The Sizzle Thread!

[aoxa]

My frilkie is looking a little bed-headed

 

[Sanna]

Am I glad I found this thread!

I'm a Silkie fanatic, got my first birds about 2 years ago. I've just had them for pets but I am getting more interested in the genetics and breeding. Someday I'll take on a small breeding project. But until then, I'll just enjoy the cute little fuzzies running around. lol

I'd also LOVE to have a Sizzle or two. How many of you live close to the East Coast, if not on the East Coast?
I tried reading through the thread but got tired somewhere on page 2. lol 80 posts is a lot of reading to do all at once.

 

[chippie]

Ok have to have a sizzle or four who sells them?

 

[country]

My frilkie is looking a little bed-headed

I LOVE this stage. I generally call it the "awkward teenage stage." I'm not sure if regular chickens go through the stage but the Sizzles & Silkies definitely do. Feathers stick out everywhere & from every direction & they seem to get all gawky & uncoordinated at the same time.

 

[country]

Wow! This thread has been busy.

Around here everything seems to be happening at once & it's just been crazy. The Sizzles & Silkies are selling like mad but they are hatching out even faster than I can sell them. Seems like all my time is being spent filling feeders, washing & filling waterers, & cleaning out brooders. Plus, I've been shipping out hatching eggs & it's getting pretty hot here so I have to gather the eggs 3 times a day so they don't get too hot. Sorry to be such a whiner. I guess I'm just getting a bit burned out. The nice thing is, when I feel this way all I need to do is go out & hang with my Silkies & Sizzles for awhile or go in & open up the incubator & see the new babies. After that, everything is instantly better.

ladyfaeden, thanks so much for your last post on genetics. Right now I'm too tired to absorb it so I'm going to print it & go over it later. This is way more about genetics than I ever thought I'd need to know but I am really enjoying getting into it.

 

[ladyfaeden]

Country-my chicks from you look like high quality silkies! Great feet, most have vaulted skulls. I'm really impressed. I will try to get more pics. They are 2.5 weeks old and the curly sizzles wings are curling beautifully. There is one frilkie, and I can recognize him from a distance as only the wing tips are curled. Please let me know if anything I wrote goes against your experience. You are my sizzle expert! I'm just an obsessive planner who loves chicken genetics.

 

[4hchickmama]

Wow! This thread has been busy.

Around here everything seems to be happening at once & it's just been crazy. The Sizzles & Silkies are selling like mad but they are hatching out even faster than I can sell them. Seems like all my time is being spent filling feeders, washing & filling waterers, & cleaning out brooders. Plus, I've been shipping out hatching eggs & it's getting pretty hot here so I have to gather the eggs 3 times a day so they don't get too hot. Sorry to be such a whiner. I guess I'm just getting a bit burned out. The nice thing is, when I feel this way all I need to do is go out & hang with my Silkies & Sizzles for awhile or go in & open up the incubator & see the new babies. After that, everything is instantly better.

ladyfaeden, thanks so much for your last post on genetics. Right now I'm too tired to absorb it so I'm going to print it & go over it later. This is way more about genetics than I ever thought I'd need to know but I am really enjoying getting into it.

I just saw all of Countrys beautiful chicks. It was hard to come back with just one! I'm really second guessing my choice to not grab that little cochin now!!!!

Country has some AMAZING looking adults and chicks out there....if only my yard were bigger....

 

[hoppy]

far right, this is a not so frizzled in a similar color- I call it khahi. more of a kinky feathering then curly.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/666900/buy-it-now-nice-young-porcelain-silkie-pair

That's my soon to be new pair of porcelains.

Here's the one I already have, his coloring is more extreme, but I think he's gorgeous. Wouldn't this be pretty on a SIzzle?

 

[country]

Country-my chicks from you look like high quality silkies! Great feet, most have vaulted skulls. I'm really impressed. I will try to get more pics. They are 2.5 weeks old and the curly sizzles wings are curling beautifully. There is one frilkie, and I can recognize him from a distance as only the wing tips are curled. Please let me know if anything I wrote goes against your experience. You are my sizzle expert! I'm just an obsessive planner who loves chicken genetics.

I'm so glad you're happy with the chicks. I'm definitely looking forward to some pictures. The Sizzle hatches aren't quite as predictable as my Silkie hatches. I'll get some really awesome chicks & start to pat myself on the back (& throw the hens some extra treats), then whoops! The next hatch takes me down a peg by giving me some chicks with 4 or 6 toes, red or single combs, or light skin or toes. Some of the comb problems & light skin I'm pretty sure are coming from a couple of cuckoo roos (Silkie & Sizzle) that I added & I expected faults to show up but what about the plus or minus toes? Where the heck do the 6 toes come from? Is it just kind of a fluke that crops up even in regular flocks sometimes? Or is it the 5-toe polydactyl gene gone amok?

One thing I've noticed with the Sizzles (at least with mine), is that the smooth Sizzles have the best foot feathering of all the varieties. Usually much better than most of the rough Sizzles & some are even better than my best Silkies. It's comical because the foot feathers are so huge & thick that they have to throw their feet to the side to be able to walk. I call them "clown feet." The smooths also have some of the largest crests.

You asked if my experience with the Sizzles differed from what you wrote about genetics. One thing did pop out. I think you said that the first Sizzle cross (the f1 generation) would all have smooth feathers. I may have misunderstood your post as that wasn't my experience with the first cross. I used a frizzled bantam Cochin over a Silkie hen & the feathering on the chicks was about 50% frizzled & 50% smooth. I even had a couple of perfect Sizzle chicks with proper comb shape & color, correct toes, etc. One of them was as good as anything I've hatched since. If I remember right, I think I read a post from Sonoran about Sizzles that said about the same thing. Anyway, the rest of the chicks were a mix of cute mutts resembling Cochins but with various Silkie body parts. One thing I thought was really strange was that I didn't get any Silkie feathered chicks in the first cross. In fact, if I remember right, I didn't get any Silkie feathers for 2 or 3 generations & it was several generations after that before I got my first frizzled Silkie. I know I crossed back to Silkie a couple of times but unfortunately I didn't keep very good records so I don't know which generations.

I'm no Sizzle expert so I'm hoping that you'll keep great records from here on so you can tell the rest of us what to cross with what to get some more consistency in the Sizzle breeding. In fact, since you have chicks from my latest generation, I'm thinking that maybe I should just take a year or two off from Sizzles & let you take the lead. When you get the blueprint for the perfect Sizzle, then would be a good time for me to jump back in!! lol Not really. Making a few mistakes along the way is part of the fun - I think.... Anyway, you have the genetics background/knowledge I wish I had. I'm just an avid reader with a bit of practical experience - mostly learned from my mistakes. I'm really looking forward to keeping up with this thread, learning from it, reading & cheering on everyone's progress, & especially drawing from the enthusiasm of some of the new Sizzle fanciers.

Sorry for the overly long post. I'll try to keep my posts shorter from now on.

 

[country]

Chippy & Sanna,
Try hoppy. He/she is in Maine - probably not close enough for chick pick up but close enough that you might have good luck with an egg shipment.