White silkie genetics?

[Pepsi216]

Hello everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster. I picked up two white silkie chicks back in April, and for the first few weeks while they went through the fluffball stage, they almost looked like different colored chicks. One had a gold cast to him, the other a silver cast to her fluff. Both have grown to be regular white silkies. I didn't think much of it until I started reading the genetics forum and now I'm curious. Does this mean the chicks are dominant white, with the white hiding a gold or silver color underneath? Or is this just what white silkie chicks look like as fuzzbutts? Or is there a link between the boy being more gold and the girl being more silver?

Five days old:

Nine days old:

14 weeks old:

 

[nicalandia]

White Silkies are Recessive in nature, most of them are partridge underneath the white.. Since recessive white will turn everything white one could be sex linked gold(s+) or sex linked Silver(S).

Paint Silkies are based on Dominant White(Heterozygous I/I+) you will rarely see a homozygous(I/I) Dominant White sold along with recessive white

 

[Pepsi216]

White Silkies are Recessive in nature, most of them are partridge underneath the white.. Since recessive white will turn everything white one could be sex linked gold(s+) or sex linked Silver(S).

Paint Silkies are based on Dominant White(Heterozygous I/I+) you will rarely see a homozygous(I/I) Dominant White sold along with recessive white

Can you explain this to me further? My recollection on dominant vs recessive is from peas in high school biology class many years ago. Doesn't recessive require both mom and dad to pass on a recessive white gene, so only way to get white would be a pair of recessive genes? In which case, how does another color show underneath it if both your options are white? Or is color spread across many genes in chickens?

Thanks!!

 

[nicalandia]

Can you explain this to me further? My recollection on dominant vs recessive is from peas in high school biology class many years ago. Doesn't recessive require both mom and dad to pass on a recessive white gene, so only way to get white would be a pair of recessive genes? In which case, how does another color show underneath it if both your options are white? Or is color spread across many genes in chickens?

Thanks!!

Partridge Silies are eb/eb, ml+/ml+, C+/C+, i+/i+ s+/s+
Recessive White Silkies are eb/eb, ml+/ml+, c/c, i+/i+ s+/s+ or S/S

As you can see that single recessive white mutation(c/c) will turn a partridge Silkie into a white silkie, but let say you cross that recessive white to an all black silkies which are E/E, Ml/Ml, C+/C+, i+/i+, this cross will produce E/eb, Ml/ml+, C+/c, i+/i+ All of the F1s will be black, but if you cross the F1s with each other you will get 25% E/E(Extended Black), 25(Partirdge) and 50% E/eb(Heterozygous Black), bu guess what? 25% of all of the F2s will be Solid White and you will have NO idea if they are based on Extended Black(homozygous or Heterozgyous) or Partridge(eb/eb), what is the moral of this genetic story? Recessive White does not care what genetic background you are it will turn you what(at last when they are feathering out, chick down is a different story as recessive white will not always turn them in yellow or white, you can see grey colored chick down with recessive white)