There are many rabbit holes for one to go down when learning about... chickens. We had a few interesting results from our first chicks hatched here at Star & Sparrow — one of them is a girl we’ve discussed before — Butter.

We were a bit perplexed as to how we got a pure white bird without having any pure white birds, so I went a-googling for answers and found out about a bunch of stuff I had never even considered:

The Chicken Calculator — there are people all over the world laying awake at night thinking about chickens, and some of them, in addition to being very knowledgeable, are also pretty innovative. This site provides tools for inputting a variety of genetic traits for males and females in order to calculate what their offspring will look like.

Egg Colors — white eggs are white, blue eggs are blue, but brown eggs are white with a brown covering! Those Easter & Olive Egger chickens producing various shades of blue/green/brown that have been so popular in recent times? Those are basically blue eggs with a brown covering, which gives the outward appearance of different shades, depending on how blue the base and how dark outer layer. This has adventurous implications for those of us bold enough to defy the American Standard of Perfection by mixing various breeds to produce our own custom Easter baskets of breakfast foods and appetizers. There are even cheat sheet egg color charts to help predict the outcomes.

My interweb education also led to a new theory on Butter. One of my favorite surprises was learning that there is a rare recessive gene in some individuals of the Cream Legbar breed that will produce an all white chicken. This can happen with any breed trait where both parents carry the same recessive gene and nature decides to put those genes together in the offspring. In our case (we think) we’ve lucked into producing a rare result known as the Frost Legbar, aka Butter!  Butter’s dad, Merle, is a Cream Legbar/Easter Egger cross, sporting a bunch of funky facial feathers (which Butter inherited). Since he was a cross, it’s pretty lucky that this particular gene, which would need to have been present in his own father, made it through his parents’ breeding and then again to one of Merle’s own offspring. But wait — that’s not enough! It also means that Butter’s mother (one of our two Easter Eggers, we now think) would also had to have been a cross with a Cream Legbar parent, lucky enough to pass on the same gene, and then lucky enough to combine it with Merle into Butter. Dang, making Butter is confusing!

Left: Butter’s dad, Merle. Right: siblings Crusty, Smoothie, Butter, and Mini-Merle.

This is all theory. Smarter people than me can probably provide all kinds of explanations for the existence of Butter (please feel free in the comments). All we really know for sure is that Butter is white, rascally, and very good at flying. With her light, athletic build, she’s proven that clearing the electric poultry fence is easy as pie, and traveling 20 yards at an altitude of 12 feet over the bird yard is a piece of cake. The next big surprise will be verifying the color of her eggs… what color do you think they will be? Comment your guess — the first person to guess correctly will get an exclusive prize from Star & Sparrow!

Left: Merle and a group of Butter’s potential moms. Right: Butter’s very different looking sisters, Crusty and Smoothie.

PS — for those of you that want to go down the same rabbit holes as me and do your own chicken math using the references above, these are all of the breeds and crosses that Merle had access to at the time that Butter was conceived:

Barred Plymouth Rock
Rhode Island Red
Delaware
Ancona
Black Sex Link
Easter Egger

There were two of each, with the pure bred and Black Sex Link being very consistent with each other. The Easter Eggers do have some minor variations in appearance and egg color — one being light blue, the other light blue with a touch of green. We originally thought Butter’s mom might be a Delaware, but now we think maybe Easter Egger. All of these hens are hatchery birds sold through a local independent retailer (The Farm Store — love this place!)