dumb question.... can Partridge Silkies ever be 'sex-linked'?

[Laurieks]

I'm seeing one chick stay uniform nutmeg color, and another is beginning to separate out to orange saddle & neck feathers... eeep no pics yet, tomorrow, ok?
the two with what I call 'quail stripes' are staying the same. The orangy one looks like he might turn out like Hattrick's roo halfway down this page http://www.hattricksilkies.net/partridge.html
they are ~4 weeks old (suddenly I'm thinking the definition of sex-linked is color diff. at hatch, but y'all know what I mean here, right?)
I got my eggs from CJ.

Thanks!
Laurie

 

[BantyMom]

It depends on the genes carried by their parents. If both parents were definitely partridge (and not silver penciled, which is what the silver version of partridge is sometimes called), then no, they can't be.

Sex-linking is a specific cross that takes advantage of the sex genes.

In people, males are XY and females are XX, and so traits that are recessive and would normally need two copies of a gene to be expressed, need only one copy in men. One example of this, I believe, would be male-pattern baldness.

In chickens, it's the reverse, XX for males and XY for females (just using the same letters for simplicity)

For example, the Silver/Gold gene is sex-linked.
Silver is dominant; you need only one copy to take all yellow coloring and turn it white.
Gold is recessive; you need two copies to express any yellow coloring (if the bird would have it; black and recessive-white birds can be gg and still not show yellow, for example)

So, to make the sex-link thing work, let's look at what each possible parent would be carrying:
Silver Roo is S/S or S/g
Silver Hen is S/- only
Gold Roo is g/g only
Gold Hen is g/- only

If you take a Gold Roo and breed him to a Silver Hen, this is what happens:
He gives all of his offspring 1 gold gene.
Since his daughters do not get any gene at this allele from the Hen, they will be g/-, therefore Gold, even though they have only one copy of the gene.
But his sons will also get one silver gene from the Hen and will be S/g, therefore Silver.

Sex-linking will not work in the reverse, Silver Roo over Gold Hen, because he will give a Silver gene to all his offspring, and though the sons would get a Gold from the Hen, Silver is dominant and so all the offspring would be Silver, breeding the children of the correct cross (as illustrated above) will not produce sex-linked chicks either.

If both parents are Partridge, it means that the Roos are g/g and the Hens are g/- and there would be no silver genes to go around to make the males Silver.

There are other forms of sex-linking which may or may not be present, but which wouldn't depend on the bird being partridge.

I hope that helps.

 

[Chris09]

For some reason I want to say that you cant make a sex-link out of silkies but here is a sticky on sex-links https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=261208.

Chris

 

[tadkerson]

Quote:
Chris,

I agree with you. I do not know of any silver silkies. Grays I believe are birchen and silver- that will not work. A silver penciled would work with a red male.

Tim

 

[RAREROO]

You should be able to get a Black Selinked Silkie if you use a Cuckoo Silkie hen. I'd use a Splash roo so you could get blue and blue cuckoo.

 

[Laurieks]

lawl I can't find a smiley for *head spinning*
I think I need to find a grade school book on genetics, with colored blocks or something.
It's nice to see it may actually be possible

Thanks for the replies, you guys are great!
I may be in trouble if I find a Cuckoo Silkie hen and a Splash roo in the sale barn at the Stockton show.

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
LOL Yeah, you should be able to use any roo as long as he's not Cuckoo, Splash or Blue would just be my preferance for that cross. Finding the cuckoo silkie hens is what I think would be the problem, they are pretty rare, If you do find a good source for them, please let me know.

 

[GraceAK]

Maybe you could make a red sex-link silkie, couldnt you? If you had a white silkie hen and a red silkie rooster.... What a great idea for sexing silkies though! They are so hard to sex, usually. You could probably make a black sex link too, with a cuckoo and all that biz....

 

[ArizonaNessa]

The only "dumb question" is the one not asked. This is interesting

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
For Red Sexlinks, the white hens have to have the silver genes, with Silkies, you never know what color is being masked under the white, so it would be hard to tell if they are sexlinked, I'm sure if it were possilbe to make red sexlinked silkies, someone would have already made them a long time ago and we would know about it by now.