Genetics discussion about this silkie cockerel...thanks for your input

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Three Cedars Silkies

Three Cedars Silkies

Crowing
11 Years
Apr 17, 2008
5,032
107
283
Gainesville, Fl.
This 7 month old cockerel was from a lavender cock over a black hen. Sonoran Silkies and others that know...what caused the silver in the hackles? Do you otherwise like the conformation of this cockerel? If I keep him, what can I expect if I breed him to black hens? How about if I put him in my BBS pen?



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it looks like reverse columbian!
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Cool.
this reminds my of how some sex link was found to occasionally have this "sport" pattern which was developed into the Delaware.
Im interested to hear what others say....
 
I'm not shure if lav can carry the silver gene. My guess would be the black hen had the silver gene hidden and it exposed with this generation. Maybe breeding lavXblack will produce the silver gene. But your right, if anyone on this forum would know about genetics, sonoransilkies will tell you the exact answer. Type and crest, feet feathering all look awesome, to bad he carries the silver gene, could have made a great breeder, but his offspring will definitely carry the silver gene, or atleast a certain % will, proly 50% will.
 
I know that he looks birchen, but since there is no "birchen" in silkies except when improperly bred, I'm wondering if this will be passed on to his offspring...or not.

I'm so trying to learn chicken genetics, but it's very slow coming. Shoot, I took genetics in nursing school, but can't remember a thing...of course that was almost 40 years ago!!
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As I understand it, off color on supposed-to-be-solids are due to birds not having/being pure for all the genes that help to make a solid colored bird. The white on neck is white just because he is silver, if he was gold, the area would have been brown/red/gold colored instead.. basically all chickens, save for very unusual exceptions, are silver or gold(or hetero for some roosters) so the 'silver' is pretty much irrelevant to this issue.

A birchin without the aid of 'darkening/solidifying' genes will be black bodied with lot more color(such as copper black marans, birchen modern games etc).. an E bird without the extra genes often will have less off color but still some on neck.

It can be a problem where a line doesn't quite have all the necessary genes present or homozygous, for the hens to be apparently solid colored and cockerels seem to grow up solid colored but eventually show some off color at maturity. I had a really bad problem with a line like this- hens would almost all be perfectly solid black but the roosters would end up having varying amounts of off color on necks.. very frustrating.

It could be the apparently solid black hen used was something like this and produced some sons with the off color as a result. Could be the rooster not being homozygous for all genes.. or...
 

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