Silkied Ameraucana Project

[EdenCamp]

I met up with Clif - and picked up the pair of blacks and the pair of lav and a dozen eggs...... The blacks are pure gold based blacks and the cockerel was sired by his GC that kicked tail feathers year before last at the Shawnee show. Clif said the black could strut into any show around here and represent. I don't show myself but he would know. I do know he's gorgeous and I'm thrilled to have him. All of them. Both girls have been laying and I've been setting eggs. They are paired with the same colored boys so at this point I should be starting to have eggs sired by my boys instead of the pen the girls were in before. Even more diversity! Whoot!

The black is the boy I told you I was going to put over the black silkied pullet first once she starts laying. Obviously those will be black guaranteed splits.... Sooooo if all goes well, eventually I'll be able to send you eggs from that breeding, or chicks or what ever. I'm hatching out from the black to black splits, test breeding actually as I pulled the other black roo that was in there to find out who is split or not - had 1 silkied chick out of 8 so at least one of the 2 black boys is indeed a split. Not sure if there's lav genes in there or not, I thought they were when they were sent to me but not sure. More test breeding. Never enough pens!

 

[marsha tutterow]

I don't about anyone else, but I'm working towards a black flock in part to benefit color projects and mostly because blacks are so gosh darn pretty.  Haven't really heard of any other black leaning flocks out there, most seem pretty splash heavy still.  Going to have one BB SiAm pen this year with the rest being split pens (using unrelated birds -- these offspring splits will be crossed back with the all SiAm offspring to reduce the impact of their relatively close relation).  Split pens will be mostly BB, with one pen BBS.

That makes my sharing goal this year: egg sets that are 1/2 all SiAm and 1/2 all splits - where the splits are coming from the unrelated good line blacks I crossed in.  With any luck, the folks receiving them will heed my suggestion to only cross the silkied to the splits or unrelated (so they are crossing the least related lines in my flock if they have nothing else to breed) for their first home-hatched offspring that are SiAm and splits.  That'll also give them time to bring in their own unrelated birds to start their projects with too without getting desperate and crossing SiAm to sibling (or half sibling) SiAm.

If this year's breeding goes to plan, that'll mean I'll have a choice of black SiAm to cross with a boat load of black split Am (new blood from 2 unrelated roos, 4 unreleated hens; 3 pens with SiAms; all good blood line).  This would be setting up next year's ultimate goal of the black SiAm black split Am only breeding flock.

Has anyone tried shipping chicks yet?  I haven't, not sure what it'd take to do it but I know we see a lot of requests.  On one hand, I just don't like the idea of putting chicks through all that, especially since they aren't quite as hardy as standard chicks.  On the other hand, I know I'm getting to the point where I will need to cull out blue/splash and this would give them a much better chance of being breeder birds in another flock versus just a layer or culled roo in mine.

sent you a message about eggs.

 

[LBKS]

sent you a message about eggs.

I don't have a message in my inbox, might give it another shot.

 

[NicoleRM]

Yep blacks are the baseline for branching out into other colors. The last of my silkied birds were all blacks, as I was working toward making splits to lavender and wheaten. Now I have some really nice lavenders and wheatens with no silkied birds to cross them to.

 

[EdenCamp]

Yep blacks are the baseline for branching out into other colors. The last of my silkied birds were all blacks, as I was working toward making splits to lavender and wheaten. Now I have some really nice lavenders and wheatens with no silkied birds to cross them to.

Do you have splits even to work with?

 

[NicoleRM]

Do you have splits even to work with?

Nope, I culled a lot of birds to cut down my numbers and kept only the blacks, then lost them all before I got any chicks out of them. Very frustrating.

 

[EdenCamp]

Yeahhhh almost like there's a curse .......... seems what ever can go wrong - does

 

[cgmaster]

i just found this in the first thread https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ailikev1tNnDdEFfak96bS1sS3EyeGM3SDUtX2hrcWc&usp=sharing last update was 2010 anyone feel like updating it?

 

[marsha tutterow]

One silkied chick. Two were fully developed but didn't even pip. But hopefully my next hatch will go better. I have 8 that will hatch next weekend and last night candled and saw a moving chick in each. Question for those hatching silkied, what humidity do you recommend.

 

[LBKS]

Wish I could help on the humidity front, I found adding anything reduces my hatch rate due to household humidity issues (so my humidity method probably doesn't apply to anyone).

Did you check the eggs that didn't pip to see if they had water accumulated in the air cells (too high humidity) or were shrink wrapped or something else? It's icky work, but worth it to see who didn't hatch because they were malpositioned (upside down, didn't have head under wing/etc positioning), deformed, etc.