White crested black silkies? Can it be done?

[PrairieChickens]

The first generation of crosses has reached point of lay in the girls, and I have collected five eggs so far. My rooster has a great deal of red and gold in his feathers that--while lovely--will need to be bred out as I work. So far the only hint of a white crest is on Yoru, the hen pictured here, and it is only white on the very tips of the crest feathers, as you can see. My hope is that some of the chicks will hatch out with a more obvious white-on-black coloring.


I also have two white silkie roosters in with them, but the male hybrid (Kage) acts dominant over them and won't let them breed, so I suspect any chicks I hatch will be fathered by Kage.

 

[orientphoenix]

wow this is gonna be awesome, someone should also do millie fluer coloring too- using duccles and silkies.

 

[QueenMisha]

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

 

[Wolfefarmyard]

How is it going?

I'm thinking of doing this project myself. After some research, I think that I may have found a way to make this possible. I would have to breed a partidge Silkie with a white crested polish. Then breed the f1 generation together, then selectively breed until I've got the right qualities

 

[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!

 

[MokiYoki]

White crest has been speculated to be a form of mottling so it makes sense they are only showing in F2. I really recommend watching carefully that the beaks stay black cause mottling strips out the fibro easily. Im very excited to see how you go

 

[luckiestck1]

Love the chicks looks like your project is going well

 

[luckiestck1]

How are your chicks going?

 

[AltonaAcres]

Any updates or new photos?