Portraits and parentage

I have a theory about my dominiques parentage. I have just taken some up to date portraits of the four chickens, which is never easy as they are never still.

Treacle

Bluebell

Pepper

Dotty

Dotty is a month younger than the other girls. I started out with three dominiques but Poppy turned out to be a roo. I was worried at the time that Dotty may be a roo too. This was because she looked much more like Poppy than like Pepper, who I knew was a hen as she was had developed her grown up voice of “boc boc”.

At the farm where I got the dominiques, they had two dominique breeding pens with one cockerel and one hen in each. My theory is that Poppy and Dotty had the same parents, while Pepper had the other parents. It’s only a theory which can’t be proved but I see such a similarity between Dotty and Poppy despite being different sexes and Pepper has a quite different look. Dotty and Poppy both have that prehistoric look that chickens sometimes have while Pepper has a much softer look. Poppy and Dotty have the same shaped beak and same eyes, where as Pepper again has a slightly different look.

I am going to include some older photos to try to show this.

Poppy at about two months old

Poppy on the left and Dotty on the right, when Poppy was two months old and Dotty was one month old

Pepper at two months old

It will be interesting to see as Dotty grows up if they still look different, I think they probably will. I think like people they take different characteristics from their parents even though they are from the same breed. I will review this when Dotty is fully grown.