Color projects in Orpingtons

[Pollo Caballo]

So who on here has been doing any lavender Orpington color projects and what do you call the shade of the two 'bookend' pullets and the rooster and hen pair? I have been calling them lemon lavender as that was the closest comparable I could find when I did an online search. I assume there were some whites and a buff or two in the breeder flock not that many generations ago ( as I had whites also hatch out from the same parents) and that the 'lemon' shade is more of a dilute buff??
I hatched these pullets from my own birds (the rooster and hen pair in the photos) this past May. The rooster and hen pair were acquired two years ago as hatching eggs from a friends flock. She got her original hatching eggs about three years ago and would get darker lavender, that lemon lavender color and the odd white bird from her hatches also.
I think these Orpingtons are pretty lovely natured birds and they also lay a much lighter pinky egg then my two older dark lavender Orpington girls.
The 'White' Orpington pullet in with Marans is actually a lavender splash ( she was pure white until her 4 month molt). Is anyone doing a lavender splash project? I have seen blue splash before but could not even find a mention of lavender splash in my searches.

[windwalkingwolf]

Oh, my! You have very lovely birds! This post is going to ramble a bit as I attempt to organize my thoughts. Fair warning.
I don't breed Orpingtons. I did have some blacks, but used them for project breedings with other breeds. They make fabulous, big, beautiful Easter eggers! And the blacks I had laid eggs like crazy, not huge eggs but lots of them, which is why I was outcrossing in the first place. The woman I got them from, bred for all traits including stellar egg production. I wish she was still breeding birds!
I'm a lover of colour in poultry, but not a very good student. Chicken genetics are beyond me except at the most basic level. I WANT to learn the technical details, but every time I try, I just can't seem to absorb anything. I'm stuck working at an intuitive level: If I stick x rooster with y hen, I will get x, xx, xy, yx, and maybe a and b. Just don't ask me to show my work.
So with my limited knowledge and experience in mind, I'll tell you some of what I intuit looking at your lovely birds, if you want to hear it, and hopefully more experienced breeders will correct where I have gone wrong. @WLLady , @modern17
Lemon cuckoo orpingtons for example, when I look at them, don't look 'lemon' to me at all; I think it's a washed-out buff (gold) due to a modifier, and not the same as true lemon, which I believe is gold and silver in the same feather. I'm really not sure, though, so keep that in mind :) With your "lemon lavenders" as you call them, the colour you call lemon looks identical to me to the 'lemon' in other import origin Orpingtons. If I recall correctly, Buff Orpingtons ARE/WERE used in North America to create/invigorate the "lemon" in colours imported, so it's very possible the breeder you got these from was outcrossing, or that these are throwbacks. Nothing wrong with that, as you have found out, you can get some fun colours!
I'm pretty sure I'm seeing some Columbian modifiers in the top two pictures, which sort of confirms to me that there's been some funky outcrossing going on in the past (there are buff lavender brahmas) but also makes me wonder if the birds in those two are not lavender, but light blue.
When I look at your "lavender splash", I'm not sure that's what you've got (self blue being very different from blue/splash/black) and I think it may be a very washed-out splash. If you breed splash together, you will get progressively faded and fewer splash markings until they seemingly disappear altogether. Lavender (self blue) is not the same as blue, which can come in all shades from very light, almost white, to almost black and every shade in between. To have a lavender splash, I think you would have to have a bird that has TWO copies of lavender, and also TWO copies of blue. It would be exceedingly difficult to find out if this is the case...but if you end up with a cockbird coloured like her, mash them together and keep notes on what hatches out! I also think she could be a throwback to a white progenitor some generations back. I think white Orpingtons (assuming the outcross was a white Orpington, and not a white Something Else) are recessive white, meaning, to my mind (again I may be wrong) that the white will eventually "breed out" if you're not selecting for it (e.g. eating all your "splash" chicks) BUT (in my limited experience), if the white comes from dominant white, (Leghorns come to mind, and I think Brahma are Dom White) it keeps popping up for freaking decades. White chicks with random coloured splashes hatch in with coloured chicks. Great if you're just like me and breeding some colourful birds for backyard beauties and the freezer, but if you want to work towards a variety of your breed, you have to be prepared to cull intensively. Dominant white throwbacks should never be used for breeding when trying to fix a colour, unless that colour is white. It's annoying. And sometimes, the only way to know, is to put a pair of birds together and hatch EVERYTHING. And then, put the hen with a different rooster, and hatch EVERYTHING. And then, put the first rooster with a different hen, and hatch EVERYTHING. And learn to like eating chicken two meals a day every day, because you don't want to sell your culls as pet stock for a pittance, and your feed bill is stupid, and eating 1000 chickens a year is the only way to recoup any losses

[Ontario Chick]

I KNEW that was going to wake up Jan !!!!
Lovely birds indeed, it's interesting how the different color expresses in different breeds.
I have ventured in to an outcross between varieties before, and frankly short of hatching hundreds of birds, you are only ever getting a very narrow sliver of what it actually in there.
If you are a "brave heart" like Jan, you end up with extensive knowledge and equally large flock

[kenya]

In silkies the colour is called porcelain, a cross between lavender and buff. If you look at porcelain d'Uncle bantams your rooster looks just like that without the speckles that the d'Uncle has. Beautiful colour.

Love your eggs looks so Christmas, like coloured light bulbs.

[Pollo Caballo]

Oh I like that ....porcelain.... sounds expensive!!
It would make sense as I assumed there would be buff Orpingtons back in there somewhere. Not sure about other breeds and I only know the parent stock and grandparent stock but nothing beyond that. My friend did hatch out regular lavender, some lemon lavender (porcelain) , one white and one smokey black ( which was probably a smokey blue) pullet from her original purchased hatching eggs. She keep back the best lavender cockeral as her flock sire but we really don't know what was in the original breeder flock... more than lavenders I would say. But lovely colors none the less.
So my splash may well be a very dilute blue splash which is fine by me. I like her for her unique color, friendly demeanour, and as a bonus the lightest rose pink egg color.
Sorry I am not as brave as Jan and though I do like to eat chicken ( though not my own!) I could not stomach it three meals a day forever!!! And with out kicking all of my horses out of their stalls I would not have the grow out space anyways!!
These chickens are a lovely color and sweet natured but I will not be able to pursue this color anyhow as I did cull that rooster this summer ( probably a good thing on many fronts!!). As gorgeous as he was he was also very protective of his little flock and would sometimes go after my kids (and routinely after my dog... who thought it was great fun)! So when it came time to pick out the keeper vs cull roosters he got voted off the island!! My keeper roosters have to have good temperaments with humans as my kids have to be able to collect eggs and tend the birds safely!!

[Happy]

Whatever they are I think they are gorgeous!

[Kbr42]

Lovely birds!

[Farrier1987]

Nice birds, nice aygs.

And I must axe. Where did you get the horse chicken handle? Usted habla? And don't tell me you won it in a raffle.

[kenya]

Gee I looked back through the pictures and didn't see a horse chicken ax handle. Where is it?

[kenya]

Too bad you had to cull that rooster he was stunning!!!