Colours

Colours are one of the two types of heritable chicken traits. There are 55 colours on the chicken colour wheel. Colours show discontinuous variation: they lie on a spectrum, and are often inherited as a mix of both parents' traits.

There are four colour loci: base, over, flair and peep. The base locus determines the underlying body colour; the over locus determines pattern, wing, and tail colours; the flair locus determines most comb, wattle and beak colours; and peep determines eye colour. Peep is the only discontinuous colour trait: it can only be one of two colours (for now): black and white. The other three loci may be any colour on the colour wheel.

As mentioned on the breeding page, chickens will inherit each colour gene from anywhere on the spectrum between each parent's corresponding colours, including possibly the parent's colour.

For example, if one parent has an amethyst body and the other has a wine body, their chicks can have bodies that are amethyst, lavender, orchid, plum, fuchsia, or wine.

To find out what colours a couple's offspring can have, look at what colours lie between them on the colour wheel.

Chicken colours can be changed with modulators, shifting one step at a time in either direction on the colour wheel.