Easter egger roo/saphire jem chicks sex linked?

[kristina84]

I hatched 5 chicks from my easter egger rooster and my saphire jem hen. 4 are black and 1 is blue. My question is since saphire jems are sex links and males show barring and have a white spot on the head,is my offspring also sex linked or does the Easter egger genes make it not possible? They are 5 weeks old now and I'm having a hard time sexing them. The grey one has almost no tail feathers so I figured roo but has no barring and not much comb growth.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I hatched 5 chicks from my easter egger rooster and my saphire jem hen. 4 are black and 1 is blue. My question is since saphire jems are sex links and males show barring and have a white spot on the head,is my offspring also sex linked or does the Easter egger genes make it not possible? They are 5 weeks old now and I'm having a hard time sexing them. The grey one has almost no tail feathers so I figured roo but has no barring and not much comb growth.

Not sexlinked

 

[kristina84]

Not sexlinked

But I though a black sex link is created by mating a non barred rooster with a barred hen. Everything I've read in here says they should be

 

[JacinLarkwell]

But I though a black sex link is created by mating a non barred rooster with a barred hen. Everything I've read in here says they should be

They are. Sapphire hens don't have barring. They can't be used to make sexlinks

 

[kristina84]

They are. Sapphire hens don't have barring. They can't be used to make sexlinks

Not true saphire jems are a sex linked breed. Of course the hens aren't barred,they're female. They can still make sex linked offspring

 

[Ridgerunner]

You cannot use a sex link to make a sexlink of the same type. The genetics are all wrong. To make a black sex link the female has to be barred and the male cannot be. You also have to be able to see the spot in the down so color comes into play, but those hens are not barred. You cannot do it no matter how much you wish.

 

[kristina84]

You cannot use a sex link to make a sexlink of the same type. The genetics are all wrong. To make a black sex link the female has to be barred and the male cannot be. You also have to be able to see the spot in the down so color comes into play, but those hens are not barred. You cannot do it no matter how much you wish.

You cannot use a sex link to make a sexlink of the same type. The genetics are all wrong. To make a black sex link the female has to be barred and the male cannot be. You also have to be able to see the spot in the down so color comes into play, but those hens are not barred. You cannot do it no matter how much you wish.

Ok I get what you're saying. For it to be a black sex link it has to have a barred mother. So a barred rock would have worked. I'm just confused since saphire jem roos have barring and females don't I was wondering if their offspring would have the same characteristics. Would a saphire jem female and male create sex linked offspring then? Saphire jems are a mutt created with barred rocks and blue Plymouth rock so that's why they are sex linked by barring

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Ok I get what you're saying. For it to be a black sex link it has to have a barred mother. So a barred rock would have worked. I'm just confused since saphire jem roos have barring and females don't I was wondering if their offspring would have the same characteristics. Would a saphire jem female and male create sex linked offspring then? Saphire jems are a mutt created with barred rocks and blue Plymouth rock so that's why they are sex linked by barring

No. They're mixes. The male would give a barring gene to half of both sexes.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

The barring gene is dominant. It expresses if a bird carries it. Sapphire gem hens do not have barring, and therefore do not have the barring gene.

The reason why crosses with sexlinked genes like the barring gene work to make sexlinked chicks is because hens can only pass sexlinked genes to their sons, never to their daughters. Thus, if you have a barred hen mated by a non-barred rooster, only the resulting male chicks could have inherited the barring gene and the female offspring cannot. The chicks can then be told apart because the male offspring have the barring head spot in their chick down and the females do not. As mentioned by Ridgerunner, there are other genes that might make it hard to see whether there is a head spot or not, but the bare basics of it is that females cannot inherit barring from their mothers, and thus if the mother is the only barred bird in the cross, then only the male chicks will inherit barring.

Now, the other half of the equation is that males can pass sexlinked genes to their offspring of either sex, and they do so equally and without any discrimination. Thus a male that is barred might have both male and female offspring with barring, and so those chicks cannot be sexed by whether or not they inherited the barring gene.

Sapphire gems, as you know, are the result of crossing a non-barred male to a barred female, making barred male sapphire gems and non-barred female sapphire gems that can then be sorted at hatch by that trait. Since sapphire gem males inherit barring, that means they can then pass that barring to their offspring of either sex because males pass on sexlinked genes indiscriminately. So crossing two sapphire gems together will not make more sexlinked chicks. It will simply make blue, black, and splash chicks that may or may not be barred regardless of their sex.

The long and short of it is that sexlinked crosses are generally one-off things. The offspring from such crosses can be sexed at hatch, but as a result of the cross they no longer have the appropriate genes to pass on to their own offspring in order to make more chicks that can be sexed at hatch. I hope that all makes sense!

 

[kristina84]

No. They're mixes. The male would give a barring gene to half of both sexes.

Ok,I totally understand now. Thank you