Created a sex-link but don't know which is a boy and which is a girl! Cream Legbar rooster X Black

[BantamLover21]

Yes, each chick color has a 50/50 chance of being male or female, there is no correlation of color to gender. The different color chicks are because the black star is itself a hybrid and (apparently) does not carry 2 copies of the extended black gene. The black chicks carry a single copy of EB (like their mother, the black star) and that is dominant to other down colors, like the buff. The buff chicks did not get an EB gene from their mother, but maybe wheaten from their grandfather, carried by their mother as a recessive gene (hidden in her by the extended black from her mother).

x3

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

OK...too bad they aren't sex-linked. I knew that normally crossing a barred rooster with a solid-colored hen would result in a sex-link...but really didn't expect it with a hybrid Black Star and thought the chicks would maybe have some variability but I didn't expect to such distinct outcomes. For the folks that look at the thread late the Cream Legbar is a blue egg layer (it has Araucana in their bloodline just like the Ameraucana)





Black Star hen






Pair of Cream Legbars









Cream Legbar chicks (male on left, female on right).




that will create offspring with a blue egg if crossed with a white egg layer or a green egg (blue shell, brown outside coating) if crossed with a brown egg layer. The rooster is barred but it is an auto-sexing breed where the male and female chicks look different at hatch (and the cockerels have a white spot on their head). The Black Star is the result of crossing a Rhode Island Red or New Hampshire Red rooster with a Barred Plymouth Rock hen and the offspring (for the first generation only) are sexed at birth by the cockerel having a white spot on their heads (the roosters ending up barred and the hens mostly black with copper around the head and neck and sometimes parts of the body). Both the Black Stars and the Cream Legbar have Barred Plymouth Rock in their bloodlines. With the Barred Plymouth Rock their male chicks will have a white spot on the head and it is the same with the Cream Legbar but the legbar chick also has the distinction that the cockerels are more of a washed out grey while the pullets are brown with "chipmunk" stripes.

 

[Chris09]

OK...too bad they aren't sex-linked. I knew that normally crossing a barred rooster with a solid-colored hen would result in a sex-link...but really didn't expect it with a hybrid Black Star and thought the chicks would maybe have some variability but I didn't expect to such distinct outcomes. For the folks that look at the thread late the Cream Legbar is a blue egg layer (it has Araucana in their bloodline just like the Ameraucana)

Quote:
You have that backwards, it's a Non-Barred Male over a Barred Female.

 

[dheltzel]

You have that backwards, it's a Non-Barred Male over a Barred Female.

Exactly.

Sex-linkage is hard to conceptualize. I think of it like this -- females only have one copy of the sex linked genes, males have 2, this is the opposite of people where males have only one X chromosome. In chickens, the hens have only one (it's not generally called X, that's just the connection I'm making with our genes). So, in order to get a female, you will get the sex chromosome from the male and nothing (well, something, but not a chromosome that carries these genes) from the female. So, to get a sex-link trait that shows in the chicks, you need the hen to carry a dominant allele, but the cock to have only recessive alleles for that trait. There are 3 commonly used traits, gold/silver (red sex links), barred/non-barred (black sex-links), and slow/fast feathering (feather sexed chicks).

silver is dominant over gold, so a silver hen passes on a silver gene, but only to the males (her daughters get nothing from her, but the gold gene from their father, so they are gold and the males are silver)
barring is dominant over non-barred, so a barred hen passes a barred gene to the males, which gives them a white spot on their head. As long as the cock is non-barred, the hens will not be barred, so no white spot.

Black sex link chicks will always have head spots on the males, it cannot be done the other way. Likewise, red sex links will always have lighter males.

The male black sex links grow up to resemble barred rocks, but darker, they are quite pretty but can't produce black sex link chicks.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Sorry, that IS what I mean to say. I get that confused because although I know the barred pattern goes from mother to son in the Black Star cross because I actually had a Black Star rooster (which looks like a Barred Rock) it's hard for me to get that picture out of my head. I actually said it right further down the thread.

 

[donrae]

When you're saying the black sex link hens have barred Rock in their heritage you're correct, but the hens themselves aren't barred, and don't have any barring to pass on to male offspring. Barring doesn't hide under another color (except dominant white), so if you don't see it, it isn't there.

Have you seen Tim's sex link chart? It's a great reference if you're looking for sex links

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/261208/sex-linked-information


You should be able to use your CCL hens under a solid/dark rooster to make sex linked offspring, but I'm not sure what the advantage would be over breeding pure CCLs.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

You're right...no advantage to using my CCL hens with another breed of rooster unless I just really wanted olive eggers...then I guess I could use my Black-Copper Marans rooster. I certainly should be happy just to have an autosexing breed that lays blue eggs, right? Thanks for the link. I'd definitely like to learn more about chicken genetics.

 

[dheltzel]

You should be able to use your CCL hens under a solid/dark rooster to make sex linked offspring, but I'm not sure what the advantage would be over breeding pure CCLs.

"Hybrid vigor" -- if you really want eating eggs only, black sex links from something like a black australorp roo over CCL hens should produce exceptionally good blue egg layers. As rare and expensive as CCL's are now, it's hard to imagine that being enough to justify the cross, but as CCL's get more common (and perhaps more inbred), that might be a very viable black sex link.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

...and I DO have a really nice, big Black Australorp rooster. I think the mix would be a green egg layer though as my Australorps lay very light brown eggs.

 

[donrae]

...and I DO have a really nice, big Black Australorp rooster. I think the mix would be a green egg layer though as my Australorps lay very light brown eggs.

You're right, green eggs.

Thinking it over, I could see the appeal of using the CCL hens for a sex link cross, just in market variety if nothing else. I'm working on some sex link projects of different crosses, just because I want to be able to offer folks a variety of different chicks, with different feather colors and egg colors. Not everyone wants a flock of virtually identical birds

and folks seem to always be looking for different colors in the egg basket. There are so many shades of green possible when mixing like this, that could appeal to a lot of buyers.