Mottled Silkies?...Calling out for Silkie Experts.

[Sonoran Silkies]

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Yes, but if bred back to a silkie, you remove mo from half the offspring, and you cannot tell which ones they are. The two pens of unrelated silkieXcochin offspring will each have one copy of h, the gene for silkieness and one copy of mo, the gene for mottled. Bred together you will get a small percentage of birds who inherit two copies of h and also two copies of mo. Breed the offspring back to a silkie and you get the silkie feathers, but lose mottling.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

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You'll lose mottling by breeding to a silkie without first getting offspring with two copies of mottle.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

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I definitely recommend against using splash, and really against using blue as a splash mottled is very messy looking. In your calculations, you have neglected to consider that both silkie and mottle are recessive. You cannot get mottled or silkied birds from the first cross.

First generation you lose both silkie and mottling, but all offspring have a hidden copy of each.

 

[Teresaann24]

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You'll lose mottling by breeding to a silkie without first getting offspring with two copies of mottle.

Ok, I get it...so the offspring of the silkiexcochin will carry the mottled and silkie gene. So the Os must be bred together? Then recrossed to a silkie?

 

[Teresaann24]

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Yes, but if bred back to a silkie, you remove mo from half the offspring, and you cannot tell which ones they are. The two pens of unrelated silkieXcochin offspring will each have one copy of h, the gene for silkieness and one copy of mo, the gene for mottled. Bred together you will get a small percentage of birds who inherit two copies of h and also two copies of mo. Breed the offspring back to a silkie and you get the silkie feathers, but lose mottling.

then how do you keep the silkie feathering?

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

F1s will be H+/h Mo+/mo. You will not have mottling, and you will not have silkie feathering. Breed together, then select the F2 chicks that inherit (and show) both mottling and silkie feathers. At this point, you will probably need to breed back to high quality black silkie to improve type. In this F3 cross, you will lose mottling, but retain silkie feathering (assumingf you use only silkied F2s. Breed the F3's together and select the ones who are mottled. Every time you breed to a bird who doesn't carry a needed recessive gene, it will take two generations (including that outcross) to bring it back.

Mottled sounds easier than it ends up being.

 

[Teresaann24]

wow, your super smart with genetics this will be my down fall I have no luck with understanding the whole genetic terms. I guess I will have to hunt you down when I need help with this subject.

 

[JenEric Farms]

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Excellent information!

 

[onthespot]

I would think she could use "any" mottled offspring from the F2 generation, to cross on black silkie for F3. She can select later on for silkied feathering. Another thing you will be battling with using a mottled cochin, is yellow legs, which is also recessive. And single combs, which is also recessive. I would imagine it could take eight or ten generations to get there, but it is doable. To breed out yellow legs, (which can show up as green legs and beaks in silkies) whenever you diecide to get rid of the yellow leg gene, you would have to cross back to a yellow legged bird, and keep meticulous records on each bird, and remove from your breeding program any individuals that produce yellow or green legs an beaks from crossing back to yellow. If it was me, I'd ignore the yellow/green legs for a few years, and work more on mottle/silkie first, combs and feet later, leg color last.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

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Learning it is like eating an elephant--one bite at a time, lol. Take it slow, and it really is not that hard. Learn terminology bit by bit, then one gene, then a second, and so forth. THe more you learn, the easier it becomes to learn a bit that is new.