Sexing your Silkies (PICTURES AND TIPS - Updated July-5-12) - Page 4

I found the thread very interesting. I have never owned any silkies..yet anyways. I have however owned different breeds of chickens and for them I would disagree with the statement

Now if it is true only for Silkies, I don't know, but for other breeds it is not always true. Kind of like a hen crowing or growing spurs. Most the time "the dance" is only predominantly in males, but some females (mostly the more dominate like the head hen) will do this dance. Most occurrences that I have seen have been in gamey and flighty breeds, but have seen a few cases in other breeds as well.

Males will dance and even attempt to mate other males, silkies are no exception to this behavior. In a 'bachelor' pen of boys you'll have a dominate cockerel who will 'dominate' over the other boys, even harassing them with dances. lol its very funny even though you feel sorry for the humiliated submissive boys.


also the main physical characteristics can be very different between hatchery birds and breeder or birds from show lines. Also bearded silkies vs non bearded.

Bearded silkies have the big poofy beard under the beak and should have barely no waddles (or the mature boys will have very little ones you can barely see ) where non-bearded will start to grow waddles pretty early (boys and girls will develop noticeable waddles with the non-bearded (clean faced)  variety)

With some show line birds you can get boys who are extremely slow to mature to manhood - its not uncommon to have a boy pass for a girl until 7 or 8 months old before the comb bumps out and the streamers start popping out.  I've even heard of pullets in an all girl pen, one will start to strut and even crow - becoming the dominate girl and acting manly for awhile.

However I agree over all with all the points the Original Poster stated   Glad to see someone trying to help out with silkie ID.  Silkies are still the hardest out there to sex, and will continue to be.

Thank you sooo much for posting this!! I have 2 day old silkies that I hatched and I will needing this eventually!

Please sticky this Mods.

The breeds (or crosses or types of hens) that I have noticed this behavior in....I have owed at least 10 hens in each breed. 
Most that I have seen have been in American Game. Seeing 3 hens express this behavior; 1 to her rooster (she would also crow and would kill other hens and stags), the other two to other hens or stags (cockerels). Also 1 BSL that was with a rooster and 12 other hens (she was the head hen), and 1 OEGB that was with a rooster and two other hens....both of these hens only showed this behavior to the lesser hens or pullets. I don't recall anymore occurrences. I don't think that I ever made videos of this, but if it does ever happen again I will try to remember this thread and make a video.   I have never noticed this behavior in my Speckled Sussex as of yet, I have only seen they to show the average hen asserting dominance, what you would think of for pecking order.
All of the hens showing the dance, have all laid eggs and most have hatched their own chicks. 

Maybe it's just me or I just have some hormonal hens.   But, that is 5 hens out of over 150 hens (or maybe more than that) After 9 years of keeping chickens I have really lost count of how many total.

Every once and a while, some of my chickens will have a stare down with my dogs and cats. The dogs and cats have learned to sit like a statue or haul tail so not to provoke an attack. 

5 months is the youngest for the most part, and 6-7 months being the average.  I have only 1 younger than 5months, but of course he was not fertile. Young wanting to mate never seem to the first pick when other more mature roos are around. Some of my hens will fight the young ones. If they can beat the hen, then she is more willing to allow him to mate her. Just because a rooster is young, under a year old (cockerel), does not mean that he does not get to mate. They will be sneaky and catch a hen off guard and try to top her.  It was funny one time I had a young one around 7 months old and every hen he tried beat him. One day he tried to be sneaky and he finally found a hen to top. Right after he got of he had to take of (and squawking), because the hen turned around on him and knocked him good.