Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

I thought I would start a thread on Mutts because I know most of us have some and I find it interesting to see the combinations some people end up with. Right now from my first incubator hatch of the season I have two Buff Orpington/ French Black Copper Marans chicks. They were born all yellow but now at a week old their feathers are coming in and are such a pretty colour, I will post pictures later today in this thread. I plan one more incubator hatch and will be putting in some other mixed up eggs (along with some purebred ones) just to see what I get.

A lot of fun to see what pops up!

It will be interesting to watch the feather colouring come in, here's hoping at least one of the two is a girl!

Great fun, Thanks for posting.
The color results on the crosses would be more or less the same regardless of breed, so might be helpful to anybody doing outcrossing in standard bred birds too.
Looks like they will be Buff with some mossiness, wish you had a dozen, so we could test Our theories on Your Chicks.

Ontario Chick wrote:QR_BBPOST Great fun, Thanks for posting.
The color results on the crosses would be more or less the same regardless of breed, so might be helpful to anybody doing outcrossing in standard bred birds too.

sorry I need an "idiots guide" version

Not at all, color genetics in chickens are incredibly complex with so many variables that the rules seldom work out in any expected manner. The chick will probably be just diluted Buff, but if you had dozen of them the results might be quite varied.
You can ask Jan (WWW)

Your chicks will likely be some colour of gold with black in the feathers, particularly the saddle, hackle and back. We'll see! There's theory and then there's what actually happens- sometimes hidden recessive genes can do wonderful things. Either way they will be pretty chicks.