This free tool helps you identify a chicken's color variety from a single photo — the color and pattern combination that gives a bird its name, from solid Black or Blue through to patterned varieties like Birchen, Mille Fleur, and Columbian. Chicken color comes from a small set of genes working together: how much black pigment shows, whether it's diluted to blue, lavender, or splash, and what pattern (barred, laced, pencilled, spangled, or mottled) sits on top. Learning to read those combinations by eye is most of what it takes to tell chicken color varieties apart at a show or in your own flock. This tool helps you do that.
Upload a clear photo of one chicken, side-on so the neck, body, and tail all show, filling most of the frame with no other birds in view. Shoot in even daylight — overcast or open shade is ideal. What matters is that the light is even: a bright photo is fine, a contrasty one is not.
Why the photo matters more than you'd think
Many color varieties differ by one thing: the exact shade of the darkest pigment on the bird. Lavender, blue, and black are the same pigment at different strengths, and lavender is defined by having no true black anywhere. So a photo that darkens the bird doesn't just look worse — it turns one variety into another.
- Bright beats dark. If you have to err, err bright. A slightly overexposed lavender bird still reads as lavender; a dark one reads as black, and the right answer becomes impossible.
- But even beats bright. These two work together rather than against each other: the enemy is contrast, not brightness. Direct sun is a problem because it throws deep shadow into the feather folds, not because it is bright — and the darkest shade found anywhere on the bird is what gets recorded, so one shadowed hackle is enough to change the reading. Open shade on a bright day gives you both at once.
- Light, neutral background. Against a dark barn or deep shade there's nothing to judge tone against. Straw, grass, or a pale wall works well.
- Fill the frame, side-on. Pattern is read from individual feathers — lacing, barring, pencilling, and spangling all look alike from far away.
- One adult bird. Young birds haven't grown their adult pattern yet, and a second bird in frame confuses which feathers belong to which.
A good photo is the single biggest factor in getting a useful answer — far more than which variety you have.
or drag and drop a photo here
Your photo stays private. It isn't saved or added to any database — it's used only to read this one chicken, then discarded.