Questions about Cuckoo Silkies

[TheChickenFanatic]

I have a few questions about cuckoo silkies, and would love some help! I have a chocolate cuckoo roo, and am looking to figure out which hens would be best to pair with him.

1. What would you get if you bred a splash hen to a chocolate cuckoo roo? The offspring would be sexlinked right? Would the offspring be the same if you bred to a blue hen?

2. What about a lavender hen to a chocolate cuckoo roo? Would the offspring be chocolate split to lav?

3. What about a white hen? Would the offspring be chocolate cuckoos, just muted in color?

4. And lastly, what about a buff hen?

If you had to choose, what hens would you put under him?

 

[EggSighted4Life]

2. What about a lavender hen to a chocolate cuckoo roo? Would the offspring be chocolate split to lav?

Chocolate females and black males.. yes, split to lav. Lavender breeds as black when not bred to another lavender. Yes, the offspring are sexlinked as long as there is a chocolate rooster over non chocolate hens.

Cuckoo is addressed later in this post and applies to all responses given.

. And lastly, what about a buff hen?

Choclate females, black males.. *probably* with some buff leakage.

3. What about a white hen? Would the offspring be chocolate cuckoos, just muted in color?

If recessive white, then chocolate females and black males.

If dominant white then possibly chocolate paint and paint. Otherwise described as white with chocolate spots for pullets and white with black spots for cockerels.

1. What would you get if you bred a splash hen to a chocolate cuckoo roo?

I answered this in another thread.. which is linked here for reference.. Also reposted in the quote following the link.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/silkie-breeding-questions.1675658/#post-28825595

According to the calculator in the following link, when crossing a chocolate rooster to a splash hen.. you would get 100% mauve pullets and 100% blue cockerels.. This based off of how splash breeds in the bbs.. black cross splash is 100% blue offspring.. so no black boys and no pure chocolate pullets, according to my current understanding.

https://kippenjungle.nl/Overzicht.htm#kipcalculator

How the cuckoo passes depends on whether the rooster is single barred or double barred.. single he will pass barring to 50% of the offspring regardless of gender. If he is double barred then 100% of the offspring would also be barred.

If your results do not follow this prediction/estimate or even if they do, and are able to think about it, please consider tagging or quoting me to let me know the outcome. Also, I'd be curios to know how different these colors are at hatch to see (with pictures) whether it's truly useful for sex linking purposes or not.

Happy hatching!

Would the offspring be the same if you bred to a blue hen?

This throws 50% mauve and 50% chocolate pullets and 50/50 black and blue cockerels.

For me, if I had to choose.. I would still choose those with correct features.. ie combs, skin color, correct toes, etc.. I might also put different colored hens under him at different times depending on what color I wanted to hatch.. for example, If I wanted to have all the offspring split to lav so I could breed them back together or back to lav. I would probably avoid the buff because "leakage" just equals low quality breeding and I would still wanna keep it as tight and close as possible to the standard of perfection even when breeding project colors. But my goals may not be the same as yours.

Also in the future, I would presume chocolate is not sex linked when used over mauve hens either.

Best wishes!