Red sex link breeding

[JosieMaeChickens]

Looking for advice on getting started breeding our own red sex link chicks. We currently have Golden Comets and enjoy them very much. We are looking to breed either Golden Comets or ISA Browns. The internet is confusing on what the parents should be. Some say RIR rooster with White Leghorn hen while others says New Hamshire with White Rock hen to make the Golden Comet. Looking for advice, especially if you have breed or currently breed red sex links. Thank you!

 

[NatJ]

There are several ways to get color-sexable chicks where the females are mostly red. Any such chickens can be called "Red Sex Links." That is part of why the internet information is confusing-- there are many different options that can work fine.

The specific parents used to make Golden Comets or ISA Browns are not available to buy. They are specially developed by big breeding companies just to produce the hybrids, and the companies sell the hybrid chicks but not the parent types.

If you want to breed your own color-sexable chicks, there are many combinations of parent breeds that can work, but none will give chicks exactly like the commercial sexlinks. They will probably not lay quite so many eggs, may have a different body shape & size, may have temperament differences, may have somewhat different coloring while still having the red female/white male sexing trait.

If you are specifically fond of Golden Comets, you might not be happy with any of the crosses you can produce.

If do you want to breed color-sexable chicks, the basic pattern is that you need a gold father and a silver mother. Sons will be silver like their mother, daughters will be gold like their father.

"Gold" can range in shade from a light yellow, through buff and gold tones to red and mahogany. "Silver" is a gene that changes all the gold parts of a chicken to white. Since you want the chicks to have obviously different colors, it usually works better to use a rooster with a dark shade of "gold" (red/mahogany) rather than a light shade (buff).

You also need the chicks to have a color of down that lets you see the gold/silver difference. Breeds with a lot of black in the down don't work very well. For example, a Gold Laced Wyandotte rooster with a Silver Laced Wyandotte hen would produce sex linked chicks, but there is so much black in the chick down that the gold/silver differences are hard to see. By the time the chicks have enough feathers to clearly show the gold/silver difference, they are almost old enough to sex by other means anyway.

A Rhode Island Red rooster, or a New Hampshire rooster, is a good choice for the father breed. They have almost identical genes for color, and they both have good other traits as well.

The typical White Leghorns that are easily available in the USA will not work as the mother breed. There are several different genes and combinations of genes that can cause a chicken to look white, and they don't have the right set. Chicks from a White Leghorn hen, will typically be white with a few bits of black leakage, for both genders of chicks, no matter what breed of rooster was their father. White Jersey Giants and White Silkies also have the wrong genes (different wrong ones, but still wrong.)

Among chicken breeds commonly available from hatcheries, several all-white breeds have a chance of working as the mother, but there's no way to be sure except by trying them. Rhode Island White probably has the best chance, with White Wyandotte and White Rock being possibilities also.

If you want to be sure of choosing a breed with the right genes to be the mother, I would suggest ones with large amounts of silver (whiite) and small amounts of black. Delaware, Columbian Wyandotte, Columbian Rock, Light Sussex, and Light Brahma are all good choices for color reasons, although some may not have the other genes to make the kind of chicks you want. Chicks from those hen breeds, with a Rhode Island Red or New Hampshire father, will be sexlinked (gold/red daughters, white sons), but they will have black in their tails and other places instead of the white that is seen there in Golden Comets.

 

[Ted_Harrell]

 

[Ridgerunner]

I copied this from a thread on here talking about red sex links. I'll include a link as the rest of the post talks about black sex links and wing feather sexing. In the chart at the end any rooster on the left can be crossed with any hen on the right to produce a red sex link chick.

First the link

Sex- linked Information | BackYard Chickens - Learn How to Raise Chickens

Then the copy

Introduction

The number 1 rule is that two sex linked chickens can not be crossed to produce sex linked offspring. A sex linked chicken can not be crossed with any other variety of chicken to produce sex linked offspring. A person can not produce sex linked offspring if they cross a male sex linked variety with any variety of female. A person can not produce sex linked offspring if they cross any variety of male with a sex linked female. A person can not use sex linked birds in any cross to produce sex linked offspring. There is one exception to rule number one; a red sex link that is a non-barred and non-dominant white male can be used in a black sex linked cross.

The second important rule is that one should not use white birds in sex linked crosses. White birds that have the correct genotype can be used to make a sex linked cross but a breeder never knows if the white bird has the correct genotype. The authors advise concerning white birds and sex linked crossing is do not use white birds in sex linked crosses. White leghorns can not be used in any kind of color sex linked cross.

There are 3 common methods that are used to sex day old chicks and two of the ways involve sex linked traits. There are color sexing, feather sexing and vent sexing. Vent sexing is exactly what it sounds like. Before the vent is opened, the feces in the chick must be expelled by gently squeezing the abdomen. The chicks vent is then opened and examined to determine if the chick is a male or a female. The copulatory organ (penis) of the male is a different shape and much larger than that of the females clitoris. The problem with vent sexing is that there are over fifteen different shapes associated with the copulatory organs and most people do not want to look into the cloaca or vent of a chick.

This post will first discuss color sexing, red sex-linked then black sex linked. Following this will be a discussion dealing with feather sexing.


Color sexing is a tried and true way of sexing day old chicks. There are two basic kinds of sex linked color crosses; there are the red sex-linked cross and the black sex-linked cross. Any breeder can produce red sex linked chicks if they have a red male and silver female chicken that carry the correct genotype (genes a bird carries). The red male parent in the cross must carry two sex linked gold alleles (s+/s+) while the silver female must carry the silver allele (S/_w).

The most important thing to remember about sex-linked crosses is that 1) female offspring inherit their sex-linked trait from the father and 2) the male offspring inherit a sex-linked trait from the mother and a sex-linked trait from the father.


Red Sex Linked Crosses

If the sex-linked trait is dominant in the mother and recessive in the father (the father carries two recessive alleles) then the sons will express the dominant trait inherited from the mother, while the daughters will express the recessive trait inherited from the father. This is the key to sex linked crosses; the male offspring can be separated from the female offspring when they hatch from the egg.


An example of this is the inheritance of the silver and gold alleles (genes) that are used in a red sex linked cross. In this case, the father has two recessive gold alleles (s+/s+) and the mother has one dominant silver allele (S). An example of a gold bird is a rhode island red and an example of a silver bird is a delaware.

A gold male Silver female




When the cross is made, the male offspring will inherit a gold allele (s+) from the father and a silver allele (S) from the mother. The males will inherit two different alleles, one silver and one gold; silver is dominant therefore the male chicks will have white down due to the dominant silver gene.



The mother can only give her silver allele to her sons; the mother does not determine the down color of the daughters. Only the father determines the down color of the daughters. The father will give one gold allele to each daughter causing the down of the daughters to be reddish in color.

The diagram below illustrates how offspring inherit alleles.

The down color of red sex linked chicks can vary depending on the breed of bird used to make the red sex linked cross. Different breeds of chickens carry different kinds of genes and it is the genes that cause the different colors in the chick down.

The chick on the right is the perfect example of the red down color and the chick on the left is the perfect example of silver or white down color. As can be seen, the female (red) is easily distinguished from the male (silver or white).

Illustration1

Not all sex linked crosses will produce the perfect down color. Here is another example of the down color associated with a sex linked cross. The gold female is on top and the silver male is on the bottom of the picture.

Illustration 2

Some crosses using silver females and gold males produce offspring that can not easily be separated into groups of male chicks or female chicks. It is important that the breeder choose the correct breeds to use in making a red sex linked cross.

As a general rule, do not use autosomal barred birds ( Campine, Fayoumi, etc) or spangled birds ( Appenzeller, Hamburg, etc.) and laced Polish ( laced tail and single lacing). These birds carry the birchen allele which will not produce the down colors needed in a red sex linked cross.

The author carried out a red sex-linked cross between a silver Appenzeller Spitzhauben female and a Rhode Island Red male. The only way you could tell the difference between the male and female chicks was by a small amount of reddish or whitish color on the chin. On some chicks, you could not distinguish the difference between the gold and white on the chin. See Illustration 3 The back of the chick in illustration 3 is black; the black down is covering the reddish or white down making it impossible to determine the sex of the chick.

Illustration 3

Breeds to Cross