Yes, when I quoted your post, I was only talking about your birds.
(I just posted a response about
@Chookwagn chickens as a separate post, to try to avoid confusion about which birds are which.)
Those reddish brown pullets have the gold gene, and it must have come from their father. So they are the proof that your rooster MUST have gold as well as showing silver.
Yes, it does get confusing, especially at first.
The more complicated version of the calculator includes a bunch of genes for traits like comb type, skin color, feathered feet, crested heads, etc. The simpler version is just color genes.
http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page0.html
This page links to several others that I found useful when learning chicken genetics.
Page 1 is a rundown of basic genetics (if you already know a bit of genetics, you may not need it), page 2 talks about some chicken genes and what they do, and page 3 is a table listing individual genes with brief comments about each one. I find the table clearer than the wordier page, although some things just do require more words.
I would group chicken color genes into three main groups:
One group affects how the colors are distributed on the chicken (duckwing vs. laced vs. columbian vs. penciled). Many of these genes interact with each other. These genes are mostly in the first half of the list on the calculator page.
One group changes specific colors (dilute black to gray or to white, dilute gold to cream or darken gold to red, dilute both black and gold, etc.) These genes are mostly in the second half of the list on the calculator page, and are easier to understand.
One group of genes has an effect no matter what other genes are present. This would include barring (makes white bars across whatever other colors the chicken has) and recessive white (turns the whole chicken white.) I would probably include mottling in this group (makes a white tip on the feather, then a black bar behind the tip, then allows other genes to control the rest of the feather color.)
