silkies

ok I'm looking at a lot of breeds to get but bantam breeds have always been my favorite, but i need to know the pros and cons of silkies, whats there egg production, how big they get and are they aggressive, I know they supposed to go broody often so let me know and, thanks

I don't have any silkies but my encyclopedia says that they lay about 100-120 cream eggs a year and that they are docile and friendly. Says it does best in cooler dry conditions.

thanks I've had some people say their aggressive i don't know how true that is but, I'm still hopefully going to try them

Hi there,
I would definatly recommend silkies.
I breed and show black silkie bantams.
Silkies lay about 3-4 bantam sized cream coloured eggs a week.
Silkies get to be around the size of a pekin bantam with the rooster being slightly bigger.
In America you can only get bantam silkies but here in Ireland and UK you can get
Large fowl silkies which are bigger than Light Sussex!
Silkies are definitely not aggressive you may have one or two bad silkies
Here and there but it is very rare.
Each of my silkies went broody this year atleast once with one going broody 3 times.
The cons of having silkies are
1.The silkie is a small bird so not much meat off extra roosters
2.Their meat is black so it may put you off because your not used to it.
3.If you are trying to show them and they go broody you can't take them to the show lol.

Other than that I would 100% recommend silkies.
Here's a few pictures of my silkies at shows and at home.

I also forgot to add
I had a silkie who went broody 2 times a couple of months after each other
And sadly she died.
I only think she died from being broody but I am not entirely sure.
She was seperated from the rest of the flock with food and water right In front of her.
She had 2 chicks (one she adopted) which were 1 week old when she died.
I was sad enough as she was one of my best breeding hens and one of the best showing ones too,
She was also a great mother
Thankfully they survived the time she was dead and
Another hen adopted them when I gave them to her
but The two chicks turned out to be two roosters :/
One of them came second in a major Irish show so I wasn't to disappointed in the end.

ChickenGrass said:

Hi there,
I would definatly recommend silkies.
I breed and show black silkie bantams.
Silkies lay about 3-4 bantam sized cream coloured eggs a week.
Silkies get to be around the size of a pekin bantam with the rooster being slightly bigger.
In America you can only get bantam silkies but here in Ireland and UK you can get
Large fowl silkies which are bigger than Light Sussex!
Silkies are definitely not aggressive you may have one or two bad silkies
Here and there but it is very rare.
Each of my silkies went broody this year atleast once with one going broody 3 times.
The cons of having silkies are
1.The silkie is a small bird so not much meat off extra roosters
2.Their meat is black so it may put you off because your not used to it.
3.If you are trying to show them and they go broody you can't take them to the show lol.

Other than that I would 100% recommend silkies.
Here's a few pictures of my silkies at shows and at home.

Click to expand...

amazing birds, very pretty swell and thanks for the feed back i decided to get 2 hens

Ah, Silkies.....the breed I never knew I always wanted! Last spring I won some mixed hatching eggs here on BYC. Lots of eggs. I had already ordered some mixed hatching eggs, but the kind gentleman who had won the hatching eggs in the first contest gifted them to me! Then I won another contest and the prize was, yep, hatching eggs. (Those I gifted to someone else) I'd never incubated eggs before yet suddenly there I was, running out to pick up a second incubator because I had so many coming at the same time. And every one of the prize donors and the company I'd ordered from sent "extras". Well, lo and behold, after I got all those eggs set, I won 2nd prize in another contest and the prize was another batch of mixed eggs. Seriously??? I went nuts buying WyoLottery tickets that month, I'll tell ya, but I was more successful with winning eggs than money.

Among those 30+ eggs were two Silkie eggs. Oh, my little granddaugher Katie, who lives across the street, was excited. She was here with her face glued to the incubator more than she was home, waiting for "her" 2 Silkies to hatch. They didn't. In fact, due to my own inexperience and shipping damage, I managed to get 3 chicks, and those weren't among them. She was so disappointed that I broke down and ordered Silkie hatching eggs from @RubyNala97 , eggs which arrived gloriously healthy and ready to go. Those hatched very well, and so began the saga of the Silkies here at Oleo Acres.

The biggest reason I didn't want Silkies is that I'm kinda a "hands-off" chicken keeper, and I didn't want chickens I had to fuss over. Silkie had "fuss over me" written all over them - those funny feathers, those feathered feet, those domed skulls, that sensitivity to cold, and I frankly have better things to do than trim face feathers so they can see. I'd also heard they can be a bit "high strung". <sigh> And I sell eggs, so what the heck was I going to with banty-sized eggs?

Turns out I had nothing to do but sit back and watch these silly little birds fit into the flock of Standards like they were just part of them. They do everything the Bigs can do, except roost. They prefer sleeping in a puddle of feathers in one corner of the coop, so I just let them be. Fussing over them? Hardly. We got our first snowfall October 12, and it was a doozy. Didn't faze them. We've had consecutive days of sub zero temps...down to -23....with high winds, and that doesn't faze them either. If there's a big old Orpington finding a tid-bit in the grass, they're right there to get their share. When that coop/run door is open, they are out like a shot, in the snow, right along with the big girls. They have very quickly endeared themselves to all of us - little eggs, fuzzy feet and all.

I have two disabled granddaughters....Katie of the Silkie story has mild autism. Her little sister, 5 year old Kendra, was born with Spina Bifida and more severe autism. So I cannot - will not - have a chicken out there that I can't trust 100%. Period. Ever. Kendra could never get away from an aggressive chicken in her wheelchair or her walker, and she likes to be outside just as much as any child. She loves the chickens. So believe me, if I thought for one minute that aggression would be a problem with Silkies, there wouldn't BE any out there.


Kendra sneaks a cuddle from a Silkie rooster.

crazy rooster34 said:

amazing birds, very pretty swell and thanks for the feed back i decided to get 2 hens

Click to expand...

Thank you.
Congrats on the new silkies
Don't forget to post pictures.
Goodluck,
Fionn.