To find out if a white has silver, cross it to a gold. If it has silver, there will be "black and white" offspring.
Just in case.. gold is a bird without silver- black breasted red, buff brahma, gold laced polish and so on.. Silver birds are well, silvers(often silver on a BBR pattern), light brahmas, silver laced polish etc.
A mating of buff brahma rooster and a light brahma hen will give sex linked mating- roosters will be light and hens buffs. (however good silvers also has an extra set of genes to prevent the gold from leaking through especially on the wings. So the silvers from this cross probably will show some red on the wings or some places on the body.. this is why exhibition breeders don't use this. Just a note before anybody sees this and runs off to attempt it..)
I was tired last night. I just realized a potential problem with using white hens for sex linked mating- it also depends on if they are dominant black or birchen(or not). Those are not sex linked but dominant so if a white bird is say, a dominant black then all of the offpsring in both sexes could be mostly black which would make sex linking them as chicks hard.
If a white bird was bred to a say, a black breasted red and the offspring are black then the white also has dominant black or birchen.
Sometimes you can find out by asking the breeder what base their whites are on.
