Why do some chickens look like they’re wearing a checkerboard while others are solid black or white?

Black and white checkered chicken

Phenomenon Description: A chicken with speckled (“checkered”) black and white plumage
Location: Harnett County, Angier 
Grade Level or Course: Biology


Question: Why do some chickens look like they’re wearing a checkerboard while others are solid black or white? 
Other related questions about the phenomenon:
How would you describe the phenotype of an organism that inherits codominant alleles?
Why doesn’t codominance follow the typical dominant-recessive inheritance pattern? How does this affect how traits appear in heterozygous individuals?
What is an example of codominance in human inheritance?
How does codominance contribute to genetic variation in a population?
How can understanding codominance be useful in animal breeding or medical genetics?
What ecological or agricultural risks could arise if one allele becomes rare or disappears (i.e. loss of genetic variation)? 
Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns 
Science Domain: Life Science 

NC Standard:
LS.Bio.7 Understand types of inheritance and how the environment can influence traits. 
NC Objective:
LS.Bio.7.1 Use mathematics and computational thinking to predict the variation and distribution of expressed traits based on: Mendelian inheritance, codominance, incomplete dominance, multiple alleles. 

Additional Resources:
National Human Genome Research Institute: Codominace
https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Codominance
Cornell University: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: Codominance
http://basicgenetics.ansci.cornell.edu/codominance.php



 


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