Solid black (chicken plumage)

In the wild, color has great significance affecting the survival and reproductive success of the species.

Under domestication, mankind has transformed all the species involved which have thus been freed from environmental pressures to a large extent.

In more recent centuries color varieties have been created purely for ornament and pleasure, fashion playing a surprisingly large part in their development.

The head, hackle, back, saddle, sickles and wing bows of the may have a beetle-green to purple sheen that may be particularly rich in male birds but still very evident in females.

[5] The original Black Orpington was bred by William Cook in 1886 by crossing Minorcas, Langshans and Plymouth Rock to create a new hybrid bird.

Cook selected a black bird that would exhibit well by hiding the dirt and soot of London.

[5] Andalusian Blue was very well known and appreciated in Spain at the second half of the 19th century, being present in the Real Botanical Garden of Madrid in 1864.

Heterozygotes Bl/bl+ individuals have the entire surface of a uniform shade of plain slaty blue, clearly and sharply laced with bluish black.

Homozygotes Bl/Bl are white with a faint bluish gray tinge, and blue in feathers with the form of large irregular shaped blobs.

Otherwise, non-black fowls may have black offspring too: The popular cross between Rhode Island Red males and Barred Rock females, commonly employed to obtain hybrid brown egg layers, such as ISA Brown, gives solid black females with a few brushstrokes of red in the chest.

But is responsible for the extension of black pigment into the normally red areas of red-zone fowl interacting with the other alleles at the E locus.

[13] Homozygotes Ml/Ml are nearly all black especially in combination with some recessive alleles of the E allelic series such as eb (brown) and e+ (wild type), except that females with e+ are black with salmon breasts, while females with eWh are wheaten with dark brown back and hackle.

Melanotic Ml in single dose has little or no effect on plumage color in combination with eWh in females.

Heterozygotes Ml/ml+ have black head and hackle in combination with eb and e+ but little effect on eWh females.