White Silkie Genetics?

[EnnieM0097]

I know most silkies are recessive white. however, say I have a black pen and a white pen - can I switch the roosters to see what colors are behind each white, or would there be a better color than black to use?

 

[Sally PB]

@nicalandia, is this something you can shed some light on?

 

[NatJ]

I know most silkies are recessive white. however, say I have a black pen and a white pen - can I switch the roosters to see what colors are behind each white, or would there be a better color than black to use?

Black is going to be dominant over most other colors. So I would use a different color for testing what other genes the whites might carry.

The "best" colors are partly determined by what color you actually have access to

Using the blacks could definitely tell you whether your whites are recessive white or dominant white. But if yours are recessive white, crossing to black will not tell you much more than that, because you will probably just get a bunch of black chicks regardless of the other genes carried by the recessive whites.

Without going into details of genetics, I would look for birds who show a fair bit of gold and some black. ("gold" being most shades of red, brown, tan, buff, actual gold color, etc.) In one of your other threads you mentioned some Wheaten Ameraucanas-- they might work well for this, and then the chicks would be silkie-mixes that lay blue eggs (if you want to sell the chicks, they might be pretty enough and interesting enough to sell well).