Thank you so much! I will check out the links you gave. I have done some breeding and showing with cats/dogs. So I'm familiar with recessive genes.....somewhat. I was wondering if chickens worked like that. If you have a yellow lab and a black lab and breed them, they are all acceptable colors. I guess chicken breeds don't work that way. Or maybe just not all chicken breeds?
For most colors in most breeds of chickens, crossing them will give a bunch of non-standard colors.
Certain combinations do work.
For example, many varieties are based on a black chicken with some gene that modifies how it appears. Any of those can be interbred with black. But mixing the modifiers often gives non-standard colors again.
Examples that work:
--Black, blue, splash
--Black, chocolate
--Black, lavender
Adding barring or mottling to any of those groups also works fine.
Barring adds white lines on any chicken (usually called "barred" or "cuckoo.")
Mottling adds white dots on the tips of the feathers on any chicken.
Combinations that usually do not work:
--any cross of gold with silver tends to mess up the silvers
--any pairing that has black in different places on the chicken (Columbian pattern x laced pattern, or double-laced pattern x wheaten pattern, or partridge pattern x spangled pattern, etc.) Such a pairing usually produces non-standard patterns of black.
What about silkies? If you breed a black to a white? Would they be pure silkie? And hatch either all white or all black?
Pure Silkies, yes. Color, not quite.
There are at least two sets of genes that can cause white in chickens.
The most common "white" silkies have recessive white. Crossing them with black silkies will typically give black chicks in the first generation, but they may have bits of other color leaking through in places. The next generation is likely to have a bunch of weird colors, plus some whites and some blacks.
But some silkies have Dominant White instead. Crossing them with black silkies gives mostly-white birds with some black leakage. They are typically called "paint," and some people breed them on purpose. It is possible to have a breeding pen that produces black, paint, and white silkies if they are all genetically "black" with 0, 1, or 2 copies of the Dominant White gene.
It would appear I have some researching to do! My plan was to get several colors as I love variety, but want to stay "pure" for selling hatching eggs/chicks.
Definitely some researching!
Many people choose black/blue/splash for that very reason, maybe with cuckoo (barring gene) as well. That means a single pen can produce black, black cuckoo, blue, blue cuckoo, splash, and splash cuckoo. Or you can skip the splash, by having blacks of one gender with blacks & blues of the other gender.
