Crossing delaware rooster with white rock hens

[milleryardchx]

I have Delaware rooster with white rock hens and first batch of chicks hatched, six eggs 100% hatch rate but 4 are perfect cream fluffy babies and 2 are cream fluffy with a black stripe down their backs... So I'm assuming they are sexlinked? .... which brings me to my question, which is the roosters and which would be the hens?

 

[Ridgerunner]

They are not sex linked at least by the standards I know. You can read about what it takes for sex links in the very first post in this thread. There are other sex linked genes rather than just the silver-gold, barring, and fast-slow feathering, such as leg color, but I don’t know of any that would show up in that cross or with a stripe.

Tadkerson’s Sex Link Thread
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=261208

To make red sex links, you need a hen with silver (which the white rock probably has) but the rooster has to be pure for gold. A Delaware rooster has silver, not gold. You cannot make red sex links from that pair. The way you tell a red sex link is that the males are yellow and the females are reddish, not a stripe down the back

To make black sex links, the hen has to be barred (white rock should not be barred. If she is, you would not be able to see it under the white) and the rooster cannot be barred. The Delaware rooster is barred. You can’t see it on the white but you can see the barring in the black feathers, like the tail. Since the Delaware rooster is barred, all his offspring will be barred, definitely not black sex linked. The way you tell a black sex link is that the males have a light-colored spot on their head and the females do not. Again, not a stripe down the back.

Chicken genetics get real complicated real fast and I’m not a real expert. It’s possible there is some gene I’m not aware of that might work in your case, but I’m real doubtful. What I think probably happened is that your breeding adult chickens are not pure but have some mixed genes hiding under the white. The stripes you are seeing are just the randomness of which genes get passed down when you cross chickens when the adults are not pure genetically.

By the way, all those chicks should wind up with the barred gene, but with all the white involved the only place you’ll see it is if they have any black or colored feathers.

 

[SE_Gardener]

Roo carry feather coloring among other traits passed to chicks. A purebred Delaware Roo has a silver expression and the White Ply Rock also has the silver expression. The F1 progeny will always have black barring that appears in a Colombian pattern. The barring comes from the Barred Ply Rock crossed on Rhode Island Red - the Delaware was a sport (recessive) of that cross. The black stripe is not a sexing coloration but how the barring expressed itself. Chick feather colors are often not even close to mature coloring. NH also have a chipmonk black pattern. But those chick feather colorings disappear when the chicks begin to feather out. Mark those chicks with the black stripe and you'll see the black stripe will be gone. All the chicks from that cross will have the Delaware Colombian barring pattern. Some will be more pronounced, some will be more Colombian and some will be faint. I breed this cross. Here's a pic of my Del Roo and Wht Ply Rock hens.