Cuckoo Silkies

[yellowflower]

I have a cuckoo roo that I am breeding with a white silkie that had the same father, a cuckoo. Will I get cuckoo chicks out of this breeding? I also have 2 white roos with a cuckoo dad (one I'm told is a lavender) that I'm breeding with blues and a black. Will they produce cuckoos? As you can guess I want cuckoos but not sure who to breed to who to get them. I know you should put a cuckoo roo with blacks and blue hens. But since the white is a resessive white hen I am confused. Not very good at genetics. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Recessive white is an OFF switch. It turns OFF the affects of all colour and pattern genes in the bird, so you do not know which ones are or are not present.

A barred male bird can carry 2 copies of the gene. If he has two copies of barring, all his offspring wil inherit; if he has one copy of barring and one of not-barring, half will inherit. A barred female carries only one copy of hte gene. She will pass this gene to all her sons; her daughters will instead receive the chromosome that does not include sex-linked genes.

The whites whose father was cuckoo may have the gene; only breeding will show, and then, unless their mother was also cuckoo, only half their offspring will be barred.

 

[yellowflower]

Okay, I was told the males always carry two copies. So he may or may not is what your saying. And the whites could be carrying both only breeding will tell. There's no way of telling who the mothers were as it was a cuckoo roo over several hens of blue, black and cuckoo. Is it a good idea to put a cuckoo roo and a cuckoo hen together? Or should he just be with blue and black? I'm just trying to wrap my head around this. Thanks for your help.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Cuckoo to cuckoo is the best way to propagate the plumage pattern.

It sounds like you don't really understrand sex-linked genes. All male birds have two Z chromosomes; all female birds and one Z and one W chromosome. The W chromosome is shorter than the Z chromosome, meaning that there are gene locations that do not exist on that chromosome. With non-sex-linked genes (autosomal genes), every diploid animal has two copies of each gene location (locus). For the sex-linked genes, males have two loci and females only one locus.
Z: ---------------------------------------------------------------
W: -----------------------------------------------


At each locus is always one of the variations (alleles) for a specific gene. With barring, the choices are B (barred) and b+ (not-barred). A hen has only one locus, so she can only carry one or the other. A cock, on the other hand has two loci, so can carry two copies of B, two copies of b+, or one copy of B and another of b+. With established, exhibition barred or cuckoo birds, males almost always carry two copies of barring. In breeds where a barred/cuckoo variety is not well-established (such as silkies), and in hatchery birds males with one copy of barring are common.

Breeding to black or blue will give you some barred offspring; however none of the resulting males will carry two copies. If the hen is the cuckoo, all the barred offspring will be males. If the cock is the cuckoo, both genders will receive barring, but not all of either gender if he carries only one copy.