Hello. Geneteics question here.

[N F C]

Hi, you could ask about genetics over on this forum: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forums/exhibition-genetics-breeding-to-the-sop.16188/

Good luck with your project!

 

[Yardmom]

I have silkies and silver laced Wyandottes. The hard (standard) feathers like the Wyandotte are dominant so no silkie feathers in the first generation. Birds will be an intermediate sized. My silkie standard crosses are clearly smaller than the Wyandottes, but bigger than the Silkies. Expect to see lacing on the offspring, but it will not be as clear and crisp as the Wyandottes. If your Silkie is a true splash it will pass a blue gene . I'm not familiar enough with this gene to know what percentage of the chicks will be blue/black.

If you breed the offspring together 25 percent will have silkie feathers.

I have not put a lot of study into genetics or paired a splash silkie directly with a pure slw. Others may be more knowledgeable about the exact coloring to expect.

 

[NatJ]

I recently decided to breed my Silver Laced Wyandotte Rooster and my Splash silkie hen. I collected 6 eggs (after about 2 weeks of them being together and checking the eggs for fertilization percentage) and put them in the incubator to hatch. I'm hoping to get some sort of a laced fluffy chick, but the more I read, the more I realized that I know nothing about how genes work. Can someone explain the possibilities I've gotten myself into ? Has anyone done this cross before ? Below is a photo of my roo, Morgan and my silkie hen , Storm. All 6 of their eggs are growing perfectly. We are on day 14 of incubation now and they're all moving a ton and appear to be right on track developmentally. Also, what size can i expect the chicks to be when they're full grown ? Will they be smaller like my silkie, big like my roo, or somewhere inbetween? Is there a specific gene factor here that determines that or can they all be different? I really like the silver chickens if you havent gathered that yet. I do have some silver laced wyandotte pullets as well, but they arent laying yet. They're absolutely gorgeous though.View attachment 4088808

I agree with what some others have posted, assuming the hen has the genes we usually see in a Splash chicken (genes for solid black, plus two blue genes turning the black into Splash.)

From that cross, chicks should have normal feathers (not Silkie feathers), and be blue. The "blue" may have black lacing on the edges of the blue feathers (like what you see in pictures of Blue Andalusians), but will not have the white in the middle of the feather like what you see on the Silver Laced Wyandotte father.

If your Silkie hen is carrying some recessive genes we cannot see, you might get other colors or patterns in the chicks. If that happens, post photos as they grow (maybe make a new thread in the genetics section of the forum), and people can help figure out what other genes are present and how they will or won't work for your project.

For chicks that are laced and fluffy, you will need at least one more generation of breeding, and most likely more. If you want to do this project, I strongly agree with this:

you should plan on eating a lot of chicken.

And there is the question of whether lacing will actually look good on a bird with silkie feathers. It might just look like a messy mix of colors, instead of the neatly defined pattern that we are used to seeing on normal feathers.

If I'm reading it correctly, the chicken calculator...I don't see an option to plug in the silkie gene, but I'm pretty sure that it is recessive. So none of the offspring would look like a silkie.

This version of the calculator has a bunch more options:
https://kippenjungle.nl/breeds/crossbreeds.html
H+ is normal feathering, h is Silkie feathering ("hookless," because the feathers lack the little hooks that would hold the parts together neatly.)

I'm also fuzzy on whether any of the relevant genes are linked, or if they are all inherited independently. Im assuming independent inheritance, but I have no particular reason to believe that. Well, this URL suggests that chickens have 39 chromosomes, so there's a decent chance the genes we're interested in are not linked.

I found a list of chicken gene linkages:
https://kippenjungle.nl/wiki/index.php?title=Chicken_Chromosome_Linkages

If we assume it is correct, Silkie feathering ("hookless") is not linked to any other genes that would matter here.

You'll also need the Columbia pattern (dominant) and partridge brown version of extended black (this is recessive) and Melanized (dominant).

Yes, the Extended Black is a big problem. That's going to turn most of the F2 chicks black such that you can't see silver or gold in patterns in their feathers.

So the F2 gets interesting then. That's where you could end up with a double copy of the lacing gene, plus a double copy of the silkie gene. That's going to be roughly 25% of the grand children.

If the Silkie hen has two E genes (Extended Black) to be black all over, with two copies of the blue gene making the black into splash, then Extended Black is going to show in all F1 chicks and 3/4 of F2 chicks, so you won't see very many that show any other pattern. Combining that with the silkie feathering gene, you would have 1 in 16 of the F2 chicks showing Silkie feathering and any kind of laced or other pattern (about 6% of chicks). A correctly laced pattern would be much rarer yet.

If the Silkie hen has E/? (Extended Black carrying something unknown but recessive to it), then half of the F1 chicks will be able to show some pattern of silver with blue, and breeding two of them will give F2 that shows some kind of patterning in all chicks. That at least makes it easier to sort silver vs. gold and select for the correct pattern, but there is still the problem with only 1/4 of them having Silkie feathers.

To get even a single copy of the silver gene in there (I understand it to be a dominant gene? ) is a 75% chance, since the F1s should all have a single copy of it. That yields almost 19% of the grand children being silkie, well laced (2 copies of the gene) and silver.

Silver is on the Z sex chromosome, so it's inherited differently. Roosters have two copies, hens have one plus a W chromosome to make them female. So the father will give silver to all his chicks. Daughters will be silver, sons will have a silver gene and whatever they inherit from their mother (gold or silver.)

We don't know if the Splash hen has gold or silver, because her coloring is probably just caused by the gene for Extended Black (makes a solid black chicken) and two copies of the blue gene (makes black into splash.) So she might already be Silver and we don't know it. If she is gold, she cannot pass it to her daughters (she give them a W sex chromosome that makes them female but doesn't affect the colors), but she would give gold to her sons.

If the Silkie hen has gold, and her sons and daughters are crossed to give the F2 generation, all the males will be silver (half carrying gold), and the females will be a 50/50 split of silvers and golds. (But silver vs. gold will only show on the ones that do not have Extended Black hiding it.)

Keep in mind that it is late, I'm tired, and I'm not a rocket scientist to begin with, so.... if I add all those factors up, I'm looking at like 2.6% of the grand children will come out as a silkie version of a silver laced Wyandotte. I have no idea what lacing looks like in a silkie though. And if you're particular about the size of the bird as well, then that's a consistent I didn't attempt to account for.

Agreed, it's pretty poor odds. I might do some parts of the arithmetic a bit differently than you did, but the numbers are small enough by this point that it doesn't make much difference.

And what's bugging me: I'm no good at telling when a Silkie is splash (Extended Black plus two blue genes) and when it has a pattern of silver-and-black. That could make an enormous difference in what the F1 chicks look like, and the odds for the F2 chicks.

When these eggs hatch, pictures of the chicks could be a big help in figuring out at least some of this! If they all look blue, then the hen is probably E/E with two blue genes, and the predictions based on that should be correct.

 

[Raisin_The_Chicken]

Hello and welcome!

 

[janiedoe]

Good morning, welcome to BYC!
I think you will get something similar to my hen, Busy, in feather pattern and color.

I look forward to seeing your chicks. Good luck with your incubabtion & hatch!

 

[Taylor12777]

I agree with what some others have posted, assuming the hen has the genes we usually see in a Splash chicken (genes for solid black, plus two blue genes turning the black into Splash.)

From that cross, chicks should have normal feathers (not Silkie feathers), and be blue. The "blue" may have black lacing on the edges of the blue feathers (like what you see in pictures of Blue Andalusians), but will not have the white in the middle of the feather like what you see on the Silver Laced Wyandotte father.

If your Silkie hen is carrying some recessive genes we cannot see, you might get other colors or patterns in the chicks. If that happens, post photos as they grow (maybe make a new thread in the genetics section of the forum), and people can help figure out what other genes are present and how they will or won't work for your project.

For chicks that are laced and fluffy, you will need at least one more generation of breeding, and most likely more. If you want to do this project, I strongly agree with this:


And there is the question of whether lacing will actually look good on a bird with silkie feathers. It might just look like a messy mix of colors, instead of the neatly defined pattern that we are used to seeing on normal feathers.



This version of the calculator has a bunch more options:
https://kippenjungle.nl/breeds/crossbreeds.html
H+ is normal feathering, h is Silkie feathering ("hookless," because the feathers lack the little hooks that would hold the parts together neatly.)


I found a list of chicken gene linkages:
https://kippenjungle.nl/wiki/index.php?title=Chicken_Chromosome_Linkages

If we assume it is correct, Silkie feathering ("hookless") is not linked to any other genes that would matter here.


Yes, the Extended Black is a big problem. That's going to turn most of the F2 chicks black such that you can't see silver or gold in patterns in their feathers.


If the Silkie hen has two E genes (Extended Black) to be black all over, with two copies of the blue gene making the black into splash, then Extended Black is going to show in all F1 chicks and 3/4 of F2 chicks, so you won't see very many that show any other pattern. Combining that with the silkie feathering gene, you would have 1 in 16 of the F2 chicks showing Silkie feathering and any kind of laced or other pattern (about 6% of chicks). A correctly laced pattern would be much rarer yet.

If the Silkie hen has E/? (Extended Black carrying something unknown but recessive to it), then half of the F1 chicks will be able to show some pattern of silver with blue, and breeding two of them will give F2 that shows some kind of patterning in all chicks. That at least makes it easier to sort silver vs. gold and select for the correct pattern, but there is still the problem with only 1/4 of them having Silkie feathers.


Silver is on the Z sex chromosome, so it's inherited differently. Roosters have two copies, hens have one plus a W chromosome to make them female. So the father will give silver to all his chicks. Daughters will be silver, sons will have a silver gene and whatever they inherit from their mother (gold or silver.)

We don't know if the Splash hen has gold or silver, because her coloring is probably just caused by the gene for Extended Black (makes a solid black chicken) and two copies of the blue gene (makes black into splash.) So she might already be Silver and we don't know it. If she is gold, she cannot pass it to her daughters (she give them a W sex chromosome that makes them female but doesn't affect the colors), but she would give gold to her sons.

If the Silkie hen has gold, and her sons and daughters are crossed to give the F2 generation, all the males will be silver (half carrying gold), and the females will be a 50/50 split of silvers and golds. (But silver vs. gold will only show on the ones that do not have Extended Black hiding it.)


Agreed, it pretty poor odds. I might do some parts of the arithmetic a bit differently than you did, but the numbers are small enough by this point that it doesn't make much difference.

And what's bugging me: I'm no good at telling when a Silkie is splash (Extended Black plus two blue genes) and when it has a pattern of silver-and-black. That could make an enormous difference in what the F1 chicks look like, and the odds for the F2 chicks.

When these eggs hatch, pictures of the chicks could be a big help in figuring out at least some of this! If they all look blue, then the hen is probably E/E with two blue genes, and the predictions based on that should be correct.

This was EXTREMELY helpful. Thank you so much! The hatch date is April 9th. I will come back and post pictures as soon as they dry off completely and keep taking weekly pictures as they grow. I didn't originally plan to cross my silkies with anything other than my black silkie roo, but sadly he died protecting his girls from an opossum So when I ended up with a roo from my SLW batch, I thought maybe it'd be a pretty cross. I'm very interested to see what happens now. As far as I know, my silkie is a true splash. She is a 3rd generation pure bred silkie. (I think I said said that right) meaning that her parents were full silkie, her grandparents were full silkie and her great grandparents were (pretty sure) full silkie. I personally haven't breed her yet. This will be her first offspring. She's about a year and a half old, so I don't have her precious chicks to base anything off of to see what she throws. I know as a chick, she was the prettiest solid blue/grey color and as shes gotten older, the dark spots throughout her feathers have gotten darker. One thing I do notice that's different is that my black roo and my partridge silkie both had blue ears, whereas she has black ears. I don't know if they tells you anything really.

 

[Taylor12777]

Good morning, welcome to BYC!
I think you will get something similar to my hen, Busy, in feather pattern and color.
View attachment 4089041

I look forward to seeing your chicks. Good luck with your incubabtion & hatch!

She is gorgeous!!! I would be perfectly fine with this outcome After breeding the two together, I quickly realized that I was in no way gonna get what I originally thought. But I also believe that it'll be pretty anyway. I've loved the blue laced or blue chickens for awhile. I just didn't realized that the cross i did would give me that. So basically what I've done is just bred a Silver Laced bird to a Splash bird. The silkie part doesn't really make a difference because it's recessive (I think I understand that correctly)

 

[janiedoe]

She is gorgeous!!! I would be perfectly fine with this outcome After breeding the two together, I quickly realized that I was in no way gonna get what I originally thought. But I also believe that it'll be pretty anyway. I've loved the blue laced or blue chickens for awhile. I just didn't realized that the cross i did would give me that. So basically what I've done is just bred a Silver Laced bird to a Splash bird. The silkie part doesn't really make a difference because it's recessive (I think I understand that correctly)

Thank you.
I love cross breeds. They are always differnt from everyone else in the flock.
If you ever have a broody hen, you can always give her some silkie eggs to hatch. Your rooster will be more likely to accept another rooster if he is raised by a hen along side the flock. Its always adds to the breeding fun, to have multiple roosters.

 

[Zenmonkey]

So basically what I've done is just bred a Silver Laced bird to a Splash bird. The silkie part doesn't really make a difference because it's recessive (I think I understand that correctly)

We're all in agreement that the silkie won't express (won't show up) in the first generation. If you cross the crosses, you should see 25% silkie. If you cross the crosses back to a silkie, you should see 50% silkie.

@NatJ makes an excellent point, that the two genes responsible for splash in the silkie could be hiding something "interesting" that would throw off the calculations.

However the odds are quite good that these eggs will produce normal feathered, blue chickens with light but likely imperfect lacing.

 

[sourland]

Hello, and welcome to BYC. Good luck for a successful hatch.