It's similar to how you describe roses, yes. S/s+ comes out as mostly silver with some golden leakage. A good example to look at are Silver and Golden Duckwings and Black Breasted Reds. Silver Duckwings are S/S. Golden Duckwings are S/s+. BBR are basically Red Duckwings (with red enhancers like Mh) and are s+/s+. If you look at photos of all the above mentioned you will see the differences.
Not quite. The first cross will yield barred buff - basically what people call lemon cuckoo*. The second will yield mostly lavender cuckoos but may yield some birds (particularly cockerel offspring) that more resemble isabel cuckoo depending on how much red leakage is present. Genetically speaking the only difference between isabel cuckoo and lavender cuckoo is that isabel is on a partridge base (i believe it's Partridge anyways) whereas lavender cuckoo is on a plain black base. The third cross will yield all cuckoo* offspring, some may have red leakage.
*The first and third crosses will yield cuckoo offspring however because only one parent is barred all males will be single barred and be darker than a pure cuckoo male of any sort. Pullets will however look the same as one from two cuckoo parents, as females can only ever be single barred.
So, the first thing to know is that the gene you're working with (Silver) is sex linked. This means you will get different results depending on which parent is the silver parent and which is the gold. Basics to know: males can have, at most, two copies of a gold or silver gene. Females, on the other hand, can only have one at the most. While cocks can pass these genes to their sons or daughters, hens can pass them only to their sons. Also, hens can't hide a color - they have just the one gene so they can only be either silver or gold but never split.
If your intital cross is gold cock x silver hen: you will receive 100% silver cockerels and 100% gold pullets. This is known as a red sex linked cross. The cockerels, as you pointed out, will technically be hiding gold; however gold doesn't hide as well as some recessive genes so I'd expect to see some at least some red or gold leakage in the wing bows and saddles of males.
On the other hand, if your initial cross is silver cock x gold hen: you will receive 100% silver offspring. Pullets will be pure silver, as they can have only the one copy of the gene. Cockerels will all be split to gold and likely have red leakage.
As for how to continue from there... that is up to you. Some good, universal advice is simply to breed what has the most of the best and the least of the worst. So any bird which is carrying at least one copy of silver and, more importantly, has the closest type to a good example of the breed you are creating the variety in. Either parent or sibling crosses would be fine for this provided the birds being bred are taking you in the directions of your goals. Some consider sibling crosses a bird more of a wild card but personally I would not worry about it.
Thank you! This is what I figured. I just didn't want to start without having some backup to what I thought. Thanks again!!!
