Silkie breeding, genetics & showing

[City farm]

Genetic question, web feet on a chicken?

 

[Sanna]

Thanks all....and good luck at your show this weekend Sanna! Let us know!

Thanks! I will take lots of pictures Sunday.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Hey there everyone! I was hoping for some info on whether a pair of silkies I bought are of breeding quality. Also, is splash a recognized color for showing? We have a beautiful Roo that I would love to let my boys show if it is.

This is Gala, one that I am hoping will be breeding quality!


Gala again: she isn't photogenic!


Gala



This is the splash roo. He is 6 months old.







Salvador, hoping he is breeding quality!








Thank you!

Gala is a cockerel (sorry), not a pullet. The splash is your best quality bird.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

hello everyone I have a question for you and I hope you can help me. I have three buff silkie hens and a buff silkie rooster. today i hatched out my first chicks from them and was surprised to see a dark chick that looks partridge. there are a few nice coloured ones and then the partridge.

I have been reading that mixing blue into the buffs at some point can do this. does anyone know if these birds are a lost cause? what should i do? they are very nice birds and some have been shown. I AM very surprised that this has happened as I got them from a breeder who really seemed to know what he was doing.

Any advice? Do i just selectively cull the non perfect buff ones or should I get out of breeding the buffs altogether?

Fran

No matter how perfect your parent birds are, not all their offspring will inherit that perfect set of genes, and there will always be birds that don't make the "KEEP IT" cut. It is not "blue" that can give partridge, although a blue bird could pass on the pattern gene and the e^b base needed for partridge. Photos of your adults and babies would help. Also, is there a possibility that another bird got into the pen, either to breed the buff girls or to lay in their nest?

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: I'm pretty sure he got some of Connie's blacks, too.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

i was wondering,so i thought i'd ask the experts,what is the "self blue" color??

Lavender.

Self is another word for solid, as in no other colours or variations in colouring. A self black bird is solid black, a self buff bird is solid buff. a self blue is a solid blue. Andalusian blue, on the other hand is a laced colour with darker colour of the head, hackles and saddle, as well as a darker lacing around each feather. Even if not laced, the head, hackles and saddle are darker than are the body, back and tail.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Sorry to disagree, but those feathers do not look silkied. Much too much webbing.

 

[PaintedFeathers]

Sorry to disagree, but those feathers do not look silkied. Much too much webbing.

What is webbing? I have only ever seen a silkie chick wing so I wouldn't know what to compare it to

MUST... ABSORB... KNOWLEDGE!

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Silver is incompletely dominant, not recessive. Girls are either silver (S/-) or gold (s+/-); boys are Silver (S/S), golden (S/s+) or gold (s+/s+).

Blues can be pure e^b; they do not have to be E; ditto for blacks. Any e-allele can create a completely black bird, and every one needs helper genes to do so (even E). From experience, I would say that E-based birds are pretty uncommon. As for blues and gold versus silver, I'm not sure one is that much more common than the other, although within a specific breeders lines there are probably some where they are more likely to be one or the other.

With DOMINANT white, blue, silver and barring are often present to breed a better white; with recessive whites, these helpers are not needed, and are not any more or less likely to be present than their alternative alleles (except for barring--very uncommon unless someone has been working on cuckoos).

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:

Looks like you need that crash course on chicken genetics.. if you have a splash you already have blue in the rooster...

I think white chicks do have yellow and sometimes smudges, but grey/silver does sound suspicious. Of course it could just be a really good silver based white... I would keep that one just to find out what it grows up to.

I guess as long as you tell them the blues carry recessive white and the boys may be Golden then they can decide if that will affect their breeding pens. If they are just going to be pets there is no problem. They sure are cute chicks!

PS.. no clue how to get rid of those lines above .. oops.
Also, with a small number of chicklets, no way to expect the percentages to be correct--so the boy could carry blue and you still have no splash if htere are only a few chicks--start getting the number of hatchlings up and the percentages will get closer and closer to their predicted range