Sex- linked Information

[junebuggena]

Hi. I put one of my beautiful Partridge welsummer roosters with my barred Plymouth rocks. When the chics hatched some were black and some were a golden brown with a brown stripe. Which are male and which are female? Thanks

The males will inherit their mother's barring. They will have a white spot on the back of their heads. Like this little boy I hatched out 2 days ago.

 

[englishcockers]

I'd say your BPR's aren't pure. Black chicks with a white spot on the head will be male, black with no spot female. golden with stripe indicates mom isn't pure for extended black.
You might still see a difference between male and female among the gold chicks and if the mother hens are barred you will see barring in the male chicks and not the female as they feather.

 

[Ridgerunner]

As Sonoran Silkies likes to point out, there are different ways to make a solid black chicken. We generally assume a solid black chicken is based on Extended Black, but with the right melanizers any allele at the e locus can give a solid black chicken, even Wheaten according to Sonoran. I got some Black Ameraucanas from a breeder expecting to get Extended Black, but she warned me that there was Birchen with melanizers in the mix too. I did not appreciate the power of the melanizers until I started hatching the chicks. A couple of generations later I saw chicks with reddish down feather out almost but not quite solid black. It took me a while to figure out why.

My first assumption would be the same as Englishcockers, that at least some of the Barred Rock hens are split for Extended Black and something red at the e locus. Karis, if you got the Barred rock hens from a hatchery this should not happen, but all hatcheries are managed by humans and sometimes mistakes happen. If you got them from a private source who knows what is in the mix genetically. Do you see any reddish/brown feathers randomly scattered on the hens?

But it is also possible there is no Extended Black there at all, just something else with melanizers. I don’t know anything detailed about different melanizers but I’d assume some are recessive and some are dominant so what gets passed down to the chick will be the normal random passing down of genes.

Karis, don’t be shocked if some of those brownish chicks feather out black, at least in some areas. Some of this stuff gets really weird.

 

[kariscluckers]

Thanks for replies.... I got all my poultry from breeders here in ireland and am assured they are PB. I'm totally baffled!

 

[donrae]

Kari, you should still be able to sex them by a head spot. It can be hard to see on non-black birds, and sometimes you have to just wait until they feather out. Check out threads on sexing Rhodebar and Legbar chicks....neither of those breeds have the exact base color you're probably dealing with, but it should be close enough to give you an idea of what you're looking for.

 

[donrae]

I don't know if this will help much, but here's a pic of some chicks I hatched out that were both red sex links and black (barred) sex links. They weren't black, obviously....the hen was silver laced Wyandotte x barred rock, so she had silver and barring. The rooster was half Welsummer half barnyard mix. The smaller chick on the left is more silver, and you can see where the darker color is broke up on the top of his head. That's where the head spot would be, indicating barring. The larger chick on the right is gold based, and has a dark head with clearly defined markings. I wish I had pics of them as they matured, but I sold them as juvies.

 

[kariscluckers]

Thanks donrae. The one on the left is the same as the chicks of mine which were not black when they hatched out.

 

[donrae]

I had posted here about my "ambiguous" blue sex link chicks a while back. In my case, I think ambiguous was spelled D-E-N-I-A-L

. The chicks I thought I couldn't tell for sure are male, while the sole female was very evident from day one. So, I'm using it as a learning experience and continuing with the project, at least as long as the ladies keep laying.

 

[cmom]

I have created many Red Sex-Links with one of my Single Comb Rhode Island Red males and my Single Comb Rhode Island White females. This year I tried the same with one of my RC RIR males and RC RIW females. They did not turn out as I expected.

I thought the white birds were males but now I'm thinking females. They are Rose Combs. I'm still not sure. I gave away the others chicks from this hatch. My plan was to process them. I will let them grow out a bit more. The person I gave the other chicks to said the dark chicks were females and the white chick he took was a male.

 

[junebuggena]

Looks the hen was dominant white instead of the silver that is needed for sexlinks. That would explain the mostly white pullet.