Genetics in the classroom

[LilJoe]

And blue hens, I think, are actually black/splash co-dominant--which could be really cool, if you bred her to the white rooster. If I'm right.

What does that mean?
I bred my blue hen to my white roo and got about 10 chicks from her.
8/blue. 2/black

 

[sylviethecochin]

Splash is white with black traces (I stole this off of the internet)

Blue is this (my little broody, Lavender)

 

[sylviethecochin]

What does that mean?
I bred my blue hen to my white roo and got about 10 chicks from her.
8/blue. 2/black

Cool--blue's a difficult gene to understand, for me at least. Lavender's chicks were all either red-colored or blue with red markings.

 

[Talithahorse]

She is beautiful....I want a blue hen...

 

[sylviethecochin]

She is beautiful....I want a blue hen...

Oh, thank you.

I have a bit of a fascination with blue. I have blue Swedish ducks, blue Havana rabbits (before we got rid of them, at least) and Lavender and her daughter are my first blue hens. I have actually considered ordering true lavender Ameracauna show-quality bantam eggs off of ebay. The price was absurdly high--but they were so beautiful.

Thankfully/Sadly, I had no broody hens at that time.

 

[Talithahorse]

I understand. I ended up with a gorgeous Blue Andalusion Rooster. Unfortunately he was a jerk so he had to go....

 

[sylviethecochin]

I understand. I ended up with a gorgeous Blue Andalusion Rooster. Unfortunately he was a jerk so he had to go....

I had four chicks from Lavender that were blue. My most beautiful one turned out to be a rooster (gold neck-feathers and hackles). My one that started brown turned out to be blue with red lacing (not clean, and certainly not show-quality, but impressive.) My favorite was spotted white and blue at hatch, got an impressive cloudy blue color and got a white breast and hackles, along with nicely feathered feet (dominant) that made him look like a Brahma.

The one with the unsightly crest and weird, slightly-feathered feet--well, wouldn't you know it. My only pullet.

 

[gojira]

With your current birds, your easiest choices would be to use the silver pencilled silkie rooster over the partridge silkie hen to show the sex linkage of gold and silver. You could also use a Dorking or Dorking Marans rooster over a silkie hen to show sex linkage of the black in the shanks. If you had a hen to breed to the dorking marans rooster, you could show the dominance of polydactyly.