Silkies

[TMP24]

I have been looking at silkie chicks for sale and have noticed that most places that sell them sell a mix of bearded and non bearded with no guarantee that you will get a mix, all of one type or the other. Do the bearded come specifically from one of the two different types of Silkies or is the bearded just a naturally occurring mutation? If the bearded are not just a mutation and these places are selling a mixture of the chicks am I to conclude that the parent silkies are probably mixed together and that the bearded silkies coming from this mix may actually be a hybrid of the two and there fore won't have as full of a beard as others that are raised with the two types separated? Sorry have not been able to find enough information about how the bearded came about to understand.