Sex-Linked Silver

Sex-linked silver is gene that restricts the pheomelanin (gold tones) in a chicken, leaving any gold areas almost entirely white (2). It is arguably one of the most researched and utilized genes in poultry due to the use in the hatchery, meat, and egg production industries (6).

Silver is used in many different breeds and varieties. On wildtype males (often called silver duckwing), the silver gene will make the hackle, saddle, wings, and flight feathers a white color, but retain a black breast and green tail feathers. In females, the color is a bit more diverse. They will have white hackles, grey patterned wings and cape, black tail, and a red-grey patterned breast (7).

Other APA recognized patterns include salmon (silver + wheaton + mahogany), light (silver + wheaton + columbian), silver laced (silver + pattern + columbian + melanotic + black restriction), silver pencilled/partridge (silver + pattern) , silver spangled (silver + mottling), silver blue, and fawn silver duckwing (the rest self-explanatory). In general, silver will replace any naturally gold tones in the pattern with a light grey or white color (2) Silver also doesn't completely restrict red enhancing genes such as mahogany, so some varieties, like salmon, will still have overall reddish tones.

It also is used with dominant white to try and prevent gold and red leakage, mimicking the recessive white. This is found in almost all Leghorn lines (3) and Cornish Cross (3), as well as some Ameraucana. However, this combination often still results in some slight yellow and black leakage, which is why recessive white is still more common for white varieties.

Sex-linked silver is often used in any red sex-linked crosses sold in hatcheries (6). It is a way to tell the sex of a chick as a day old with complete certainty. This is most often achieved by crossing a gold (wildtype) or red male over a silver female. The resulting offspring will have red/gold colored females, and silver leakage males (usually culled). There are a few different ways to go about this, most often two contrasting breeds are used. For example, Golden Comets are the result of a New Hampshire cockbird over white Plymouth Rocks (5). Cinnamon Queens are silver laced Wyandotte hens with a New Hampshire cock (5).

The APA recognizes silver duckwing in American Game, Araucana, Modern Game, and Old English Game.

Silver is a recognized variety in Ameraucana, Campine (with the autosomal barring gene), Polish, Leghorn, Dutch, Phoenix, and Sebright (with the pattern and colombian gene), and Dorking. (7)

Delaware, Rhode Island White, Leghorn, Cornish and other recognized breeds also naturally have silver (8).

Breeding with silver:

The wildtype of silver is often called gold, so for this chart, Gold will be any bird without silver, while Silver Carriers will be males with one copy of the gene.

Silver x Silver = 100% Silver

Silver male x Gold female = 100% Silver females, 100% Silver Leakage males

Gold Male x Silver Female = 100% Gold female chicks, 100% Silver Leakage male chicks (most often used for sex-linked breedings)

Silver Leakage Male x Silver Female = 50% Silver female chicks, 50% Gold female chicks, 50% Silver Leakage male chicks, 50% Silver male chicks

Silver Leakage male x Gold female = 50% Gold chicks, 50% Silver chicks, regardless of sex