The Chicken Calculator is a good tool to learn off of.
http://kippenjungle.nl/Overzicht.htm#kipcalculator
Just click the color for the male and the female, then click calculate crossing and it shows you exactly what will come from it. you can then cross a chick to a parent, chick to chick , ect and continue into 2cd , 3rd 4th generations, however far you want to go.
Pattern genes need to be breed to the same pattern obviously for the chicks to be the same.
Solid colors work a little different.
It can all get confussing in one post but I'll try to help as much as I can
here goes, silkies folks as well as any other breeder will often keep blue black and splash together, reason being, they breed true, you just get different ratios depending on the parents
They are all black based birds, the blues just have a gene that turned the black blue. One copy is all it takes, meaning only 1 parent has to be blue, 2 copies of blue is what makes the splash birds.
This all works the same with dun too, it just makes the brown ( not chocolate, that's different, it breeds more like lavender)
on the blues ( or duns) here's the breeding ratios
black to black = 100% black
black to blue = 50% each
black to splash = 100%
blue to blue = 50% blue 25% black 25% splash
blue to splash = 50 % each
same on dun, just sub dun for blue and khaki for splash.
This ratio will work on patterned birds with blue or dun in them too. Just remember blue and dun have just 1 copy, and splash and khaki have 2 copies of the gene. Each parent can only pass on 1 copy of any gene to the chicks, so it's just basic math if you look at it that way.
Now lavender and chocolate are recessive, chocolate recessive sex linked. In short, these are black based birds too, but they are masked with the recessive lavender or chocolate genes.
Any time you cross one of these to another color, you will get all blacks. These blacks will carry the "split" gene for the color though.
Split means they have it in them as 1 copy, but by being recessive it takes 2 copies for it to be visable. So you have to 1. either cross the chicks back to each other, or 2 cross the chicks back to a lav or cho bird to get new ones.
again works the same in patterns too.
White, you have 2 basic kinds, recessive white and dominate white. Dominate white will breed about like the blues above on a first cross, and replaces all black feathers with white, and dilutes red to an orange color, baically red pyles are bb reds, goldnecks are mille fluers, buff laced is gold laced, all just having dominate white in them.
Recessive white is a masking color. It really isnt the true color of the bird in a genetic sence. What it does is covers up all color. You will not have a patterned recesive white. Most are over black bases, but they can be over anything.
This is why silkie people often keep blacks and whites together, they are the same color, ones just covered by recessive white. So they can get more blacks off the whites, these blacks will now carry 1 copy of rec white and will later make then more whites.
On patterns, Lord there's a million of them, would be hard to cover them all.
Most all have to be bred to the smae to get the smae though, not many are dominate. One that comes to mind is Birchen, when bred to birchen, duckwing, ginger, or any of the basic wild patterns, they will always be birchens. Now these will be split to whatever pattern you bred it to and will later make more of that pattern too, but on the first cross, birchen is dominate .
certain combos will outright make new patterns too, like mille fleur to bb red, = buff columbian right on the spot.
most arent that easy though and take 2-6 years to get the new color finished.
Barring or cuckoo is somewhat dominate too, as long as the male you use is barred, all off spring will be barred, assumeing he is double factored.
There's an easy way to tell this. First double factored means both his parents were barred. hens will only carry 1 copy by the way
but if a male came from barred parents, he will be pale in color and have no solid feathers on him. If he is single factored, he will be dark colored and have a few solid colored feathers in him.
Now that that's said, a double fatcored male will make all barred chicks no matter what you breed him to. That crele JJ posted about is from one of my barred projects. It is nothing more than cuckoo to bb red.
as long as you are using a solid barred to a pettern, the end result is just a barred version of that pattern. You can do it with anything, just takes a couple years to finish the color part out.
anywa, it can go on and on. Try the calculator out, it will help if you want to start trying some crosses. Or feel free to ask if you have any specific questions about it all.
