What color are these silkie chicks

[Gutgirl]

Hi everyone, I need help understand how the coloring in silkies go. I have a Black split to paint Silkie Rooster and a Splash Silkie Rooster, both bearded. A Bearded Showgirl paint, Paint and Mauve silkie Hens. Non Bearded Blue and White Silkie hens.
My showgirl hatched 7 eggs. 1 that was hers for the first time out of 3x she went broody other two hatched never her eggs at all lol. Her baby hatched 1 showgirl with blk spots as a paint but with pink pigment skin but 5 toes but now her skin color changing . Then 2 blacks, 2 white when born but now have black on their Wing feathers. 1 light grey now has black coming in. The one baby that looks silver white. Not white like the other 2. This one was my mauve girls eggs was white I saw her lay it and I labeled and dated it. The other eggs were all same color creaming so I don’t know who eggs are who. I went on a 3 day vacation and chicken babysitter was afraid to to lift her she said she was pecking her what color will this mauve baby chick be if it’s not white but a silver white and how do I know who fathered who and what hen is mom? Trying to understand how silkie coloring works.

 

[Debbie292d]

I do not know for sure as it's like a box of chocolates saying, you never know what you'll get. Yours are gorgeous!

I'd assume the one in your hand might be a paint or splash? I see a couple possible blues in there and some whites that will be white. The gray with dark, I have one I don't know yet either.

 

[Gutgirl]

I do not know for sure as it's like a box of chocolates saying, you never know what you'll get. Yours are gorgeous!

I'd assume the one in your hand might be a paint or splash? I see a couple possible blues in there and some whites that will be white. The gray with dark, I have one I don't know yet either.

Thank you! I know it’s so mind boggling. The guessing game kills me !
The one in my hand she is a paint showgirl like her momma! First time she hatched her own egg. But when she was born her skin was pink but now looks like it’s changing. Do they change color over time? Who would be dad? I’m kinda stumped on the others because her last hatch she hatched 4 blues and 2 splash but this hatch they all are differnt colors so its kind of mind boggling lol. Especially the mauve hens baby in first and 3rd pic think she will be white? She looks a white silver to me.

 

[NatJ]

Trying to understand how silkie coloring works.

Silkie coloring works the same as any other chicken coloring, except that it's harder to see some of the patterns on the feathers because they are fluffy instead of smooth. So all resources on chicken colors can be used, not just silkie-specific ones.

Do you want to learn chicken genetics in enough detail to predict your own chicks in future, or are you just trying to understand this particular batch?

when she was born her skin was pink but now looks like it’s changing. Do they change color over time?

Sometimes chicks do hatch with light skin that darkens up over time. Other times the skin color they have at hatch is the same one they will have for their whole life.

The one in my hand she is a paint showgirl like her momma... Who would be dad?

I have a Black split to paint Silkie Rooster and a Splash Silkie Rooster, both bearded.

If the chick is blue paint, the father is the splash rooster.
If the chick is normal paint (black dots, not blue), the father is the other rooster.

I have a Black split to paint Silkie Rooster

What do you mean by "Black split to Paint"? Can you post a picture of him?

I'm going to just call him black for now (shorter name, and I have a good idea what "black" does in chicken crosses.)

I’m kinda stumped on the others because her last hatch she hatched 4 blues and 2 splash but this hatch they all are differnt colors so its kind of mind boggling lol.

A Bearded Showgirl paint, Paint and Mauve silkie Hens. Non Bearded Blue and White Silkie hens.

Most of those parent combinations have the possibility of producing blue chicks. The splash chicks had to inherit the blue gene from both parents, so that means splash father no black, and the mother was probably blue or mauve but possibly white (because white can hide anything, so I don't know whether she's got the blue gene or not).

The different colors this time may mean that the eggs came from different combinations of parents, or it could just be a coincidence of which genes came together each time even if they did have the same parents.

From that list of parents, in various combinations, you should be able to get all of these chick colors:
black
blue
splash
black paint (white with black dots)
blue paint (white with blue dots)
maybe splash paint, if any of your current paints are blue paints
solid white

All of those colors are able to carry hidden genes for other patterns, so there is also a chance of getting chicks in almost any possible color & pattern, depending on what the parents actually do carry. (They may not carry anything else, but there is no easy way to know for sure.)

The one baby that looks silver white. Not white like the other 2. This one was my mauve girls eggs was white I saw her lay it and I labeled and dated it...what color will this mauve baby chick be if it’s not white but a silver white

I don't know why it is looking like that. It might be splash (blue gene from the mauve mother, blue gene from the splash rooster.) But the mother might be carrying some genes for other colors & patterns that could show in her chick, and either father might be carrying such genes too. When a chick inherits a recessive gene from each parent, it can show colors & patterns you don't expect.

The other eggs were all same color creaming so I don’t know who eggs are who. I went on a 3 day vacation and chicken babysitter was afraid to to lift her she said she was pecking her

If the other 6 eggs were collected over 3 days, they cannot all come from one hen. So we know there are at least two or three different mothers in this batch.

how do I know who fathered who and what hen is mom? Trying to understand how silkie coloring works.

Sometimes you can tell by learning what genes they show, and which parents could give them those genes. Sometimes you never can figure it out for sure (which will probably happen with some of the chicks in this situation.)

 

[Gutgirl]

Silkie coloring works the same as any other chicken coloring, except that it's harder to see some of the patterns on the feathers because they are fluffy instead of smooth. So all resources on chicken colors can be used, not just silkie-specific ones.

Do you want to learn chicken genetics in enough detail to predict your own chicks in future, or are you just trying to understand this particular batch?


Sometimes chicks do hatch with light skin that darkens up over time. Other times the skin color they have at hatch is the same one they will have for their whole life.



If the chick is blue paint, the father is the splash rooster.
If the chick is normal paint (black dots, not blue), the father is the other rooster.


What do you mean by "Black split to Paint"? Can you post a picture of him?

I'm going to just call him black for now (shorter name, and I have a good idea what "black" does in chicken crosses.)




Most of those parent combinations have the possibility of producing blue chicks. The splash chicks had to inherit the blue gene from both parents, so that means splash father no black, and the mother was probably blue or mauve but possibly white (because white can hide anything, so I don't know whether she's got the blue gene or not).

The different colors this time may mean that the eggs came from different combinations of parents, or it could just be a coincidence of which genes came together each time even if they did have the same parents.

From that list of parents, in various combinations, you should be able to get all of these chick colors:
black
blue
splash
black paint (white with black dots)
blue paint (white with blue dots)
maybe splash paint, if any of your current paints are blue paints
solid white

All of those colors are able to carry hidden genes for other patterns, so there is also a chance of getting chicks in almost any possible color & pattern, depending on what the parents actually do carry. (They may not carry anything else, but there is no easy way to know for sure.)


I don't know why it is looking like that. It might be splash (blue gene from the mauve mother, blue gene from the splash rooster.) But the mother might be carrying some genes for other colors & patterns that could show in her chick, and either father might be carrying such genes too. When a chick inherits a recessive gene from each parent, it can show colors & patterns you don't expect.


If the other 6 eggs were collected over 3 days, they cannot all come from one hen. So we know there are at least two or three different mothers in this batch.


Sometimes you can tell by learning what genes they show, and which parents could give them those genes. Sometimes you never can figure it out for sure (which will probably happen with some of the chicks in this situation.)

So I don’t know how to separate it all like you did so I’ll answer accordingly.
Question 1: id like to learn in general about their genetics for this hatch and future. Is their a website or a book I can read because some of the things I read online are confusing or I just plain out don’t understand.
#2
Okay so I didn’t know their skin color can change. So it explains why when it was born it was a pink and now darkening. I’m also wondering now if what i thought last hatch was a splash if they were blue paints. I didn’t know they could be blue as well.

#3
I’ll post pictures of my Rooster. So he has a light brown or gold on his hackle feathers so I asked the breeder if he was mixed with chocolate or buff she said no she do t breed chocolates that he probably is a black split from paint breeding pen.

#4
I know this is the first time (blueberries mauve girl) egg has hatched she is the only one who lays a white colored egg. So want to see how her baby grows out. Also Helgas my showgirl has hatched it first chick too! If I have a paint and a paint showgirl, will my showgirl only produce Showgirls or will she produce a regular looking chick? Should I assume my white babies with black wings are from my paint hen or my white hen? Or I’ll never know unless I know their eggs. Lol

I’ll post pics of my black Rooster and also the babies from last hatch maybe you can tell me is they were blue paints or splash. I just thought they were splash so what I told my brother lol. I didn’t keep any because I didn’t want dads mating if I I didn’t know who fathered them.
If I have a paint baby this hatch I want to keep one but don’t want to if I don’t know who dad is. Even if the light grey baby is a splash I’d like to keep to but I’ll know it came from my splash Roo right?

 

[NatJ]

@nicalandia can you check whether the birds in post #5 are splash, or whether they are blue paint? I'm not good at telling those apart, especially when they are silkies.

So I don’t know how to separate it all like you did so I’ll answer accordingly.

I'm using a desktop computer, so it might be different if you are accessing it differently.
When the quoted text is inside a blue box, I can click inside there and hit "enter" to divide it into multiple boxes.

There is an option in the little symbols at the top of the reply, to "Toggle BB code."
The image looks like little brackets [ ]
If I have trouble making the blue box behave, I turn off BB code and copy/paste the correct bits (brackets or otherwise) to where I want them in the reply, then turn BB code back on to make sure I got it right.

(What you did was also fine. I like playing with some kinds of effects, so that is a large part of why I do it.)

Question 1: id like to learn in general about their genetics for this hatch and future. Is their a website or a book I can read because some of the things I read online are confusing or I just plain out don’t understand.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ue-barred-rock-rooster.1567879/#post-26640128

Here is a link to a post where I listed some books and online pages.

http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
This is a chicken genetics calculator. You can change the genes in the dropdown boxes, and the little pictures of the chickens change too. It can calculate possible offspring, but I mostly use it to model what genes do what.

The default for each gene is the version found in the wild Jungle Fowl. Those are marked with + (which makes them easy to recognize, if you want to put it back the way it started.)

Each gene has a name, and an abbreviation (usually one letter or a few letters that somehow relate to the name of the gene.) Dominant genes have a capital letter abbreviation, recessive genes have a lower case letter. When there are more than two genes, I'm not sure how they decided which middle ones would get capital letters vs. lowercase letters.

For your specific chickens, change the first box to E/E
I'm not actually sure if your chicks are pure for E (Extended Black), or if they are E with something else, but the images will look the same either way.

Partway down the list, I is the symbol for Dominant White (it "inhibits" black, and the letter I wasn't already being used for something else, so that's why it got that symbol.) Each of your paints has I/i+ and the ones that are plain black or blue or splash have i+/i+. Two copies of Dominant White (I/I) will turn a black chicken completely white, without leaving any black spots. So that makes a white chicken rather than a paint. Your white chicken might have that, although there are several other genes that can also cause a chicken to be white. So I'm not entirely sure about her.

Further down the list, Bl is the symbol for Blue. bl+/bl+ is a chicken that can show black, Bl/bl+ is a chicken that has all black turned into blue, and Bl/Bl is a chicken that has all black turned into splash. (On an all-black chicken, the black or blue or splash is all over. On other patterns, like black tailed red or black laced gold, the black is changed but the red or gold is still present.)

You can play around with the various combinations of Bl and I to get paints with black, blue, or splash markings.

For mauve, your hen would be E/? and i+/i+ and Bl/bl+ and choc/-
That means Extended Black base color, no Dominant White, one copy of the blue gene and one not-blue, and one copy of the chocolate gene. Chocolate is on the Z sex chromosome, so it behaves a little differently. Roosters have two Z chromosomes, but hens have ZW. So a hen can only have one gene there, not a pair like with other chromosomes. The - after the / is showing that she has not got a second gene there.

#2
Okay so I didn’t know their skin color can change. So it explains why when it was born it was a pink and now darkening.

Yes, that would be why. I think actual black skin may be black from hatch, but other versions of dark skin (like the slate-colored legs on Ameraucana chickens) can definitely start out light and get darker. Actual black like in Silkies and Ayam Cemanis requires a special gene (fibromelanosis, often shortened to "fibro"). Fibromelanosis is a dominant gene, so a chicken shows black skin if it has even one copy of that gene. That means a chicken can show black skin but also carry the gene for non-fibro. If a chick inherits non-fibro from both parents, it will not have actual black skin. I suspect that is what happened with your chick.

I’m also wondering now if what i thought last hatch was a splash if they were blue paints. I didn’t know they could be blue as well.

I’ll post pics of my black Rooster and also the babies from last hatch maybe you can tell me is they were blue paints or splash. I just thought they were splash so what I told my brother lol.

That is a possibility. I'm not very good at telling paint from splash, especially on Silkies, so I've tagged someone else to check that. (I put that at the beginning of this post.)

#3
I’ll post pictures of my Rooster. So he has a light brown or gold on his hackle feathers so I asked the breeder if he was mixed with chocolate or buff she said no she do t breed chocolates that he probably is a black split from paint breeding pen.

I think he just has leakage, which means bits of color showing (in this case on an otherwise-black chicken.)

He might be black split to something (some color pattern that allows red or gold to show, rather than just black). But the gene that turns a black chicken into a paint chicken is Dominant White, which is dominant. He is not split for that.

Helgas my showgirl has hatched it first chick too! If I have a paint and a paint showgirl, will my showgirl only produce Showgirls or will she produce a regular looking chick?

The gene that causes naked neck is incompletely dominant. One copy of the gene makes a chicken with a naked neck, and two copies of the gene make the chicken even more naked. I have seen them referred to as "bowties" (because the less-naked ones have a tuft of feathers at the base of the neck, as if they were wearing a puffy bowtie) and "strippers" (the more naked version.)

If your showgirl has two copies of the naked neck gene, all of her chicks will inherit one copy (so she would be a stripper, and all her chicks would be bowties if they had a non-naked father.)

If your showgirl has one copy of the naked neck gene (bowtie), then she will give the naked gene to half her chicks (making them bowties too), and she would give the not-naked gene to the other half of her chicks (making them look like normal silkies, with no naked neck.)

Should I assume my white babies with black wings are from my paint hen or my white hen? Or I’ll never know unless I know their eggs. Lol

It might become more obvious as they grow up.

For now, I am guessing they are showing a different color pattern (like e+ wild-type or E^Wh Wheaten), which could be carried by a black chicken without showing it (even if the black chicken then has genes turning it into a blue chicken, or a splash chicken, or a paint chicken, or a mauve chicken, or a white chicken.) If one rooster and one hen carried other genes like that, you could get chicks that do not have E (Extended Black) at all.

I didn’t keep any because I didn’t want dads mating if I I didn’t know who fathered them.
If I have a paint baby this hatch I want to keep one but don’t want to if I don’t know who dad is. Even if the light grey baby is a splash I’d like to keep to but I’ll know it came from my splash Roo right?

A splash baby would have to come from the splash father, not the black father. You are correct about that.

Whether to allow father/daughter matings in your flock is up to you. But some amount of inbreeding does not seem to be a big deal for chickens: their chicks will typically be fine anyway.

If you want to keep some daughters but do not want to let them have chicks with their father, you could keep them as a separate flock. Or let them run together most of the time, and only separate them when you want to collect eggs for hatching (just collect eggs from the older hens, not the ones you have hatched.)

 

[Gutgirl]

@nicalandia can you check whether the birds in post #5 are splash, or whether they are blue paint? I'm not good at telling those apart, especially when they are silkies.


I'm using a desktop computer, so it might be different if you are accessing it differently.
When the quoted text is inside a blue box, I can click inside there and hit "enter" to divide it into multiple boxes.

There is an option in the little symbols at the top of the reply, to "Toggle BB code."
The image looks like little brackets [ ]
If I have trouble making the blue box behave, I turn off BB code and copy/paste the correct bits (brackets or otherwise) to where I want them in the reply, then turn BB code back on to make sure I got it right.

(What you did was also fine. I like playing with some kinds of effects, so that is a large part of why I do it.)



https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ue-barred-rock-rooster.1567879/#post-26640128

Here is a link to a post where I listed some books and online pages.

http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
This is a chicken genetics calculator. You can change the genes in the dropdown boxes, and the little pictures of the chickens change too. It can calculate possible offspring, but I mostly use it to model what genes do what.

The default for each gene is the version found in the wild Jungle Fowl. Those are marked with + (which makes them easy to recognize, if you want to put it back the way it started.)

Each gene has a name, and an abbreviation (usually one letter or a few letters that somehow relate to the name of the gene.) Dominant genes have a capital letter abbreviation, recessive genes have a lower case letter. When there are more than two genes, I'm not sure how they decided which middle ones would get capital letters vs. lowercase letters.

For your specific chickens, change the first box to E/E
I'm not actually sure if your chicks are pure for E (Extended Black), or if they are E with something else, but the images will look the same either way.

Partway down the list, I is the symbol for Dominant White (it "inhibits" black, and the letter I wasn't already being used for something else, so that's why it got that symbol.) Each of your paints has I/i+ and the ones that are plain black or blue or splash have i+/i+. Two copies of Dominant White (I/I) will turn a black chicken completely white, without leaving any black spots. So that makes a white chicken rather than a paint. Your white chicken might have that, although there are several other genes that can also cause a chicken to be white. So I'm not entirely sure about her.

Further down the list, Bl is the symbol for Blue. bl+/bl+ is a chicken that can show black, Bl/bl+ is a chicken that has all black turned into blue, and Bl/Bl is a chicken that has all black turned into splash. (On an all-black chicken, the black or blue or splash is all over. On other patterns, like black tailed red or black laced gold, the black is changed but the red or gold is still present.)

You can play around with the various combinations of Bl and I to get paints with black, blue, or splash markings.

For mauve, your hen would be E/? and i+/i+ and Bl/bl+ and choc/-
That means Extended Black base color, no Dominant White, one copy of the blue gene and one not-blue, and one copy of the chocolate gene. Chocolate is on the Z sex chromosome, so it behaves a little differently. Roosters have two Z chromosomes, but hens have ZW. So a hen can only have one gene there, not a pair like with other chromosomes. The - after the / is showing that she has not got a second gene there.


Yes, that would be why. I think actual black skin may be black from hatch, but other versions of dark skin (like the slate-colored legs on Ameraucana chickens) can definitely start out light and get darker. Actual black like in Silkies and Ayam Cemanis requires a special gene (fibromelanosis, often shortened to "fibro"). Fibromelanosis is a dominant gene, so a chicken shows black skin if it has even one copy of that gene. That means a chicken can show black skin but also carry the gene for non-fibro. If a chick inherits non-fibro from both parents, it will not have actual black skin. I suspect that is what happened with your chick.




That is a possibility. I'm not very good at telling paint from splash, especially on Silkies, so I've tagged someone else to check that. (I put that at the beginning of this post.)


I think he just has leakage, which means bits of color showing (in this case on an otherwise-black chicken.)

He might be black split to something (some color pattern that allows red or gold to show, rather than just black). But the gene that turns a black chicken into a paint chicken is Dominant White, which is dominant. He is not split for that.


The gene that causes naked neck is incompletely dominant. One copy of the gene makes a chicken with a naked neck, and two copies of the gene make the chicken even more naked. I have seen them referred to as "bowties" (because the less-naked ones have a tuft of feathers at the base of the neck, as if they were wearing a puffy bowtie) and "strippers" (the more naked version.)

If your showgirl has two copies of the naked neck gene, all of her chicks will inherit one copy (so she would be a stripper, and all her chicks would be bowties if they had a non-naked father.)

If your showgirl has one copy of the naked neck gene (bowtie), then she will give the naked gene to half her chicks (making them bowties too), and she would give the not-naked gene to the other half of her chicks (making them look like normal silkies, with no naked neck.)


It might become more obvious as they grow up.

For now, I am guessing they are showing a different color pattern (like e+ wild-type or E^Wh Wheaten), which could be carried by a black chicken without showing it (even if the black chicken then has genes turning it into a blue chicken, or a splash chicken, or a paint chicken, or a mauve chicken, or a white chicken.) If one rooster and one hen carried other genes like that, you could get chicks that do not have E (Extended Black) at all.


A splash baby would have to come from the splash father, not the black father. You are correct about that.

Whether to allow father/daughter matings in your flock is up to you. But some amount of inbreeding does not seem to be a big deal for chickens: their chicks will typically be fine anyway.

If you want to keep some daughters but do not want to let them have chicks with their father, you could keep them as a separate flock. Or let them run together most of the time, and only separate them when you want to collect eggs for hatching (just collect eggs from the older hens, not the ones you have hatched.)

Wow! Thank you for taking the time to explain all that! Helps out a lot! I am on my phone. So maybe that is why.
I think I may just make separate pens for them but here n there all forage together. So I can keep their daughters. I am going watch them grow out to 4.5 months maybe longer llike I did the other babies before I brought them to my friend and brother.
I bought 3 blk silkies form a feed store near me to see what they come out to look like for fun that is why you see more then the 2 my silkie hatched.
I also bought some silver partridge, partridges, and 1 white from a breeder in La so hoping to get some pretty babies they can go in pen with mine that I keep.
I know Hooper my Black Roo isn’t all black because some of the black Rooster posted from breeders are pure black and beautiful not that he isn’t of course my boys are handsome too! Lol but he has other colors that led me to believe he wasn’t all black. But I love him lol!

 

[Goldenwahintofboss]

Thank you! I know it’s so mind boggling. The guessing game kills me !
The one in my hand she is a paint showgirl like her momma! First time she hatched her own egg. But when she was born her skin was pink but now looks like it’s changing. Do they change color over time? Who would be dad? I’m kinda stumped on the others because her last hatch she hatched 4 blues and 2 splash but this hatch they all are differnt colors so its kind of mind boggling lol. Especially the mauve hens baby in first and 3rd pic think she will be white? She looks a white silver to me.

Some do..my silkie x cochins have black skin. Buy my easter egger x silkies had pinky skin that has turned silverish. Weird thing is 5 toes w silver skin on one and 4 toes on the other. Same eex silkie mix. The bantam cochin x silkies have 5 toes and black skin. And Stevie wonder my roo is ee x silkie. He has yellow skin and 5 toes.
.