Silkies Of A Different Color

Oooh, I wanna jump on this thread! Hopefully someone can tell me what I may be looking at with these colors. I’ve spent hoursssss looking for examples on line with no luck
The photo with the two whites - the one on the left is from a white/white mix - has a bit of a yellow undertone. I’m curious about the one on the right - more blue undertone. Is that possible a champagne or lavender?
The photo with three partridges… #1 looks like it’s feathering in as a standard Partridge coloration. #2 is feathering in that darker slate gray/brownish color all over and #3 is getting cream covered feathers… whaaaat?!

Czugi said:

Oooh, I wanna jump on this thread! Hopefully someone can tell me what I may be looking at with these colors. I’ve spent hoursssss looking for examples on line with no luck
The photo with the two whites - the one on the left is from a white/white mix - has a bit of a yellow undertone. I’m curious about the one on the right - more blue undertone. Is that possible a champagne or lavender?
The photo with three partridges… #1 looks like it’s feathering in as a standard Partridge coloration. #2 is feathering in that darker slate gray/brownish color all over and #3 is getting cream covered feathers… whaaaat?!

Click to expand...

So the white to the right is from a white/white cross? White to white should result in all white chicks (at least if the parents are both recessive whites which most white silkies are). That ones looks to be feathering in pretty normally for a recessive white to me. The bit of the yellow undertone could come from being gold based.

How about the one to the right, do you know what it came out of? It doesn't look to be feathering in like a recessive white normally would. The color coming in reminds me more of a splash. I'm not seeing any of the darker splash markings showing up yet but if it is a splash it may get more as it feathers in (and some splashes are diluted if they've been bred to other splashes for too many generations and the darker splashes may not ever become apparent). If that one is from a white to white breeding than it likely would be recessive white just not a usual one. Though it isn't very common some silver based recessive whites can feather in with a sort of smokey hue. As far as champagne I've heard that term being used for dominant white with a lot of khaki leakage. I've actually hatched one or two from my paint breeding as paint also has dominant white involved. It has been my experience that they typically are a brighter white than your little one there until they get older as the leakage doesn't tend to show up until later on. It doesn't look too much like a lavender to me either (not the same shades I've seen anyway) but I don't have much experience with those. True self blue (lavender) silkies are kind of hard to come by.

As far as the partridgey ones was there any buffs involved in that breeding? Number 1 and 3 both remind me of of chicks I've seen that have some columbian genes involved (it pushes the darker pigment back to the wingtips and tails). Buff is often partridge based but with the addition of the columbian gene. Number one is obviously gold based like a regular partridge or buff. Given how it is feathering in so far it'll probably end up lighter than a typical partridge and may look sort of in between a buff and partridge (some might call it a smutty buff). Number 3 is probably like number 1 but silver based instead. If it is a boy it may be silver/gold and that gold influence might be making that cream color it's starting to get coming in. I've heard of these silver/gold males sometimes being referred to as golden in some other breeds (they look more silver based as silver is more dominant but the gold can shine through a bit). If it is silver/gold it must be male as females unlike males can only inherit silver or gold not both. I agree number two does look more like a typical partridge chick (without that possible columbian influence). It looks more like some grey/silver partridge I've hatched so I'm guessing it may be silver based. Grey is pretty much the silver version of partridge in silkies with just some slight patterning differences to be considered correct. Greys with these incorrect patterns although genetically silver partridge are still usually called greys (I hate how confusing it gets, I never know exactly what I should call them)!

I could be wrong but that is my best guess as to colors. Some might just call some of them mixed colors but I hope I might have shed some light as to some of the genetics possibly involved. It can be hard to judge what is involved when they are still so young as well so I could be completely off on some of them.

They sure are cute! I bet it'll be a lot of fun watching to see how their color develops as they mature!

Silver Columbian

LynnaePB said:

So the white to the right is from a white/white cross? White to white should result in all white chicks (at least if the parents are both recessive whites which most white silkies are). That ones looks to be feathering in pretty normally for a recessive white to me. The bit of the yellow undertone could come from being gold based.

How about the one to the right, do you know what it came out of? It doesn't look to be feathering in like a recessive white normally would. The color coming in reminds me more of a splash. I'm not seeing any of the darker splash markings showing up yet but if it is a splash it may get more as it feathers in (and some splashes are diluted if they've been bred to other splashes for too many generations and the darker splashes may not ever become apparent). If that one is from a white to white breeding than it likely would be recessive white just not a usual one. Though it isn't very common some silver based recessive whites can feather in with a sort of smokey hue. As far as champagne I've heard that term being used for dominant white with a lot of khaki leakage. I've actually hatched one or two from my paint breeding as paint also has dominant white involved. It has been my experience that they typically are a brighter white than your little one there until they get older as the leakage doesn't tend to show up until later on. It doesn't look too much like a lavender to me either (not the same shades I've seen anyway) but I don't have much experience with those. True self blue (lavender) silkies are kind of hard to come by.

As far as the partridgey ones was there any buffs involved in that breeding? Number 1 and 3 both remind me of of chicks I've seen that have some columbian genes involved (it pushes the darker pigment back to the wingtips and tails). Buff is often partridge based but with the addition of the columbian gene. Number one is obviously gold based like a regular partridge or buff. Given how it is feathering in so far it'll probably end up lighter than a typical partridge and may look sort of in between a buff and partridge (some might call it a smutty buff). Number 3 is probably like number 1 but silver based instead. If it is a boy it may be silver/gold and that gold influence might be making that cream color it's starting to get coming in. I've heard of these silver/gold males sometimes being referred to as golden in some other breeds (they look more silver based as silver is more dominant but the gold can shine through a bit). If it is silver/gold it must be male as females unlike males can only inherit silver or gold not both. I agree number two does look more like a typical partridge chick (without that possible columbian influence). It looks more like some grey/silver partridge I've hatched so I'm guessing it may be silver based. Grey is pretty much the silver version of partridge in silkies with just some slight patterning differences to be considered correct. Greys with these incorrect patterns although genetically silver partridge are still usually called greys (I hate how confusing it gets, I never know exactly what I should call them)!

I could be wrong but that is my best guess as to colors. Some might just call some of them mixed colors but I hope I might have shed some light as to some of the genetics possibly involved. It can be hard to judge what is involved when they are still so young as well so I could be completely off on some of them.

They sure are cute! I bet it'll be a lot of fun watching to see how their color develops as they mature!

Click to expand...

Lolol so I’m going to need to reread this about 85 times to wrap my head around everything you said but I immensely appreciate such a thorough and detailed response! That gives me a lot of stuff to research.
The only thing I know for sure about the white chick on the right is that it came out of a frizzle breeding pen. Absolutely no idea what colors/genes the parents have. Also hatched a solid black and a gray/slate blue chick from the same pen but I’m not sure if the exact same mother was involved. I’ll attach a photo of the gray one at the end. I’m keeping him for sure because he’s frizzle and goofy looking
As far as the partridges go I have zero info on them. Number one looked like multiple photos I’ve seen of adult hen coloration, so that one didn’t surprise me too much and I was thinking number two it was just a darker version but number three really threw me off with the cream feathers. Maybe I’ll try and start a fresh thread with these photos to see if anybody can offer up some adult photos. We’re only planning to keep three out of the 11 that hatched so we’re in fierce debates over which color variation to choose. Ha

Blue Partridge.

Czugi said:

Lolol so I’m going to need to reread this about 85 times to wrap my head around everything you said but I immensely appreciate such a thorough and detailed response! That gives me a lot of stuff to research.
The only thing I know for sure about the white chick on the right is that it came out of a frizzle breeding pen. Absolutely no idea what colors/genes the parents have. Also hatched a solid black and a gray/slate blue chick from the same pen but I’m not sure if the exact same mother was involved. I’ll attach a photo of the gray one at the end. I’m keeping him for sure because he’s frizzle and goofy looking
As far as the partridges go I have zero info on them. Number one looked like multiple photos I’ve seen of adult hen coloration, so that one didn’t surprise me too much and I was thinking number two it was just a darker version but number three really threw me off with the cream feathers. Maybe I’ll try and start a fresh thread with these photos to see if anybody can offer up some adult photos. We’re only planning to keep three out of the 11 that hatched so we’re in fierce debates over which color variation to choose. Ha

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Aww so cute! Well with those siblings I'd guess my splash theory is the most likely (looks like a light blue and a black or dark blue sibling so splash makes sense as it is two copies of the blue gene). If it is splash it should become more obvious as it matures (the siblings it has means it probably won't be too diluted).


Good luck choosing which to keep, having to only choose three must be tough!

Got some white silkies the other day. Their real cute but I was wondering whether every silkie has an extra toe on each foot.

Cascadia said:

Got some white silkies the other day. Their real cute but I was wondering whether every silkie has an extra toe on each foot.

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They're supposed to