Breeding questions

WVChickNboots said:

And if I breed my production red rooster with my Americauna hens, will the babies be blue egg layers? Also, will any combinations of these chicks be easy to gender at birth, such as specific markings for roosters/hens. I've not bred my own flock yet for chicks, but I plan to in the spring time. Im just curious if anyone has had experience with crossing these breeds, and what you ended up with. Thanks in advance.

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I agree with Sonoran Silkies. Also I am assuming the hens are easter eggers. The reason I wanted to see pictures of the hens was to determine if the cross was a possible black sex linked cross or a red sex linked cross. If the hens are black and barred and purebred for black, the cross would be a black sex linked cross. If the females were silver (not barred) and carried the correct E locus allele (not birchen or extended black), then the cross would be a red sex linked cross.

if the hen is hybrid for black (and barred) and carries the silver allele, the chicks can still be sexed at hatch. Some will be black sex-linked and the rest will be red sex linked. The barring gene in the red sex-linked males will lighten the down color some but should not effect the ability to sex the chicks. It would be helpful if the males did not express a wheaten down color. If the chicks do not express the wheaten down color then you would have to look at the non-stripped ground color on the chicks back.

Sex linked traits are not the only way to sex chicks at hatch. There are other ways but sex linkage is the most common.

If rhode island red are bred to do so, they are autosexing and can be sexed at hatch and so can new hampshire and buff brahma.

There are sex linked crosses where the face of the female chick is red and the male is white, the remainder of both male and females chick down is white. Males are basically white and females are white with a red face.