Crossing Silkie Colors

[isadream]

Hi,

I know a lot of ppl keep their silkie colors separate and they do that because they are showing them and when they sell the eggs ppl know what they are getting.

I am just curious if you mix the colors what happens? Like with some dogs like labs if you mix the colors you can get all colors in a litter. Is that what happens if you mix silkies or does it ruin the solid colors.

Like if you mix white and blue what do you get? Buff and white? Or black and white?


Are there any websites on silkie colors you can go and look at?

thanks for any help,

Renee

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

We need a sticky! This question gets asked at least once a week.

White X anything is an unknown.

Silkies tend to be recessive white, meaning that each parent must contribute the recessive white allele. All other colours and patterns are hidden, so over a couple of generations you completely lose knowledge of what other colour/pattern genes each bird is carrying. And you are not selecting for/against those traits/genes to improve or correct or maintain the hidden colours--because you don't know what they are.

You can try to chicken calculator to see what colour crossing does--set your colour, then reset the E-allele to e^b, as that is the allele almost all silkies are.