crossing a white rock rooster with a barred rock hen

[jamesk53]

Crossing a white rooster with a barred hen should give sex linked chicks. Barred males and non-barred females, but what will the females look like? Anyone ever experienced this? I'm wondering if the females will be all white which would make them almost impossible to distinguish between the pure bred white rocks that will hatch...

 

[AinaWGSD]

I think white is the only color you can't use over a barred hen to get sex-links. From my understanding, there are two types of white, dominant white and recessive white. If your rooster were homozygous for dominant white, then all of the chicks from this breeding would be white, male and female. If he were heterozygous for dominant white, he could be hiding any color under the white, including barred (in fact, there's a good chance that a white bird is carrying the barred gene). If he were dominant white carrying the barred gene, then some of the chicks would be white and some would be barred, again both males and females. I'm not really sure if you would get sex-links using recessive white, but if it were likely/possible then the chicks should just be regular black sex-links where the females are "solid" black (usually with some leakage) and the males are barred. What I do know is that a lot of the people who are working on barred projects in breeds where barred is not currently an accepted color seem to have gotten started on their barred projects using whites.

 

[jamesk53]

So I thought barred was a dominant gene, but white is dominant above every color you're saying?

 

[AinaWGSD]

There are two types of white. Dominant white is dominant over pretty much all other colors. Recessive white is recessive to pretty much all other colors, which is how many of the "white sports" show up in other color varieties.

Many breeds that come in white have both dominant white and recessive white responsible for the white variety. When birds are judged at a show, they are not judged on their genetics, only the resulting appearence. Therefor, since both kinds of white will result in the same desired visual appearance of a bird there is no real incentive for breeders to use, for example, only birds that are white because of the dominant white gene and cull any birds that are white due to a recessive gene.

Unless you know which of the two different kinds of white you are working with, you don't have any way of reliably predicting what will happen when you cross a white bird with some other color. This is why in many breeds most breeders do not advise using whites to improve some desired quality in another color. It's because with the possibility of unknown genes being hidden by the white, using white to improve some quality in another color often leads to many generations of breeding before the other color variety breeds true for color again. In other words, white throws a monkey wrench into the color calculator more often than not.