So when you breed cuckoo silkies to eachother will the chicks be barred?

[BeastyBird]

I have tried to do my own research but I am finding very mix information on how the genetics work with cuckoo silkies and I am very confused on what my 10 chicks will end up being.

I bought a rooster and 3 hens a couple months ago, all with mottled skin and wonderful form (nice big hair puffs) I was told they are from 15 years of breeding, and after a month of quarantine, a batch of infertile eggs, a 2 week hold on hatching and then then a 21 day wait I now have 10 chicks from them... but the question still stands.... Will these be barred like their parents???????

And if they are barred will they be hens and roos or is the color sex linked somehow when cuckoo is bred to cuckoo???
Or is it breeding to solid birds that gets you sex linked chicks???
If it is sex linked how do I get barred hens???
Why is this so confusing???

 

[junebuggena]

If the rooster is pure for barring (two copies) and all the hens are pure (one copy), then all chicks should have barring. However, some of those chicks look to be Blue, and the Blue gene can make it difficult to actually see the barring or the white head spot.
The white spots on the back of the heads indicate the presence of at least one barring gene.

 

[BeastyBird]

So anyone without a white spot may not be barred? And the spots mean defiantly barred, so these guys should be barred? Some have very faint pale dots, is this indicative of barring? I do have 2 that are striped and one has a nice big white dot on its head, they also have the palest skin so they look the most like cuckoos to me (a lot of these chicks have nice dark skin, which I took as great for cuckoos but now I wonder if they will even be barred.)

And if they are barred will cockerels and pullets be bared or just cockerels? That was another confusion I had.

 

[Marilynszoo]

They are beautiful chicks! It will be interesting to see how they turn out.

 

[junebuggena]

Any spot, no matter how faint, indicates barring. If any do not have a head spot, the rooster only had a single copy of the barring gene instead of two. If that is the case, chicks without a spot are definitely female.

 

[BeastyBird]

So are the chicks with spots defiantly barred but also defiantly male? I am hoping for both barred males and barred females.

 

[junebuggena]

Nope. A barred hen can only pass her barring gene to her male chicks, but a barred rooster can pass it to both male and female chicks.

 

[BeastyBird]

Updated: my cuckoo X cuckoo breeding did produce barred hens and roos (way more roos though) and anything with a pale dot became barred and the striped ones came out lavender barred.

 

[junebuggena]

How did you get lavender? Completely different gene from Blue/Black/Splash and the two should never be crossed.

 

[BeastyBird]

I am not sure if the color is called a lavender cuckoo per se, but the chicks with stripes on their back came out barred in a very pale shade of gray which I say compares to a lavender, and all the parents bred where regular colored cuckoos so I have no idea how I got this. I will get a picture of the 12 nearly grown chicks tomorrow and you will see what I mean by calling 3 of them lavenders