Our Brahmas
Anyone who has owned Brahmas will understand why we have fallen in love with them. These BIG fluffy beautiful chickens have the most incredibly gentle dispositions. Having young children growing up with chickens we never wanted a rooster who could cause any risk to our family. They are incredible tolerant and placid making them a dream to worth with both as a family friendly and exhibition bird.
Partridge
In Brahma colouring this typically refers to the Gold partridge (black pencilling over a gold base) however we also have Blue Partridge and Splash Partridge too. The Blue Partridge differs as these birds carry one copy of the blue gene creating the steal blue/ grey colour over the gold instead of the black in the pencilling. Splash carries two copies of the blue genes when this occurs, the colours of the bird change completely and most of the pencilling is gone, instead you are left with a beautiful light coloured bird with orange patches and some dark tail feathers in the roosters.
Partridge x Partridge = 100% Partridge
Partridge x Blue Partridge = 50% Partridge and 50% Blue Partridge
Partridge x Splash Partridge = 100% Blue Partridge
Blue Partridge x Blue Partridge = 25% Partridge, 50% Blue Partridge and 25% Splash Partridge
Blue Partridge x Splash Partridge = 50% Blue Partidge and 50% Splash Partidge
Splash Partridge x Splash Partridge = 100% Splash Partridge
Dark Brahma
This colour is one of the colours accepted in the Australian Poultry Standards and often has its own class in many poultry shows. The colour is described as silver with black pencilling. When selecting roosters they should have clean white shoulders with as little red leakage as possible. Roosters with a broken chest pattern may not be as suitable for exhibition but should be selected to as breeders as this broken chest pattern positively contributes to the pencilling. Having good quality darks in you pens can significantly help to develop new colours. See our BSO and Blue dark projects.
Our Dark breeding pens consists of exhibition quality Dark Hens and unrelated Dark Rooster. These will produce all Dark offspring.
BSO (Blue Silver Orange)
Blue Silver Orange (or shouldered, depending on who you ask) is the abbreviation for BSO. The orange is the crucial component there. That is the distinction between a BSO and a blue dark. Blue or splash partridges are crossed with dark to produce BSO, which can be obtained with just one cross. Instead of progressive improvement over many generations, this hue can be achieved in a single generation. BSO could serve as the foundation for a blue-dark project, but it takes many, many generations of extremely selective breeding to even begin to start removing that orange. In the males, the orange is particularly noticeable. A dark or blue dark rooster would only have a small amount of orange, red, or yellow on their shoulder in contrast to a BSO rooster.
Our BSO Project pen consists of a high quality Dark boy free from any red leakage with our best Blue Partridge and Splash girls. The BSO birds from this breeding pen will produce F1 BSO birds, it is to be expected that they will carry more yellow and leakage in their feathers then the F2 BSO birds produced in our Blue Dark project pen.
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Blue Dark (in development)
The distinction between blue dark and BSO tended to cause additional confusion, especially when BSO hens are called blue dark. To be fair, they can have extremely similar appearances. The differences are in the genetics. .
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Dark in blue would be blue and silver as opposed to black and silver. Same clean, bright silver throughout the body with the same clear, defined pencilling. A genuine "blue dark" would be just that, and it has been achieved overseas and with very few breeders in Australia. It is also not yet a recognised colour in the Australian Poultry Standards but can be entered in the ‘Any Other Colour’ or ‘Project’ Class. This has been a project for a limited number of people, and we are just starting out. We expect this will take several generations to achieve the desired results – the clean blue pencilling on the silver background especially in the boys. If you are also developing this colour we would love to connect with you.
Our Blue Dark Breeding pen consists of an exhibition F1 BSO rooster, Dark Brahma hens of excellent type and unrelated F2 BSO hens. When breeding the ‘blue’ genetics you will always produce a darker and lighter version of the mutation. This results in DSO (Dark Silver Orange) and SSO (Splash Silver Orange). This breeding group will produce F1 Blue dark, BSO, DSO and SSO
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* Not our image but our goal. This will take several generations to achieve. This image is from a breeder in the USA
