This may turn into a long post, but I thought I would fill everyone in. Last june we got "ameracauna" eggs from someone on e bay. We kept all the chicks we hatch ( 5 roosters, 6 hens) they are all differant colors. Most of the roosters look like blue wheatons and one looks like a red/brown. The hens look like blue wheatons, red/brown and white. So we hatched early this year ( first hatch Feb 14th). At about 3 weeks old we have someone come over to get some chicks, being that we had about 40 in a big brooder we didn't inspect everyone of them. Anyway while we were helping the guy pick out chicks I spotted the " wheaton" colored one and put it in our keep brooder, I remembered seeing this post ( I got butterfly's in my belly) After the guy left we went threw the rest and found a blue colored one, so I went up to our brooder for the chicks up to one week old and found another blue colored one!!!! (Now we lost the older blue colored one) So we started saving every chick till we could see the feathers coming in. Now this is where it gets long and really makes me wonder how the silkied gene comes out. Before we hatched our first set of eggs we send 2 of our EE roo's to a friend on lend, now we had them in with all the others so they could have been breeding the hens. Anyway after our first 3 htches ( hatching on a weekly basis) we got no more silkied chicks. We told our friend about what we were getting and he was watching any eggs he hatched out. Well guess what on Sat we went to see him and he had 3 silkied chicks for us. Same roo's differant hens ( but still ee hens). He is going to continue to hatch just for us are we are going to keep hatching here. So what are the odds that hens in my coop and hens in his coop carry the silkied genes? We know it is in the roosters. Makes me really wonder about the genetics of this. Sorry so long thought maybe my experience with this may help some, or at least make you rack your brains ( as I have been doing for months now)
