Breeding Sex Links

[rhoffart]

This is my first experience with chickens. We bought 6 "Golden Sex Links" from TS. She said they are all pullets. Cool, now 2 months later it's clear we have 5 pullets and a Roo. Now let's fast forward a year from now, if I allowed the process to go one more generation ... what do you get? Is this where EE's come in? Do they start mutating into something else? I'm sure this has been done before, I just could not find a clear answer. Thanks

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Sex-linking in chickens is a one-shot deal. If you cross a hen of the right breed with a rooster of another correct breed you get chicks that you can tell male from female at hatch by their down color. But only once. If you then breed the children together you will lose the sex-linking ability of telling boy from girl at hatch.

If your birds are commercial sex-links you can breed them together and still end up with hens that lay pretty well, if perhaps not quite as good as their mothers did, but you'll have to grow them out a few weeks before you will be able to tell boy from girl.

 

[rhoffart]

If your birds are commercial sex-links you can breed them together and still end up with hens that lay pretty well, if perhaps not quite as good as their mothers did, but you'll have to grow them out a few weeks before you will be able to tell boy from girl.

So if you do this, and they are not considered "golden sex links" anymore. What do you call them? Just Chickens? Will they carry the same colors?