crossing varieties (polish)

[Griffon Point Farm]

My daughter shows chickens in 4H and we are working towards getting breeding pairs of each variety (large fowl only).
We currently have white, buff laced, and gold laced hens and a silver laced rooster. My question is what be the result of crossing the gold laced hen and silver laced rooster?

 

[The-White-Elephant]

My daughter shows chickens in 4H and we are working towards getting breeding pairs of each variety (large fowl only).
We currently have white, buff laced, and gold laced hens and a silver laced rooster. My question is what be the result of crossing the gold laced hen and silver laced rooster?

Horrible at genetics, but my guess would be a double laced hen. @NatJ @nicalandia

 

[NatJ]

My question is what be the result of crossing the gold laced hen and silver laced rooster?

This pairing will produce silver laced chicks, but the white parts may be yellowish and not the nice clean white you want.

I would not use this pairing to produce silver laced chicks, if you want them for showing.

However, the sons will also carry the gold gene, so you could cross them back to their mother and maybe get some nice gold laced in the next generation.

Genetics of gold and silver:
Male chickens have sex chromosomes ZZ, females have ZW.
The gold/silver gene is on the Z chromosome.
Because a hen only has one Z chromosome, either she is gold or she is silver but she cannot have both genes
Because a male has two Z chromosomes, he can be gold (two copies of the gold gene), or silver (two copies of the silver gene), or he can have one copy each of the gold & silver genes (this will look mostly silver, but the white parts will be somewhat yellow looking.)

There are many genes that affect what shade of gold (red, gold, pale yellow, etc). A nice looking silver chicken will have genes that make the white look nice and clean. A "silver" chicken who had a gold parent might not look properly white, because it doesn't have the right set of modifying genes.

(A chicken that is "gold" or "silver" can also have some pattern of black markings such as lacing, spangling, columbian, etc. Or the black markings can be changed to blue or chocolate or white or some other color. But the genes for the color of the gold or silver parts work about the same anyway.)

 

[NatJ]

Horrible at genetics, but my guess would be a double laced hen.

No, because double lacing is when there are two black lines around the edge of each feather.

Since gold laced and silver laced each have single lacing (one black line around the edge of each feather), the chicks should also have single lacing. The genes for how the black appears on the feather should be the same in both varieties.

 

[Griffon Point Farm]

This pairing will produce silver laced chicks, but the white parts may be yellowish and not the nice clean white you want.

I would not use this pairing to produce silver laced chicks, if you want them for showing.

However, the sons will also carry the gold gene, so you could cross them back to their mother and maybe get some nice gold laced in the next generation.

Genetics of gold and silver:
Male chickens have sex chromosomes ZZ, females have ZW.
The gold/silver gene is on the Z chromosome.
Because a hen only has one Z chromosome, either she is gold or she is silver but she cannot have both genes
Because a male has two Z chromosomes, he can be gold (two copies of the gold gene), or silver (two copies of the silver gene), or he can have one copy each of the gold & silver genes (this will look mostly silver, but the white parts will be somewhat yellow looking.)

There are many genes that affect what shade of gold (red, gold, pale yellow, etc). A nice looking silver chicken will have genes that make the white look nice and clean. A "silver" chicken who had a gold parent might not look properly white, because it doesn't have the right set of modifying genes.

(A chicken that is "gold" or "silver" can also have some pattern of black markings such as lacing, spangling, columbian, etc. Or the black markings can be changed to blue or chocolate or white or some other color. But the genes for the color of the gold or silver parts work about the same anyway.)

thanks for taking them time to explain. still a little over my head but definitely a good generalization

 

[Frizzled-n-Sizzled]

Similar question... What if you have a Golden Laced Male and a Buff laced Female. What would the results be?

 

[NatJ]

Similar question... What if you have a Golden Laced Male and a Buff laced Female. What would the results be?

All chicks would be Buff Laced, no matter which parent is which color.
(Exception: if the "Buff Laced" already comes from such a cross, half the chicks will be Buff Laced and the other half Golden Laced.)

Genetic explanation:
Both of those have a gold base color. The Gold Laced has black lacing and the Buff Laced has white lacing. So the gold base color breeds true (gold x gold = gold.) The white lacing is caused by Dominant White, which turns black to white. Since it is dominant, that's what you see in the chicks. But the recessive for not-Dominant-White (aka black) is carried by all the chicks, and can show up in later generations.

 

[Chicken poppy]

Should produce a chicken.