Silkie-feathered EE---PICS update

[Kev]

breed with white EE or Amer, all chicks will come out normal feathered but all will be carriers. For most silkied chicks, breed offspring back to silkied parent. 50% of chicks will be silked plus if your chick really does turn out solid white, it could be recessive white so all chicks would be white too. Also, all of the non-silkied chicks will be carriers.

Brother-sister mating will work, but only 1 out of 4 will be silkied AND you will not know which normal feathered offspring have the gene or not.

Lastly, if another of the EE from same place is a roo, breed him with your pullet.. chances would be real small but if they happen to come from same source, there's a chance he'd be a silkie carrier.

 

[peepblessed]

This is all sooooo interesting! Waiting patiently for pictures!

 

[EMaker]

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Okay, just to be sure I understand...I should get a white EE or Ameraucana roo to cross with my Silkied EE, and then breed my hen back of one my hen's normal feathered sons? I got this chick at a feedstore, she's a hatchery EE, so I can't get another male chick from the same source to breed to her. I did recheck and she has dark blue-ish grey legs, not a bright blue. I'm certain she's solid white, though. What about getting a splash Silkied Ameraucana roo---according to this thread, there already are splash Silkied Ameraucanas in existence. What would splash do when combined with white?

Sounds like this will require a lot more effort than I want to invest in breeding chickens.

 

[EMaker]

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LOL! It's funny, to me it was just an unusual chick....I assumed there were others like her (although I knew they were uncommon, certainly)

 

[EMaker]

The Hedemora has a silkied-feather variety, although I don't know if they come in white. I don't think they are peacombed, however. What is more difficult to breed in, the silkied feathering, or the blue egg?

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

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I've got a little flock of blue and splash silkie feathered blue/green-eggers here.

 

[peepblessed]

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I've got a little flock of blue and splash silkie feathered blue/green-eggers here.

So cool!!

 

[Kev]

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Okay, just to be sure I understand...I should get a white EE or Ameraucana roo to cross with my Silkied EE, and then breed my hen back of one my hen's normal feathered sons? I got this chick at a feedstore, she's a hatchery EE, so I can't get another male chick from the same source to breed to her. I did recheck and she has dark blue-ish grey legs, not a bright blue. I'm certain she's solid white, though. What about getting a splash Silkied Ameraucana roo---according to this thread, there already are splash Silkied Ameraucanas in existence. What would splash do when combined with white?

Sounds like this will require a lot more effort than I want to invest in breeding chickens.

Yes, if your goal is solid white silkied EE, best bet would be getting a white EE or amer roo. If the pullet is recessive white, then that's one less thing to worry about when breeding because recessive white bred to recessive white= 100% white chicks, so you could concentrate on other traits. If color is not much concern then use whatever rooster on hand or you like.

White isn't really a color, it's just a gene that prevents any pigmentation the bird has, from entering the feathers. So a white bird can be anything under that white.. could be a black, blue, brown, etc. That makes it hard to answer "what do you get when breeding white to X?".... With that in mind, if you bred a splash silked roo with your white pullet... the easy answer would be all blue chicks.. but in reality, probably expect blue chicks growing up into blue adults with some color leaking on body- either white or brown.. however nobody can give you definite answer on this until they're bred together and chicks raised.

If your pullet turns out to have dominant white.. then at least half of the chicks will turn out white. (another reason white X questions are harder to answer without knowing the background- there are two separate "white" genes and they inherit completely differently)

As for the silkied part, if it's the same gene then all chicks will be silkied... but that's a guess, because afaik, these silkied splashes have not been bred to silkies, which would prove if it's the same gene or a new mutation unrelated to silkie's silky feathers. again if your goal is pure white birds, splashes are a good cross, because sometimes blue is introduced into a line of whites to help keep the white 'cleaner'.

as for what's harder, silkied or blue eggs... depends on how you look at it.. once you have a silkied roo and hen, you're set for pure breeding for silky feathers. For more colored eggers, all you need is at least one parent carrying the O gene(the gene responsible for blue/green eggs), but that makes it much harder to create a line pure breeding for colored eggs- no quick way to tell if an individual hen or rooster is pure for O or not until you test mate them. One way is to actually breed with single combed birds, because O is tightly linked to the pea comb gene(it's not 100% foolproof but it's pretty good).

 

[EMaker]

Thanks very much, Kev! I appreciate your suggestions.

 

[EMaker]

We also got a lavender EE in this year's group. (Not Silkie feathered, the lavender has regular feathers.) She's older than the Silkie feathered pullet, and is fully feathered out now. No other color leakage or lacing, just solid lavender. She has willow legs, and is peacombed. I feel fortunate to have received some interesting colors with our newest EE babies. I love EEs, it's always a fun surprise to see how they feather out.