White crested black silkies? Can it be done?

[PrairieChickens]

The diverse genetic possibilities of chickens fascinates me, but I don't know as much about it as I would like. I have an inquiry that more educated minds might be able to shed some light on regarding the possibility of producing white crested black silkies.

I have a white crested black Polish pullet who is not getting on at all with the other Polish. I'm sure I could force the issue and integrate her successfully, but she's adopted herself into the silkie flock where she seems to exist quite happily. This got me to wondering--if I crossed her with a silkie rooster, and then carefully bred for silkie traits over the next several generations, could I retain the white-crested black coloring with the silkie feathering? Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[PrairieChickens]

Hello, apologies for disappearing. My rooster was killed by a predator and I thought that was it for my experiment, but fate apparently wasn't finished with the polkie project.

This past summer, I was at the fair when I noticed one of the roosters there to be rehomed looked an awful lot like a blue polkie. I asked the owner about it, and she said he was the offspring of a WCB polish rooster and a white silkie hen. On top of that, Kuro and Yoru (the two polkie hens) had somehow avoided death for the past four years, so I bought the new rooster (Now named Nobunaga), and added him to the flock.

Now, things didn't click immediately. It was the typical chicken drama. Nobunaga was skittish and a loner, and kept escaping to run by himself, cheating death and testing my patience each time. Then when I finally convinced him to sit tight, Kuro decided to run away and elope with my leghorn rooster instead and would not stay in Nobunaga's pen. Finally, I got the idea to set them up in my call duck pen, which was more secure and had fewer chicken neighbors, and at last they decided to settle down.

As a bonus, a third polkie pullet already lived there: a 3/4th polish, 1/4th silkie girl I call Dot, hatched from one of Kuro/Yoru's eggs when they were living with my polish flock. Dot's father is a buff laced/silver laced polish cross who represents the buff a lot more, and she takes after him in appearance. This means though that she has silver laced, buff laced, AND WCB polish in her ancestry, as well as silkie.
(The other hen in the photo is a silkie/OEGB mix who decided she wanted to live in this flock, so I'm letting her stay.)

I started collecting eggs immediately, even though I knew that meant I'd probably get some leghorn DNA in the mix, *stares at Kuro* but it was worth it to hatch every possible egg from this group. Monday, the eggs started hatching, and I'm stoked with the results.

Surprisingly, only one chick hatched out half leghorn. The rest look like "pure" polkies. Most hatched out black or dark blue, but one has hatched out with very unusual coloring. I look forward to seeing how it feathers out and continuing this experiment, and I promise to get better photos of the results.

 

[PrairieChickens]

Batch #2 just hatched, and one looks like a white-crested-black. A couple look like they might be white-crested blue, and another one looks like "Gori", the super interesting chick from the first hatch (who is feathering out silkied, by the way). I also have some that hatched out maybe "partridge"ish, though one is a neat chocolatey color. The things you find when you mix genetics!

 

[AltonaAcres]

Any updates or new photos?

 

[PrairieChickens]

Alright, hatched out several polish/silkie crosses, a fox got some, but I do have two females and one male still. I will probably put the girls in with a silkie rooster to breed back in more of the silkie traits. So far, the girls are solid black with no sign of a white crest, and the male has some red leakage in his feathering that I'm not sure where it came from. I read once that "white" birds can hide the genetics for a host of other colors and patterns that only become apparent when the white bird is crossed with a non-white bird. I figure that's where my male got his sparks of red.

Here is one of my juvenile pullets.

 

[QueenMisha]

Very interesting project, thanks for sharing. The second generation should be interesting to see.

 

[luckiestck1]

How are your chicks going?

 

[luckiestck1]

how are your white crested silkies going

 

[luckiestck1]

How's the project going?

 

[sourland]

This is something that I have always wondered about. It would make for a very striking silky.