The chicks that are black with yellow will be birchen. The chicks that are brown with stripes/mottling will be silver penciled. If you got a yellow chick with stripes, that is likely a silver duckwing like Kari has hatched. The below photos show the difference:
Birchen Chicks (can have varying amounts of yellow on face/wings)
Silver Penciled Chick
Silver Duckwing Chicks (Photo from this thread, by KariMW)
In regards to the really dark hens, that's what I started with as well. I found the really dark ones are typically gold instead of silver. That being said, if you breed them to a silver rooster, the pullets from that cross should be much improved. That's what I've found, anyway. You can work towards the pretty lacing from there, by selection, or you can add in "better blood" where someone has done some of the work for you to fast track it. If you see the scant pencilings on the necks of your hens are more beigey/yellowy instead of white, they're gold. If the rooster develops gold in the hackles/saddle with age, he's likely not pure for silver (it's a sex-linked trait, silver turns the reds to white for the most part, males have two genes for gold or silver, the hens only one - opposite of mammals for sex genes) but likely carries silver. If bred to the dark girls in that case, you would expect half gold, half unpure silver cockerels and half gold, half silver pullets. If you then bred the silver pullets back to an unpure cockerel, you'd get half silver cockerels and pullets, half gold pullets and unpure silver cockerels. From that generation, take the silver cockerels to the silver pullets and you'll have eliminated the gold and the lacing/pretty white will be much better.
Silver penciled pattern is a different E locus (underlying base pattern type) than birchen. Silver Penciled is based on e^b - Brown which turns the bird partridge with the pattern gene also present. Birchen is based on E^R - Extended Black Restricted which leads to the mostly black bird with "leakage" of color on the head/neck in pullets and head/hackles/saddle of cockerels. Brown/partridge is recessive to birchen, so it's possible that it can pop out of birchen birds if both the male and female carry it. Otherwise you'll need to obtain a bird to bring the gene into your breeding flock. Once you have silver pencilled birds, however they should breed true unless you have other genes in there recessive to the brown (e^b).
Other genes in the mix that we commonly deal with:
Silver Duckwing is there in the lines - this is yet another E gene, the wild type (e^+). These are your yellow striped chicks. The pullets develop salmon breasts at maturity and overall seem to be a little lighter. (The males of all of these colors end up looking fairly similar at maturity, so mark your chicks young.)
Autosomal red (the deep rusty red sometimes seen in the wings/shoulders) is in the lines, genetics still being argued about but believed to be a dominant single gene.
Leg color - the standard calls for willow legs which is yellow legs plus an overlaying of dark dermal pigment. Absence of the yellow leg gene gives you slate legs (white with overlaying of dark dermal pigment). Absence of dermal pigment gives you yellow or white legs. Yellow is recessive to white. Dark dermal pigment is recessive to lack of pigment, and to throw a wrench in the works, is also a sex-linked trait. Think of the legs as two layers, the lower base layer of the skin and shanks can be white or yellow. The outer skin can be light or pigmented. Each is controlled by a separate gene. These can also be influenced by other genes, more found here: http://www.genetics.org/content/20/6/529.full.pdf which was the original research on shank color. More recent page with photos/examples here: http://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/gms10-skin-and-shank-color/
Wow, that is great information!! I have a lot to learn. I'll try to mark which is which. I just assumed that the chicks that hatched where a mix. The lady I got them from said that a different aggressive rooster had gotten to them. Which is why they are missing some feathers on their backs. Thankfully the feathers are slowly growing back. Their shells where very thin at first too, and now they seem stronger. I don't think these birds were in the best of shape. I love the look of my rooster, but he's missing some toe nails. My hubster thinks maybe frostbitten?? I'll have a lot to learn going into winter months. We've only had chickens since March (living in a rubbermaid tote first, then out in the coop once we moved to the country). Thanks again for all the information.
