Ok ... back to the basics again. On the males if they have the genes for the gold leakage they will show it. Thus its pretty easy to cull for young males that show color in the hackles. Some take up to 10-12 months for it to show though so you might be feeding out birds for a while... The females carry the genes and will pass them on to their young, but don't express the color themselves. So even if you pair those black females with a solid jet black male, you wil get all jet black females and males that may or may not show color in the hackles (phenotypically anyways). So the challenge is not only getting that elusive perfect black male, but also eliminating the carriers on the female side.
Ok now I'm going to complicate it a lil bit.... Hormones and age play a role in the color too. So you can have a perfectly black male that is jet black with no leakage at 1,2, even 5 years of age and then boom after a molt they can show color.... Fun eh? Now in the standard of perfection off-color in a cockerel is a disqualification. In an older male it is a defect.
The off-colored males, depending on the genome of the hen's you are mating them to, can also possibly throw some clear blacks. I've also heard it told among breeders in not just silkies that it is wise to use those males that develop gold in the hackles later in life. They supposedly throw the deepest dark blacks. Your breeding stock is not always your show stock....
Then the hardest part is whether to strive for simply great color, great body type/feathering, or both... Because let's just say you have a black hen that just won a major national show. Exceptional type, feathering, perfect color, etc. But say you do test breedings on that so called perfect bird and you find that she'll throw cockerels with off-color, some of the most perfect females you have ever seen, and a few great clear cockerels too? Do you cull something like that just because she is a carrier?....probably not. Usually only 1/100 (or more) of cockerels should ever be good enough to go back into a breeding program anyways. You save back the best of her clear boys and get some darn nice girls to show.... Its kind of a double edged sword. If you cull simply for color sometimes you can lose the most important factor....type. I think alot of our major hatcheries have proved that to be true.
Your clear explanations with details and such depth of information is so appreciated! Tina G.
i love her!!
