The next year I crossed those back to a very good cockerel and I got 18 and more pullets. The really good thing about lavender is it breeds true. Once you really have a full lavender...you know LIGHTS ON for real, you will get lavenders. When you don't then something isn't right. Either you have birds crossed with splash along the way, or another color, and they are looking lavender but genetically not. Let's back up a bit and explain our lingo..."mutts" are the off colored silkies you get from lavender crossing. I find that these mutts are usually the best type but the color is all wrong for showing. "Splits" is a term I started using since I was raising peafowl and hear that a lot with them. When I crossed a black silkie with a lavender rooster thinking this hen was a mutt I got a lot of black chicks, really NICE black chicks. I began calling them black split to lavender. In the past most of my mutts were nearly black with silver or gold in their hackles. So, when I finally realized I had actually crossed back to black genes we were excited to see that the brassy/gold off color we got at times in our cockerels was now not showing as much. All the other breeders I was working with started doing the same thing...crossing back to good quality blacks. This turned out to be really good since you can get excellent lavenders or blacks while improving your lavender color. I also see much darker skin color and eye color with the black crosses. All my birds now have a black base but I still throw two different looks. Some chicks have stripes while others don't...First I believed it was certain hens but after tracking for several months I saw no difference with one than another...they were actually throwing both type of chicks. Besides working with Deb I have another friend in Colorado who strated with our lines but with adding her own black birds has now crossed and got her OWN lines. She has the same results as I do with the types of chicks hatching. She has sold some of her birds to Shagbark.
