Genetics of chicken colours – Extended Edition Hardcover

In 2020, the German ‘chicken colour genetics’ book came out. This book had been expanded compared to the first book, which is still up to date by the way, just more comprehensive. The English chicken world said ‘we want a big hardcover book in English.’
It took a couple of years, here it is…

Over the years I have learned a lot of new things, learning never stops. At the time I started to see new correlations that were not mentioned in books or articles on ornamental chickens before.
In the early 2000s, I was the first to explain and illustrate with photos of silver based chickens, how and where autosomal red occurs and how to recognise it – this was soon followed by my theory of ‘combined feather patterns’, starting with tollbunt. I explained and illustrated the many variations of mottled, which in the hobby are all called ‘mille fleur’ or ‘tricolour’, depending on the breed. Indeed, there’s nothing scientific about the hobby colour names.

The Extended Edition of genetics of chicken colours, it weighs almost 1400 grams, 280 pages heavy silk paper, hardcover. The base is the German book Colour Genetics (very interesting colours, some different from elsewhere) and I added extra chapters on interesting stuff. Some things are a bit beyond the basics… the additional explanations.

Here some more things that go on between the colours and patterns, and the reasons why. Illustrated, of course, with lots of photos (1000+) and, where possible, references to scientific studies.
I read these studies and extract what might be interesting or even important for us hobby breeders. See the 55+ articles on this website.

The Recipe Book, which contains all the genomes (genetic recipes) of the common feather colours and their variations, with photos of the cock and hen (also unique), has been expanded to include even more colours. These additional colours are basically combinations of existing colours and plumage patterns, as there are no new genes after choc and a mysterious incomplete dominant Serama and Chabo ‘all-in-one-columbian’ with very typical characteristics. This book is a (hardcover, on request) extended version of the softcover book that will continue to exist for as long as there is a demand. It will be discontinued when the demand is no longer sufficient to justify printing it. Until then there is the original and this new extended hardcover book.