Question about breeding silkies

Not that I really want anymore silkies, but I was wondering, and thought someone on here would know. If you breed silkies, say you want a white one, do you have to breed two whites? Same with other colors?

What if you breed a red and a white, will the color be a combination? or will the baby most likely be a white or a red? For instance, at Ideal poultry, do they breed buffs with buffs to get buffs? or do they just breed a lot of silkies and sort them after they are born. Like.. my reds... do my reds have all red ancestry?

Am just curious, and would someday like to have a FEW more babies. I just want to know.

This chicken/duck condition can get serious. I don't know what it is with it, but it is contagious. They are so cute as babies, but taking care of them is a long term commitment if they are pets.

For health reasons, we should probably all be raising our own chickens for food, but killing my own would be very difficult for me. Not saying I couldn't or wouldn't do it, it just wouldn't be easy.

It's nice knowing the silkies could hatch other eggs for me.

Karen

Look out she's got the chicken fever!

lol yea

Same ehre, I kept saying no new chicks till spring and now what I am thinking about doing. I DO NOT want to winter any chicks but dang............... everyone is having so much fun with it.

Oh, don't say it.

Don't worry, I would too if I didn't live in town and have a 3 bird, no rooster, limit. If I ever move out to some land, WATCH OUT!, I'll have it, too! :)

I'm sure someone else more knowledgeable about breeding will come along, but my gut says that the breeding pair needs to be the color you want to get in order to guarantee that the chicks are that color. I'm sure there's always the possibility of a recessed gene or something like that...

Karen - it depends on the parents, and even the grandparents, etc, of the birds in question. A white and white are likely to produce white chicks, but let's say one of their parents was black or red or something (not sure if white is a dominant or recessive gene in silkies) but they could be carriers of genes for other colors and thus pass those on to the babies. Only if you know that the parents are bred true from homozygous stock, can you be sure of the babies colors.
Claire

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SOMEONE WANTS CHICKS???
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CF

See SarahSizzles current thread on this year's sizzles towards the bottom. She is breeding blacks and blues but sometimes gets red feathers thrown in - she has a pic of a roo that came out that way. That shows at least some of the color gene traits are heterozygous. This is why I think two whites may not breed true all the time unless they are both homozygous for all white color traits.

Again, if white is dominant gene (which I am not sure of - usually darker colors are dominant in other animals but not sure about chickens), then the results would be different.