Buff isn’t a gene, it is composed of multiple genes. Crossing two breeds will never get you purebred offspring. No matter which way you cross it, mottling and silkie feathering are recessive.@Willawong Hill, @Amer, @AllenK RGV, I was wondering how the buff gene works in silkies. If I breed a buff silkie to a Mille fleur would I get a silkie with the patterns of a Mille Fluer? If I breed a buff Cochin to a Mille fire would I get a Cochin with Mille fleur patterning?
You would get black tailed buff offspring with white skin, a walnut comb, five toes, and a crest if you breed the Cochin over a Silkie.
If you breed the Silkie over Cochin, which I would recommend, the female offspring will be fibromelanistic.
Breed the offspring together and you will be hard pressed to find anything resembling a mille fluer silkie. I wanted to calculate the chances but Kippenjungle crashed because there are just that many genes involved. While that is a method to extract genes, I would recommend breeding the daughters of the original cross between Silkie and Cochin back to the father and then breeding their offspring together. Then it would only be a matter of getting mottled offspring. Keep all the offspring and breed as many as possible. Only about 13 percent will be mottled, and of those, you might have the bad luck (again 13 percent chance) of getting single comb.
It’s a lot of work but it’s how any new variety is developed. Hatching numbers.