Allan gives information on breeding gold and silver feathered birds, this article has particular reference to Birchen and Mealy Grey Pekins....

When breeding silver birchins or mealy greys it is important to know if the sire is pure for silver that means he is not carrying any gold in his makeup. Now what does this mean? ALL FOWLS ARE EITHER GOLD OR SILVER (except for albinos) The reason some don’t appear to be gold or silver is they have other colours super-imposed on them. That means all hens are either gold or silver. Now the dominant silver gene and its recessive Allele gold, are located on the sex chromosome of the fowl (along with at least a dozen other genes) and the hen passes nothing on to her daughters from the sex chromosome, so she can only pass on this silver or gold gene to her sons. This means that all hens are either gold or silver, but never both. This is because they only received this gene (either gold or silver from one parent i.e. the cock, remembering the hen passes nothing on to her daughters from the sex chromosome). The cock birds on the other hand can carry both silver and gold because they receive the gene for silver or gold of both the mother and the father How does a cock come to be carrying both gold and silver in his makeup? There are 4 combinations which will result in him carrying both silver and gold, and there are 2 combinations that can result in a pure silver cock.

Above: Birchin Male owned by K Elsden Queensland

Let’s start with......

Mating # 1. a pure silver cock mated to a gold hen,

now all the pullets will be silver as they only receive the silver from the cock bird remembering they receive nothing of the hen bird from the sex chromosome. However all the cockerels from this mating will receive silver from the cock bird and gold from the hen that makes them impure silvers? All these cockerels will appear silver because silver is dominant over gold, but they will have the gold colour hidden in there makeup.

Mating # 2, a gold cock mated to a silver hen,

this time all the pullets will be gold as they only receive the gold gene from the cock bird, all the cockerels though will receive the gold gene from the cock and the silver gene from the hen, again this makes them impure silver cockerels

Mating # 3, an impure silver cock over a gold hen

you would get both silver and gold pullets and cockerels because while the hen will contribute only gold to her sons, the cock will be dishing out both silver and gold to both his sons and daughters, remembering he is impure for silver means 50% of the time he donates a silver gene and the other 50% of the time he gives the gold gene. This is purely a random process (whether or not he gives silver or gold at any particular moment).

Mating #4, is a impure cock over a silver hen.

again you can expect both silver and gold pullets but only silver cockerels. This time though you will get some pure as well as impure silver cockerels. This happens because while the hen only gives the silver gene to her sons the impure cock will 50% of the time give gold (resulting in impure cockerels) and 50% of the time give silver, resulting in pure silver cockerels. How do you tell if they are pure or impure? Well while the impure ones will look a little dirtier and perhaps even show a gold feather or 2 in the hackle and tail or shoulder ,the only way you can be sure he is pure is by progeny testing your cock bird. This is done by mating him to a gold hen and if you get just one gold chicken that means he is impure, (refers to mating #1.)

Now the other way to get pure silver cockerels is of course to mate a pure silver cock over a silver hen, this will result in all the offspring being pure for silver. This is what anyone breeding silver fowls should be aiming to do (that is to breed only pure silver offspring) that way you don’t get any wasters, (i.e. impure silver cockerels.) The pure silver is a much more pleasant colour to look at. Having a lot more clarity of silver, these need to be kept out of the sun as they still tend to go yellow if exposed to too much sun. The impure cockerels although no good for breeding silvers, can be utilized by brown red breeders. They are perfect for diluting the dark mahogany colour that comes from breeding brown red to brown red for long periods of time. They have the effect of lightening the darker mahogany to closer to the required lemon top colour you end up with silver and gold cockerels and pullets, the shade of gold though will be much lighter than the dark gold mentioned earlier. Back to the silvers though, the trick to breeding proper birchins is to get lacing on the breast and striped hackles but retaining the crow wings.

That means no colour other than black on the flight feathers. On the cockerels you also want striping on the saddle hackles and over the cushion and some colour on the shoulders as well. If you mate 2 birds together that are correctly marked, you will end up with overly marked chickens. That is they tend to be a little too well marked on the breast and also you might find that they are no longer crow winged. At least this has been my experience when I used to breed coloured fowls

The method I found best was to mate a correctly coloured cock bird to a hen with just a little silver in the neck. Mealy greys on the other hand don’t have this problem to the same extent, as you can mate 2 very well marked birds together with success. If you are intending on breeding mealys, be prepared for other colours to crop up as well. I sprung some Columbians and what could best be described as mealy golds, approaching the partridge colour. If you want to improve the type of either of these colours you can use black or white, but I personally would use a white.

The reason being that once you’ve crossed the white hen with a silver cock (and you would go that way, remembering silver is sex linked) you can then brother X sister the offspring to find the pure for silver whites This can be done by progeny testing (Progeny testing article to follow at a later date)

These then can safely be crossed back into then silvers in the future, in the knowledge they won’t be introducing the gold gene. This is also beneficial for the whites, as whites carrying the silver gene are a cleaner and purer looking white than whites carrying the gold gene, who tend to be a bit creamy, especially the males. Blacks on the other are better with the gold gene in them as this promotes the green sheen. Columbians are also a silver breed, though I don’t have any experience in breeding them as the ones I had came along accidentally from the mealys.

Sex Linkage really only involves the female
All poultry carry 78 chromosomes
Because the genes attached to the females sex chromosome are only passed on to her sons
The genes attached to her singular sex chromosome for the purpose of this exercise are Gold, Silver and Barred (approximately a dozen other genes are known to be attached to the sex chromosome but not relevant to this article
All the other genes she carries, which are attached to the other 77 chromosomes she possesses, are passed on in an equal fashion to both sons and daughters

Definition of Terms used
Chromosome : a vehicle for carrying the birds genetic makeup
Gene : An inheritable characteristic attached to the chromosome