cross breeding qustion

[rebel yell]

If you breed a rir rooster over black sex links hens, would you get any solid red birds, or would the black color be dominant ?

 

[Illia]

You'd get solid red offspring with of course black tails, primaries, and tips of the neck feathers as well as more black birds with a lot of red leakage, much like a sex-link hen.

 

[Ridgerunner]

A black sex link hen can be made many ways. Tadkerson has a great thread on this in a sticky at the start of this section. This creates a problem in answering your question. I don't know what breed rooster was used with what breed hen to create the black sex link. The breed of the hen does not matter all that much. She was probably a black barred hen. She passes the black down to all her offspring and it is practically always dominant. (I'll use the weasel word, practically, in that sentence because somebody may come up with an example where this is not the case, but I'm not aware of any) What makes the black sex link a sex link is that she only passes the barred gene to her sons, never her daughters.

A red rooster is often used to make a black sex link. Very often that red rooster is a Rhode Island Red. If a red rooster is the father of a black sex link, then the hen is basically half red and half black, but the black dominates. If you cross her with a RIR, then about half the chicks should be red and half should be black. They are not sex links. If a black rooster was used instead of a red to make the BSL hen, then all the offspring from crossing her to a RIR should be black. Some other colors can be used to make a BSL. All it takes is a rooster that is not barred and that produces a chick where you can distinguish that spot on ther chick's head.

Most BSL's that are created with a red rooster have red leakage around their necks. If your BSL has red around her neck, then I think the odds of half her chicks being red and half black are extremely high if you cross her with a RIR rooster. I really think this is what will happen with yours.

I guess it is possibe to use a red barred hen with a black rooster and get a black sex link, but I don't know any hatchery that does that. But just not knowing for sure what was used to create your BSL makes it a bit harder to answer you for sure.

Hope this helps. Good luck!