Chocolate Wyandotte Bantam and Black Silkie cross?

[Dannkand]

Hello! I have some Chocolate Wyandotte Bantams and some Black Silkies. If I cross my chocolate wyandotte roo with the black silkie hen and the black silkie roos with my chocolate Wyandotte hens, will I be able to get Chocolate silkies? I realize they will take more crossing back to black silkies to get away from the wyandotte characteristics.

 

[Debbie292d]

Chocolate roo to Black hen:
Chocolate pullets and Black split to Chocolate cockerels

Black roo to Chocolate hen:
Black pullets and Black split to Chocolate cockerels

 

[Cloverr39]

From that cross, you'll get chocolate daughters and black carrying chocolate sons. The chicks won't have silked feathers, but they'll all carry them. When you breed the Wyandotte/Silkie crosses back to Silkies, half the chicks will have silked feathers.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Eventually you could, yes. As you acknowledged, you would need to breed back to Silkies for a few generations to get back to proper Silkie traits. You'll have smooth-feathered offspring in the first generation, but all of them will carry a recessive silkie-feather gene, and they'll likely have smaller crests and beards, and less foot feathering compared to pure Silkies. Also the chocolate gene is sexlinked recessive, so is inherited as so:

Chocolate male x Black female = Black male offspring carrying chocolate and Chocolate female offspring

Black male x Chocolate female = Black male offspring carrying chocolate and Black female offspring

So the females from the Black male x Chocolate female are not very useful for this kind of project, but the rest of them could be.

In your shoes, I'd probably take the chocolate-carrying Black male offspring from either cross and breed them to the Chocolate females from the first cross and to Black Silkie females. You should get a portion of Chocolate-colored and silkie-feathered individuals from that, with which you can continue forward toward better Silkie type.

 

[Dannkand]

Thanks for your help everyone!