Self Blue (Lavender) Silkie Thread

[Fur N Feathers]

Took this photo this afternoon.

I'm no expert but he looks Lavender/Self Blue to me.

Quote:

Just came across this thread and wanted to see if anyone else with lavender silkies could help me out. I have a lavender split blue roo and I'd like to find a hen or two that would be a good breeding match as far as color goes. I started out a year ago with chickens and my first two silkies were white. I purchased this roo after the fact. One of white hens went broody over Christmas last year and hatched out three chicks. They are a weird mix of color (Dark with a "splash" of white) and I obviously don't want to continue hatching from this pair. I was told maybe try to find a lavender hen? That will be difficult for me so I'm thinking of trying to find someone who would ship lavender chicks or hatching eggs. Anyone else have any thoughts as to what would be a good color to breed to this roo? I know nothing about about color genetics.

Do you have any pictures of the rooster and also the chicks? Is your goal Lavender/Self blue chicks? A lavender hen or a split hen will give you some. PeepBlessed sells and ships lavender chicks. I see you are in New York. There may be some breeders on the east side of the country that will but I can't name them off the top of my head.

 

[Lynzi777]

Quote:

Do you have any pictures of the rooster and also the chicks? Is your goal Lavender/Self blue chicks? A lavender hen or a split hen will give you some. PeepBlessed sells and ships lavender chicks. I see you are in New York. There may be some breeders on the east side of the country that will but I can't name them off the top of my head.

I really just don't want to end up with some weird coloring of chicks like I did this last time around. Especially since I have a small flock and don't plan on keeping ALL of what I'm hatching, I don't want to have difficult time rehoming chicks that I have no idea what the colors are.

Here is my Roo:



And here are the chicks I got from the white hen and him:

 

[kasey08]

Ok question. Im thinking about getting a Lav roo and also a Paint roo with black hen. I have right now blue roo over 2 black, one buff and a blue. I would need to put both over black hens right? Lav over buff makes porcelian?

 

[peepblessed]

Ok question. Im thinking about getting a Lav roo and also a Paint roo with black hen. I have right now blue roo over 2 black, one buff and a blue. I would need to put both over black hens right? Lav over buff makes porcelian?

Lav to Buff. Then breed the offspring back to lav to create porcelain (more accurately call self-blue cream).

 

[kasey08]

Oh I just love porcelain

 

[Lynzi777]

Could I go wrong breeding a blue with a blue lavender split?? I found someone willing to ship for a reasonable price but they have blues, blacks, greys, no lavender.

 

[peepblessed]

Could I go wrong breeding a blue with a blue lavender split?? I found someone willing to ship for a reasonable price but they have blues, blacks, greys, no lavender.

Here is the info I received on that from a very respected breeder:

Black split and BBS, etc. - For your black lav splits, you want to use them in a lavender program. You do NOT want to introduce the lav genes into your other colors (such as black) You can breed splits to splits or splits to lav, but it is hard enough to breed good blacks without having the lav genetics introduced. This is basically because lavs were outcrossed with both whites and blacks early on and it is impossible to know what color genetics they are carrying. An example is all the partridge birds that come out of lav to split, lav to black or even lav to lav. What you see is definitely NOT what you get as far as color

Introducing the lav gene into BBS can also cause red leakage to show up in splash and leakage in blue and black.

 

[Lynzi777]

Here is the info I received on that from a very respected breeder:

Black split and BBS, etc. - For your black lav splits, you want to use them in a lavender program. You do NOT want to introduce the lav genes into your other colors (such as black) You can breed splits to splits or splits to lav, but it is hard enough to breed good blacks without having the lav genetics introduced. This is basically because lavs were outcrossed with both whites and blacks early on and it is impossible to know what color genetics they are carrying. An example is all the partridge birds that come out of lav to split, lav to black or even lav to lav. What you see is definitely NOT what you get as far as color

Introducing the lav gene into BBS can also cause red leakage to show up in splash and leakage in blue and black.

Ok so what I'm getting from all this is if I introduce pure blues so my lavender split blues, all I will be doing is now creating more lavender split blues. BUT I do plan to still search around for lavenders so I could hopefully end up with a few lavender hens. So in that case, it will be OK to breed those lavenders with the blue lavender splits right?

 

[peepblessed]

Ok so what I'm getting from all this is if I introduce pure blues so my lavender split blues, all I will be doing is now creating more lavender split blues. BUT I do plan to still search around for lavenders so I could hopefully end up with a few lavender hens. So in that case, it will be OK to breed those lavenders with the blue lavender splits right?

Here is some further info that I recorded from Sonoran. Hope she doesn't mind me passing it on:

Lav/split breeding - Sonoran - Okay, you are talking two separate genes here:
lavender (lav) and blue (Bl). Rather than saying "black" let's say
"not-lavender" and "not-blue."
If both are pure for not-lavender, then offspring will be about half black and
half blue and all will be pure for not-lavender.
If one parent (either one, doesn't matter which) has one copy of lav, then
about half the offspring will inherit lavender and the other half will inherit
not-lavender. With large enough numbers, statistically this will work out to
about half of the blue chicks and about half the black ones. But that requires
MANY, MANY chicks. Anything less than several hundred (check the chicken
calculator for numbers) is unlikely to be evenly balanced.
If both parents have one copy of lav, then about a quarter of the chicks will
inherit two copies of lavender; another quarter will inherit two copies of
not-lavender and the remaining half will inherit one copy of lavender and one
of not lavender. If the lavender chicks inherit one copy of blue, you can
call them lavender blue; if they inherit two copies of blue, call them
lavender splash; if they inherit two copies of not-blue, call them lavender.
Now your bggest problem here is distinguishing between the birds that are blue
or splash AND lavender and the ones who are blue or splash AND not-lavender.
Almost impossible to distinguish by appearance. Only the lavenders who are
pure for not-blue are easy to distinguish. And if you are not expecting them,
one might simply think that they are just a light blue, not realizong that they
are lavender.
Most lavender/self blue breeders (all breeds, not just silkies) from all over the world recommend keeping them (self-blue and BBS) separate. A bird that is lav/lav and Bl/? looks more like blue or splash than like lavender, so what is the point of it carrying lavender? The phenotype is wrong for lavender, and I don't see any advantage to the blues. Indeed, lavender can bring in feathering issues.

 

[Lynzi777]

Thanks for sharing. I have some decisions to make.....I REALLY don't want to remove this rooster from my flock. I love him, he's such a sweetie and he really is my nicest looking silkie. Maybe I'll just get a couple of colors and hopefully end up with not only some blue hens but another nice looking roo that I can keep and use for breeding instead of my Duncan.