Chocolate Serama Breeders - dun and blue can be included here as well

[Lorilyn Farms]

Have you tried combing the silkie with a fine toothed comb to remove the sheaths?

In my silkie endeavor cross, the feathers are always smooth, but the combs come out single straight purple and the skin comes out black. I know what you mean about adding that silkie gene to the smooth stock. At least I have no silkie roosters, so I just keep track of who is laying the eggs.

 

[muffi]

They really aren't combable. Too many feathers stay as thick pins that would just pull out rather than drop sheath. And the tail feathers are crazy. A fraction of them have super thick sheaths that seem to have several layers and these never clear up. I've only noticed it on the chocolates, but then I pay more attention to chocolates, since I am interested in that color.

 

[smoothmule]

I understand it takes several generations of the Silkied Serama to Silkied Serama to get decent feather quality. If you outcross the Silkied to straightfeathered Serama to bring in new color varieties, you have to keep breeding back to Silkied to Silkied to get the feathering right again.
June Suhm has been breeding them for multiple generations, Silkied to Silkied. I think I remember reading a post about this subject by her but I could be mistaken.

Once you have your first generation of chocolate Silkied Serama, you should be only breeding back into Silkied for several generations to get the feathering right again and I think the discussion went on to suggest that if you don't want to lose the Serama type tail sickles, you have to occasionally breed back in a straight feathered or all the feathers become silkied and they won't have that Serama appearance so it may be a fine line to get them perfected

 

[Rocky Maley]

cho. hen

 

[smoothmule]

cho. hen

Rocky,
Your hen is a melanized color, not chocolate. It's so easy to get the chocolates wrong, here is my hen Candie,
Candie looks more chocolate than your hen but she is not chocolate either. The stippling and the darker head and neck are the give away. There are a lot of chocolate look a likes, but being brown does not make them chocolate. Chocolate is a recessive, sex linked gene. It's pretty easy to figure out by breeding them and it's pretty easy to figure out the ones that are not chocolate. Your hen looks like she may have pumpkin diluting her plus the melanizers so she's lighter than Candie is.

 

[Lorilyn Farms]

Rocky,
Your hen is a melanized color, not chocolate. It's so easy to get the chocolates wrong, here is my hen Candie,
Candie looks more chocolate than your hen but she is not chocolate either. The stippling and the darker head and neck are the give away. There are a lot of chocolate look a likes, but being brown does not make them chocolate. Chocolate is a recessive, sex linked gene. It's pretty easy to figure out by breeding them and it's pretty easy to figure out the ones that are not chocolate. Your hen looks like she may have pumpkin diluting her plus the melanizers so she's lighter than Candie is.

What is the genetics behind that beautiful brown color in your hen, Smoothmule?
And do you know which gene is responsible for the multicolored tails? Would that be pumpkin?

 

[smoothmule]

Not entirely certain about Candie. I don't know her background, I bought her as a pullet but didn't get any information about what parents looked like.
All I can say is that she is not chocolate. I wish she were, I did a lot of checking into it and it's a common coloration, probably a few genes present here. She has a lot of stippling. maybe columbian? and melanizers.

Rocky's hen is definitely pumpkin plus other genes.

 

[smoothmule]

Here is an even better photo of Candie's chest, the coloring is beautiful, love the lacing. You can see the stippling better here. You can also see that her head and neck is black so no chocolate. She's an excellent example of how people can be confused about chocolate. She is a chocolate brown color, I'll give her that but if I were to advertise her as chocolate, she would sell quickly but she would not produce a chocolate (unless bred to chocolate or chocolate carrier)
I would say (and I tell people this all the time) that it's not only the seller that is responsible to advertise honest, but if a buyer is out to buy a particular color or whatever, they need to educate themselves about the color they are wanting and know what to look for, what to ask the seller etc. You can't always blame a seller when the seller sometimes does not know themselves what they have. To some, it doesn't matter what I call Candie, but if I was telling people that Candie is chocolate and I know better, that is dishonest. I believe as a responsible seller that I should know what I have or at least say honestly that I don't know what the color is. I've done that lots of times with Serama's. Most of them are "I don't know but it's gorgeous" colors.







Look closely at how much she resembles chocolate, I was so hoping she was.

 

[muffi]

Thanks for the info on silkied Serama breeding. I will keep it in mind. All of my projects are casual at this point. I have had to cut way back on my numbers due to health issues. But I will do the best I can with what I have to work with and hope for the best.

I think many people are confused between being chocolate, visually and genetically. The above birds are clearly not (self-)chocolate. They are just brown. But they do appear as if they could be genetically chocolate (being pure for the recessive sex-link chocolate gene). I am unfamiliar with the so-called pumpkin diluter gene. Based on my experience, I think those hens are pure for chocolate gene, because they don't look like they exhibit any black. Where they would otherwise show black (tail tips, mottling within back feathers, lacing on chest), they appear to have the chocolate color. You might be able to make solid chocolates from them by breeding to solid black roo (if you don't have any chocolate or chocolate-carrying boys). The sons should then carry chocolate and could be used to breed back to mom or some solid black hens. If former, you can get some solid chocolate males and females. If latter, you will only get chocolate females, but you will be more solids this way.

 

[Lorilyn Farms]

Here is an even better photo of Candie's chest, the coloring is beautiful, love the lacing. You can see the stippling better here. You can also see that her head and neck is black so no chocolate. She's an excellent example of how people can be confused about chocolate. She is a chocolate brown color, I'll give her that but if I were to advertise her as chocolate, she would sell quickly but she would not produce a chocolate (unless bred to chocolate or chocolate carrier)
I would say (and I tell people this all the time) that it's not only the seller that is responsible to advertise honest, but if a buyer is out to buy a particular color or whatever, they need to educate themselves about the color they are wanting and know what to look for, what to ask the seller etc. You can't always blame a seller when the seller sometimes does not know themselves what they have. To some, it doesn't matter what I call Candie, but if I was telling people that Candie is chocolate and I know better, that is dishonest. I believe as a responsible seller that I should know what I have or at least say honestly that I don't know what the color is. I've done that lots of times with Serama's. Most of them are "I don't know but it's gorgeous" colors.







Look closely at how much she resembles chocolate, I was so hoping she was.

You realize of course that you are just one step away from making a cocopop color? Lucky you!