Blue for sexlinks

[JacinLarkwell]

I'm making sexlinked Cochins after next year. This year in ordering the birds to start.

I was told you can use blue with a barred female and get sexlinks. Is that true? Can you still tell who's a male and who's a female at hatch? Or would some chicks be too light?

 

[LadiesAndJane]

25% Pullets, blue
25% Pullets, black
25% Cockerels, blue barred
25% Cockerels, black barred

This is what turns up with the kippen calculator, females will be either blue or black and males will be blue or black with barring. Not sure if they would have a head spot. Hopefully others will comment as well!

 

[JaeG]

It's the barred gene that's the important one.

This article explains the different types of sex linking possible and yours would be the 'black' sex link but blue should work the same.
Sex Linked Chickens for Beginners, What they are and how to breed them. | BackYard Chickens - Learn How to Raise Chickens
Unfortunately some of the photos no longer show but it explains it well.

Good luck with your project.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

So I won't have to worry about splashes not showing head spots?

 

[Willawong Hill]

As long as only one bird is blue (so your barred female is black) you won't have any splash birds to worry about. I imagine it would get tricky if you had blue and blue barred you wanted to cross though.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Okay cool. I'm using blue and red Frizzle males over barred females so I needed to be able to tell headspots and didn't want to get a color I ended up not able to use

 

[Egghead_Jr]

You won't get splash but it will still be difficult to sex by the head spot. Blue down can be light to dark. The light blue doesn't show head spots well. Trust me, I've been there scratching my head looking at blue chicks that may or may not have head spot. Mine were not sex links, father carried one barring gene and I obviously wanted to sell off all chicks with barring as it was a blue variety project.

Long story short is I wasn't 100% accurate.