Silkies aren't supposed to lay blue eggs, are they?

[Cloverr39]

There's a woman on a local Facebook group I'm in and she's often selling silkies that "will lay blue eggs". I once commented on one of her posts and asked about it. She said her rooster is purebred, came from a blue egg shipped from Germany. She also said something about his grandchildren being silkies, so therefore he must be purebred. She said apparently people in Germany are breeding blue-egg-laying silkies.


So I'm here to ask:

Is this actually a thing and some people are trying to breed blue egg laying silkies and these would be considered purebreds? Or did someone just cross a silkie with an ameraucana or something and bred them for a couple generations?


Note: Sorry if this is in the wrong category.

 

[sourland]

A blue egg laying breed is in the background of her birds.

 

[Cloverr39]

A blue egg laying breed is in the background of her birds.

Well, yeah but can these be considered "pure" silkies?

 

[abpatchy]

I know of a breeder in Germany who is breeding silkies... and silkies which lay blue eggs. Yes, she must have crossed a different breed with them. But after a few generations they are just silkies again... and they lay blue eggs.

 

[abpatchy]

Well, yeah but can these be considered "pure" silkies?

yes... because that's how you breed a new color for example.. you need to cross different breeds. Then keep breeding back to the original breed. and get what you are looking for.
If you see it your way... nothing is pure bred. Where do chickens come from. From the bankiva chicken for example. Most of our domesticated chickens look nothing like the bankiva anymore. And all the different breeds ended up being crosses way back when. Until someone liked a certain feature and kept breeding for it... or because these people lived off the beaten path and kept breeding their own and it turned into a breed.

So in this case, if you keep breeding back to silkies... eventually it's almost back to 100% pure and is considered pure.

 

[sourland]

Well, yeah but can these be considered "pure" silkies?

I would say no. A DNA test would indicate the presence of non silkie chromosomes.

 

[abpatchy]

It could do that when you DNA check a "pure" bred silkie as well.

 

[Obsessed With Silkies]

I think it's a project some are working on. I think @Hinotori mentioned having a blue egg laying silkie project. In general, yes you are correct, silkies don't lay blue eggs but white with the slightest shade of brown. Hinotori can probably explain much better than I.

 

[Hinotori]

Silkies are supposed to lay tinted eggs. It's a very light brown. However, I think only Marans actually have egg color in their Standard of Perfection.

There has been much talk over the years of making a blue laying silkie so their egg matches their earlobes. It's just a fun thing that most people don't stick with until the completion because it takes so long. So it's very possible someone did.

I have a small side project I've been doing for fun over the last several years of trying to make a blueish laying silkie. I crossed a partridge silkie rooster with a wheaten ameraucana. Wheaten messes very little with the partridge color so getting back to that hasn't been hard as I breed the females back to partridge silkies.

I still have years to go to stabilize the blue egg gene. So far the pullets I've kept only carry one copy of the blue egg gene as I've been trying to get back to silkie standards without losing that copy. I may have finally got a male to use.

It's a slow process with my birds only laying at around 9 months and I'm not sure if I'll ever sell any.

I'd be more concerned about bird feather color and conformation in parents and relatives. If eggs arent from a named color, it's probably mixed birds. EBAY is rather notorious for sellers lying about what the birds actually are and buyers getting mutt eggs. Facebook is almost as bad unless it's an actual poultry group. But Facebook doesn't allow selling in those anymore.

 

[Hinotori]

Oh and that brown tinting that silkies have sticks with the eggs, even when they are blue. It would take many years longer to try and get rid of it. So the eggs are greenish.

Distance and a bit of tint correction in the photo can make them nicely blue.