Thank you for the explanation. I asked on the showgirl thread, but never got a reply. I couldn't make sense of the why.It's due to a mistaken notion that the black skin is sex linked gene. It is not.. that page has been up for ages with no correction.
Bottom line it does not matter which way for the first cross. NN roo, silkie hen works just as fine.
The only thing to consider is if the NN has either clear yellow or white legs, it has the Id gene which IS sex linked and it "messes up" the expression of the black skin gene.
If the NN has either blue or green legs then it doesn't have the Id gene- and all chicks would turn out black skinned, regardless of the sex of the parent breeds.
That too is interesting.As for breeding showgirls... I've made them from scratch(and I'm actually the person who coined the name many years ago..)
On paper, getting a NN, sillky feathered bird is relatively easy.
The difficult part is getting them to look as nice as the show bred silkies.. especially if starting with hatchery stock silkies. They will look funny and cute but they will have all kinds of things like long narrow bodies, way long legs, the crests and leg feathering will be very variable in quality.
A common thing is the first generation silky featherd birds feel rough and prickly when handled despite having silky feathers. Completely soft feathers comes with generations of breeding back to silkies.
Getting a very good quality silkie from show bred lines really cuts down on the number of generations before seeing birds with the rounder bodies with shorter bodies and totally soft fuzz.
Thank you.
