What will I get breeding my Splash Marans rooster over a Silver Leghorn and my Welbar? I'm pretty sure the Welbar chicks will be sexed at birth due to the barring, but I don't think Welbars have black or blue in their color. So how will that react with a Splash Marans?
Because the rooster is splash, all chicks will inherit the blue gene from him. That will turn all black into blue, but will not change what other colors appear where.
If the Splash Marans is that color all over, with no pattern of gold or red or silver or other colors, then I would expect the chicks to be blue all over. They inherit the genes to be black all over, which is dominant over most other color patterns in chickens, and then all that black is turned into blue by the blue gene.
Yes, the Welbar hen will produce barred sons and not barred daughters, when bred to that rooster. So the sons will be blue with white barring, and the daughters will be blue with no white barring.
All chicks, from all mothers, have a chance of showing some leakage as they grow up: gold or red or white that "leaks" through in some areas of the feathers.
Also curious about breeding him with the Silver Leghorn because I read that all colors of Leghorns breed the same. I'm not sure if that's true.
If you are talking about feather colors, no all colors of Leghorns do not breed the same as each other. But Leghorns of a given color do breed the same as other chickens that have the same color genes.
So a Silver Leghorn will produce the same colors of chicks as a Silver Dorking or a Silver Duckwing Old English Game or any other chicken that has the same genes for color & pattern. The Silver Leghorn will not produce the same colors of chicks that a Brown Leghorn or a White Leghorn would produce.
