Trying decide on rooster... please help! Long post

[UrbanRustic]

Ok... first... our goals. We love the taste of the silkie eggs. We find them to have much richer flavor than our other eggs. We also love their soft, poofy feathering and they are so super gentle as a general rule. They are really good mamas.

We love the blue and green eggs for the "novelty" and have genuinely loved our EE chickens. They also lay very well and consistently for longer than our "laying" breeds like Australorp and Isa Browns. They are also people-y and curious. They also seem to be good mamas when they go broody which tends to be less often that the silkies (which we also prefer... less often but still about 1x a year).

All of this to say we want to head our flock in the direction of silked EEs without the $35 price tag. We didn't even know there were silked EEs until we decided to move this direction.

So.... in light of this... we have a sweet rooster that is silkie (Father) over an EE that we have had for about 7-8 years. She still lays but this year has finally quit laying real regularly. Last year we bought an EE hen, she lays blue. And then our rooster has a sister and we think she is laying blue with a slight green tint... almost a mint blue-green. He has several daughters and none of them lay blue we are pretty sure... although we are about to split the flock and try and get a better idea to be sure. But I *really* don't think he got his mom's blue gene.

So... we have 3 birds currently laying blue eggs. One is we think his sister which is silkie/EE. The other 2 are EE.

We have 2 white silkies and 1 silkie/EE/silkie (his daughter) that are all laying.

This year we got a silkie pair (white cockerel and white pullet) and 9 Americana (EE from TSC) and wound up with 4 cockerels and 5 pullets we are pretty sure.

We also have 2 hens that have gone broody and will NOT give up their eggs but they mostly have blue eggs and a few silkie under them (we are about to have way too many chickens!)

Our plan is to pair our silkie cockerel with all the blue layers and new Americana pullets (so he will have 8 girls depending on what hatches he might have 10).

The silkie girls are where we are stuck. Do we keep breeding them with our sweet roo? Or do we switch to a new Americana roo? What are the chances that the new roos have the blue gene? Is there any thing to look for that makes it more likely? Are we complicating this too much? We can't have more than 2 roosters total. And we aren't sure if we can even do that long term depending on how much they cockadoodle battle. We really need to get to a rooster that has the silkie feathering genes and the blue egg gene. Help!

PS This isn't for selling or anything.. just our own personal flock. We do have a few different people with country properties that can take extra hens at least.

 

[Debbie292d]

Hi.

I would read this post or the whole thread may interest you.

 

[NatJ]

we have a sweet rooster...He has several daughters and none of them lay blue we are pretty sure... although we are about to split the flock and try and get a better idea to be sure. But I *really* don't think he got his mom's blue gene.

The silkie girls are where we are stuck. Do we keep breeding them with our sweet roo? Or do we switch to a new Americana roo? What are the chances that the new roos have the blue gene? Is there any thing to look for that makes it more likely?

There is a genetic test for the blue egg gene.
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg

It might be worth testing the sweet rooster you already have and like. If he has the blue egg gene, of course you would keep breeding from him. If not, you may want to test one of the other roosters (it would be a pity if you got rid of the sweet one and kept another, and then found that he didn't have the blue egg gene anyway).

If you separate the sweet rooster's daughters to check their egg color, and if you find that one or more of them did inherit a blue egg gene from him, then of course you don't need to bother with a genetic test because you will know the answer.


I do not think there is anything you can look for that makes a rooster more or less likely to have the blue egg gene in your particular flock.

In some flocks, people can track which birds have the blue egg gene by looking at what kind of comb they have, because there is a link between whether a chicken has the blue egg gene and whether the chicken has the pea comb gene. They tend to be inherited together.

But the problem is, the linkage can go any direction:
blue egg/pea comb in Ameraucana
blue egg/not-pea comb in Cream Legbar
not-blue egg/pea comb in Brahmas and Silkies
not-blue egg/not-pea comb in most of the common white-egg and brown-egg breeds

Since you have Silkies (pea comb, not-blue egg) and Easter Eggers (blue egg, may be linked with pea comb or with not-pea comb), I don't think the comb types are going to tell you anything useful.

We really need to get to a rooster that has the silkie feathering genes and the blue egg gene. Help!

I think I would try with the Silkie rooster and this female:

we have 3 birds currently laying blue eggs. One is we think his sister which is silkie/EE.

Breeding her to the Silkie rooster should give about a 50/50 split of chicks with silkied feathers and chicks with normal feathers. For each feather type, there should be a 50/50 split of ones with the blue egg gene and without it. So I would probably pick a male with silkied feathers, and use a DNA test to see if he has the blue egg gene, repeating for one male after another until you get one that does have the blue egg gene.

All of this to say we want to head our flock in the direction of silked EEs without the $35 price tag. We didn't even know there were silked EEs until we decided to move this direction.

Is the price tag lower on the males? Buying a Silkied EE male might be something to consider.