I couldn't find it in the search but if you do some back tracking someone has a thread called "Silkies of a different color" or something like that and it had a pic of a columbian project silkie. Someone said that the columbian genes were incompletely dominant, like the
Andalusian Blue color gene. But anyway, there are three genes that can color birds white. Recessive White, Dominant White, and Sexlinked Silver. The light Columbian color you are wanting is Sexlinked Silver and White Silkies are Recessive white, which means they are masking another color and there is no way to know what color they are masking, so White Sikies would NOT be a good choice for this project. Use either a Silver Silkie, like Greys, or a gold inverse. Breeding a silver male to gold hens will give hens that are pure for the Silver genes and roos that are split for both silver and gold. I think if I were going to do it I would probably us a Columbian or Silver laced Cochin rooster on Buff Silkie hens. I believe that should give the columbian looking females and the split males. And then work from there. ( just FYI, I bred a BO rooster to a SLW hen and hatched a Buff columbian colored pullet, with light black ticking only in the hackle and tail where it should be for a columbian, so reversing those parent sexes would give Light Columbian in stead of Buff Columbian, thats where I am getting my sugustions from and I'm just assuming it sould work the same in silkies as it would in any other breed, but I dont personally breed Silkies.
And Partridge or Grey Silkies may work too but I'm not sure what you would get when breeding partridge to columbian so hopefully some of the silkie people can tell you.
ETA There were't any posts when I started typing this put the pic that Brody's Broodello posted is the one I was talking about.
