Silver Project

[Jean]

I hatched my second generation on my silver project last week.  I have two out of five chicks that hatched with the correct chipmunk pattern!

Chick #1:





Chick #2:





Hopefully I\'ll get some better type and some size out of these babies......

[Beth C]

Yay for stripes! Can\'t wait to see them when they grow out!

[Mike Gilbert]

Looks like they are going to be dark.  But it is progress.

[Guest]

Super cute!!

[verycherry]

Great!  Looking forward to seeing more pictures soon.

[Jean]

My second set of chicks are hatching now.  This is from another pen.  

The first pen was a silver/black cockerel over silver hens.  The ones hatching now are from a silver cock bird over silver/black hens.  

So far I have two for two.

[John]

silver cock bird over silver/black hens

When I\'ve made the crosses that is the way I go.  I tried it the other way many moons ago and never was able to get good silver color on the cockerels...so I gave up a couple years of that breeding project.
Whether it\'s using blacks with wheatens, silvers or some other variety I like to use a black female with a male of the other variety that I\'m trying to improve so the sex-linked silver/gold issue gets taken care of right away.

[Jean]

Here are a couple pictures of the chicks as they have matured.  Both are pullets:

[Mike Gilbert]

See my August post in this thread.   You can predict this by the chick down.   Good silver coloring in females involves a lot of recessives.   These will need to be bred back to pure silvers or take the risk of losing some of those recessives altogether.