Silkies Of A Different Color

[Sonoran Silkies]

Well, my original chocolate silkies can look like a sun bleached black, and in poor lighting can look black. My polish are not quite that dark, but are still pretty dark; male hackle shoulders and tail are like a very shiny very dark-chocolate candy bar, with the breast and body more of a dark taupe. I would say the khakis are a light to medium taupe.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
I brought a couple of breeder cockerals to Shawnee. An F2 to deliver and an F1 if I had found someone who was serious about working on them. Neither have silkie feathering, and the F1 is a lot farther from type and traits than the F2. The khaki is the oldest of my F3s, and I showed him at Shawnee--way too young, but I wanted feedback, and I got a ton of favourable comments--even Eric Kutch said he really liked the colour and where I am at with him.

Darn, no I didn't get to see them. I barely saw your khaki, but I don't remember why.

I know I was with Sundy. She had asked if I had seen the khaki. We went over and I vaguely remember meeting the owner who I now know is you (sorry, I was looking at him). I remarked about the him being so young. Then you said something about how long it would have been before there was another good chance for people to see, etc....we all agreed and then.............nothing. I think we were both called away for something and that was it. I remember that

I think that was later on Sat and with things shutting down so early we were rushing to get out. I thought things would run later Sunday but more than half had cooped out and were gone when we got there. It was all I could do to track down the new cages I had ordered for the kids and help them coop out.

Shawnee was way too short!
...

INDEED!

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
Right now the F3s are mostly too young to breed. I do have a couple who are not back to pure silkie that I will probably breed to some of my original chocolates to see how that goes.

I have a khaki frizzle who has gorgeous colour, but I am not sure how well he will pair up wth a silkie. Also have a pullet who has very splotchy colouring, but her type is better than most of the boys. And a really evenly coloured chocolate who has dark red wing patches--making me think chocolate partridge. Not enough pens to do it all, so I am playing with ideas in my head as to where I will make the most ground, but also what will be the most fun.

 

[averytds]

I know! Right now I'm trying to figure out how my kid's can best pair their breeders off and space requirements. Yet I want them to have some fun with it as well. Connie's tip about the food coloring is going to help immensely with the pens needed. I hated that we would have to separate out so many girls just to know which eggs belonged to which hen. Now we can just do one for blues and one for blacks for DD and DS's can all stay together. I think we'll let DD's white roo have a hatch with my porcelains for some later color genetics experiments until he has some white gals of his own.



So whenever you refer to your chocolates, your talking about your birds that have 2 copies of the dun gene? Did you breed it in from your polish or start with chocolate silkies from someone else?

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

I've had chocolate coloured silkies for years, but not been able to produce them with any regularity. A couple of years ago I acquired a pair of chocolate polish and crossed them into my birds. There were other thngs I tried, but the polish cross is when I began making headway. When I say chocolate, I refer to one copy of the dun gene; khaki is two copies.

 

[chickenpiedpiper]

This is my Blue partridge Roo, He came out of a partridge only pen, so we dont know how he came to be, some one from the blue pen must have stepped out!! But I love anything that is blue and red, I have BLRW's and Chanticleers and tangeringe blue cochins too. I just love the combo!

This roo has the wrong color comb, but nice everything else, I dont breed him, I let him live in my broody pen, and play with the babies, he loves all the little ones. He also is a determined head wetter, he keeps his poof slicked back and frozen if he can, I think he likes to see! Goofy bird!

This silkie is what Ideal calls Grey. I assumed it was a cockoo, but she has no barring, just grey colored feathers.... I dont know what it is, but she makes lovely babies with my splash and blue roosters, so I dont mind.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
From what I can see, his comb colour is fine: mulberry. And yes, she is a grey.

 

[RioLindoAz]

Quote:
Do your birds carry the CHOC gene?

 

[NoSkiveez]

I hatched these two out at Easter and I was hoping someone might be able to give me an idea of what to call the color. At this point, I'm not sure if the color is good, bad or neither.
Roo

Rooster on left, hens back end

Hen

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
Do your birds carry the CHOC gene?

I would be very surprised if they did. My first chocolate silkies came from a self-blue splash cock X white hen. They hatched two chocolate-coloured boys and one chocolate-coloured girl. If choc caused the colouring, it would mean that both parents had to carry it. Since the parents came from different breeders, and choc was pretty rare and uncommon, and not known in the US that long ago, the chances of them being choc seem pretty astronomical. Add to that my inability to reliably get chocolate coloured offspring from them, when two visually choc birds should produce all choc offspring. I deliberately bred chocolate (Dun gene) polish into them (as explained earlier in this thread), and the offspring colouring seems to follow the correct percentages for Dun.