sex link chickens

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mikel78 said:
am looking for a link to an exhaustive list of sexlink chicks from heritage crossbreeds
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You mean which crosses will produce sexlinks?

Gentically, gold rooster over silver hen, or rooster with no barring over hen with barring.
That's it, the two basic sexlink recipes. In each case, the sons show their mother's trait (silver or barring) and the daughters show their father's trait (gold or not-barred.) There are LOTS of breeds that can produce those.

As a practical matter, some of them work better than others.
You could cross a Brown Leghorn rooster with a Silver Dorking hen, but it might be hard to tell which chicks are silver or gold because the down colors are so similar. The same goes for a Gold Laced Wyandotte rooster over a Silver Laced Wyandotte hen, where the chick down makes it hard to tell color.

Barring makes a nice yellow spot on the head of black chicks, but is not easy to recognize on light colored chicks. A Columbian Wyandotte rooster (no barring) over a Delaware hen (barring) would make sexlinks where the sons have barring and the daughters don't-- but they look pretty much the same when they hatch, so it's not useful in any practical sense.

The most common sexlinks use a Rhode Island Red rooster, or a New Hampshire rooster. Those are gold and not-barred. With the rich red shade, the gold shade is more obvious in gold-silver sexlinks (as compared with using a Buff Orpington, who has a much paler shade of gold.) And for barred/not-barred sexlinks, it is most common to use black-based hens with barring, because the barring shows up so much better on that background (yellow head spot on the chick, and white lines in the feathers as they grow.) The black shows up in the chicks because it's dominant over the red from the Rhode Island Red.
 
NatJ said:
You mean which crosses will produce sexlinks?

Gentically, gold rooster over silver hen, or rooster with no barring over hen with barring.
That's it, the two basic sexlink recipes. In each case, the sons show their mother's trait (silver or barring) and the daughters show their father's trait (gold or not-barred.) There are LOTS of breeds that can produce those.

As a practical matter, some of them work better than others.
You could cross a Brown Leghorn rooster with a Silver Dorking hen, but it might be hard to tell which chicks are silver or gold because the down colors are so similar. The same goes for a Gold Laced Wyandotte rooster over a Silver Laced Wyandotte hen, where the chick down makes it hard to tell color.

Barring makes a nice yellow spot on the head of black chicks, but is not easy to recognize on light colored chicks. A Columbian Wyandotte rooster (no barring) over a Delaware hen (barring) would make sexlinks where the sons have barring and the daughters don't-- but they look pretty much the same when they hatch, so it's not useful in any practical sense.

The most common sexlinks use a Rhode Island Red rooster, or a New Hampshire rooster. Those are gold and not-barred. With the rich red shade, the gold shade is more obvious in gold-silver sexlinks (as compared with using a Buff Orpington, who has a much paler shade of gold.) And for barred/not-barred sexlinks, it is most common to use black-based hens with barring, because the barring shows up so much better on that background (yellow head spot on the chick, and white lines in the feathers as they grow.) The black shows up in the chicks because it's dominant over the red from the Rhode Island Red.
Click to expand...
thanks for the reply , so i was looking for a resource that would go through every heritage breed and tell you what other heritage breed you could cross it with to get sexable chicks , so from your post are you saying that all heritage breeds can be classed as either silver gold or barred ? that would simplify things a lot , all i would need then would be a list of breeds that fall under each category
 
mikel78 said:
are you saying that all heritage breeds can be classed as either silver gold or barred ? that would simplify things a lot , all i would need then would be a list of breeds that fall under each category
Click to expand...
For any true-breeding chicken variety*:
--either it is silver or it is gold
--either it is barred or it is not-barred
Examples:
Rhode Island Red is gold and not-barred
Silver Laced Wyandotte is gold and not-barred
Cream Legbar is gold and barred
Delaware is silver and barred

Yes, you can just sort them that way.

For some, it is not obvious or useful (a black chicken is either silver or gold too, but you can't see it because the black covers it up, and some white chickens are barred but you can't see that because barring on white isn't obvious.)

*I said "true breeding chicken variety," because with mixed-breeds you can get a rooster that has silver and gold, or barring and not-barring. This can only happen with a rooster, not a hen. But any kind that is breeding true for color & pattern should not have that, with a possible exception for the ones where you can't see it anyway (so a Black Australorp is probably silver, but you really can't tell if some have gold, because they all look black anyway.)
 
Last edited:
NatJ said:
For any true-breeding chicken variety*:
--either it is silver or it is gold
--either it is barred or it is not-barred
Examples:
Rhode Island Red is gold and not-barred
Silver Laced Wyandotte is gold and not-barred
Cream Legbar is gold and barred
Delaware is silver and not-barred

Yes, you can just sort them that way.

For some, it is not obvious or useful (a black chicken is either silver or gold too, but you can't see it because the black covers it up, and some white chickens are barred but you can't see that because barring on white isn't obvious.)

*I said "true breeding chicken variety," because with mixed-breeds you can get a rooster that has silver and gold, or barring and not-barring. This can only happen with a rooster, not a hen. But any kind that is breeding true for color & pattern should not have that, with a possible exception for the ones where you can't see it anyway (so a Black Australorp is probably silver, but you really can't tell if some have gold, because they all look black anyway.)
Click to expand...
:) i appreciate the help , I've learned a lot
 

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