DOMINANT TRICOLOR D 301 is a very attractive coloured program that enables to sex one-day-old chickens according to the flight feathers growth rate. Another program characteristic is the variability in eggshell colour, from white to light cream. It is very popular as a final hybrid for self-sufficient farms and not only in Europe. Owing to its attractive colouring, it is also used in exporting of parent breeding pairs to Asia and America for the production of eggs in self-sufficient family farms. The asset is relatively high productivity, namely laying over 280 eggs with an attractive original plumage colour. This program and its colouration first appeared in 2003 in one hen within the D 300 program Brown Leghorn lineage, and gradually this colouration was not only preserved but also bred into closed paternal and maternal populations, which guarantee its preservation in the hybrid F1 population.
This program is the result of cross breeding two Trikolor populations. The parental population is fast feathering with allele of the recessive gene "k" for feathering rate "K/k" and the maternal population is slow feathering with the dominant allele "K". When hatching one-day-old chickens, feather sexing using the "K/k" allele is applied, where one-day-old cockerel acquires the dominant allele of this "K" gene from the mother and is slow feathering and one-day-old hen acquires the recessive "k" allele from the father and is fast feathering, which is evident on one- day-old chickens’ flight feathers.
