My Questions On Silkies

[IzzysSilkies]

So I’m not exactly new to the silkie game. I’ve had silkies before about 4 years ago but I need a refresher and have some new questions. My plan is to eventually breed and sell hatching eggs and chicks. I want to know what colors are best to start with. I also want to know the breeding situation. What colors are ok to keep in pen together and which should be kept separate? How do I keep from having color leakage? I want to know the overall concept of breeding with certain colors and all that type of stuff. Also we’re is the best place to order silkie so I know they are the right color? TIA!

 

[NatJ]

Color genetics work about the same for all chickens (although silkies only come in certain colors, and I don't keep up with that list.)

Black, blue, and splash are often crossed with each other.
Any color that comes in a black and a blue version will often be crossed together (partridge with blue partridge, wheaten with blue wheaten, black laced red with blue laced red, black laced white with blue laced white, etc.)

Lavender (aka "self blue") and black get crossed together: the offspring will be black but split to lavender (they carry one copy of the recessive gene, but don't show it.) Those chicks can be crossed to lavenders to produce half lavender offspring, with the other half being more blacks split to lavender. [If the original "blacks" are already split to lavender, then the first generation chicks will be half lavender and half split.]

Crossing the gold and silver versions of a given color (gold laced/silver laced, gold columbian/silver columbian, etc) is usually discouraged. The daughters will match their father, while the sons will look like messy silvers and will also carry the gold gene. There will be no gold males, no matter which parent is which color; and the silvers (either gender) will usually have some amount of red or gold leakage, or yellowing in the feathers. But at least the black patterning should still be OK.

Crossing breeds with different patterns--laced, columbian, partridge, etc--will usually give messy-looking birds, and is very strongly discouraged if you want to get standard-looking colors.

In some breeds, whites are regularly crossed with blacks, in other breeds not, and I don't know which is the norm with silkies. (Genetically speaking, there are several ways to "make" a white chicken, and some work well with black while others do not.)

I don't know where to buy silkies, and I don't know which colors are popular.

 

[Willawong Hill]

I think in silkies white/paint/black are often together, but i have also heard that there is both dominant and recessive white in silkies so you'd have to know you had the right sort of white.
I would agree with blue/black/splash also being good together. I suspect your more interesting/fancier colours eg laced, partridge, would be more popular as they are more rare (though i personally like the plain colours on silkies- perhaps start a poll somewhere and see what the BYC consensus is) but harder to do and you would have to have more separate pens so i guess it depends the size of the setup you are after. I would imagine a breeder who keeps separate colour pens would be the best place to get them so you know the colours you are starting with are pure and it may depend on what colours you can get near where you are. Perhaps you could try finding others on here in your area- i think there are threads for different locations.