You can also breed your own sex links! Crossing Barred Rocks with Rhode Island Reds results in a barred hen with a kinda strangely colored roo. You can look up pics on the net.
Hi...
Go look at the link below...."FeatherSite-The Poultry Page" It explains what sex-links are, how they are made and shows you pictures of them too.
They are AWESOME egg layers! Mine has been laying for months now and I think she took three days off that entire time so far! And they are nice big eggs too! OH and she is one of my friendliest chickens too
Sex-Links are chickens that can be differentiated at birth by their down color. Sex-Links are only single generation meaning that you can not breed a sex-link to a sex-link and get a sex-link. They will generally breed back to something resembling the hen parent stock. Auto-sexing are cross breeds that will breed true generation after generation but are not necessarily distinguishable at birth as to which sex they are.
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Is the roo a true Ameraucana? If so, you could cross him to Barred Rock hens and get sexlinked Easter Eggers as offspring. The male chicks would all be barred. The female chicks would all be black.
The sexlink trait will only be in the first cross though. If you later cross any of the chicks, or breed back to the parent birds, then you won't get sexlinks. But then, this is true of all sexlink crosses.
The offspring would all be EEs and most females will lay a greenish egg - maybe sort of olive colored if the original Barred Rock hens lay darker brown eggs.
To get a sexlink cross using an RIR, you need a RIR Roo and then cross to hens in specific other breeds.
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Is the roo a true Ameraucana? If so, you could cross him to Barred Rock hens and get sexlinked Easter Eggers as offspring. The male chicks would all be barred. The female chicks would all be black.
Just a question...but where is the barring gene coming from in that cross?