All things silkie!

[The Cave]

Hi and thanks for your guidance in advance!

I have never be in the chicken show world (just horses!) and I am very interested in showing some of my silkies next year if possible. Could anyone give me advice on qualities I should look for when choosing show silkies from my flock. I am in Canada, 13 of my silkies came from a show breeder. Mainly for fun but I am a competitive person
I think from what I remember someone telling me is you want them to have a nice tall stance, short back and round/puffy. Can you have too round/puffy?!

I am also curious can I show frizzles, paint, splashes? Or are they not recognized?

I have 2 black chicks that came from paint parents. If I wanted to get a paint/splash who should I choose to breed out of my flock (buff, blue, white, black and partridge are my options) Im not sure of the cockerels from pullets yet although I have my guesses ....it could be a long wait they will be 6 months late April but I know they sometimes hold off on laying for quite some time.

I have two other silkies a white and a partridge about 5.5 months old now as well

As a side note I did some research on the frizzles and read they should not be bred to one another, is this correct?

Thanks again!

 

[Northwest_Wannabe]

You can show frizzles, although I'm not sure about silkie-frizzles if thats what you're asking, I personally have shown cochin frizzles I'm not sure paint is an accepted colour, although I could be wrong about that.

I have 2 black chicks that came from paint parents. If I wanted to get a paint/splash who should I choose to breed out of my flock (buff, blue, white, black and partridge are my options) Im not sure of the cockerels from pullets yet although I have my guesses ....it could be a long wait they will be 6 months late April but I know they sometimes hold off on laying for quite some time.

Splash and Paint are different, if you have a black bird, no matter what you breed that black bird to, it won't make a splash. Splash is two blue genes (bb) and black is 'lack of blue genes' to put it simply (BB). Blue is one blue gene (Bb). I'm not entirely familiar with how Paint works, if I remember correctly it's a black bird with one gene of dominant white on top, resulting in a white bird with some "holes" in it letting the black poke through, making that classic spotted/dalmatian look!

If you wanted more paints I imagine starting WITH a paint would be your best bet, probably breeding to either another paint or a black would be best (if I remember correctly a lot of silkies who are white are recessive white which is different from the dominant white that makes paints, so just in my personal opinion breeding a paint to a white may not pan out as well as breeding a paint to a black)

I believe for the most part when breeding for show you're gonna wanna keep your colours bred to your colours, and by that I mean white x white, partridge x partridge, etc. Buffs especially. I noticed this first hand at a friends farm, funny enough it was with silkies xD their daughter had taken some of their breeders to use for 4H, seperated them, and hatched some of their chicks, I believe a buff rooster over white, blue, black and blue partridge hens, make really pretty chicks but they weren't good for show, they found nice pet homes though.

and yes, frizzles shouldn't be bred to frizzles, it can make what I believe are nicknames "frazzles" which have really weak, delicate and slow growing feathers, it's a better bet to just breed frizzle x non-frizzle to get 50% frizzles, rather than take the risk to get frazzles : D

 

[The Cave]

Wow thank you @Northwest_Wannabe !

Very interesting, I know my friend who I got my white silkie from has all white roosters....and a few different hens but for sure a few white ones. For a dominant white, you'd need white rooster and white hen correct?

I would be so excited if I could show a frizzle silkie! I have one that is stunning right now and at such a young age I can't wait to see what it turns out like.

 

[Northwest_Wannabe]

Wow thank you @Northwest_Wannabe !

Very interesting, I know my friend who I got my white silkie from has all white roosters....and a few different hens but for sure a few white ones. For a dominant white, you'd need white rooster and white hen correct?

I would be so excited if I could show a frizzle silkie! I have one that is stunning right now and at such a young age I can't wait to see what it turns out like.

Sorry for the late reply, family stuff! Dominant white is just a gene, not necessarily a result from a pairing. Basically what it means is a Dominant White bird only needs 1 of the dominant white genes in order to cover up any other genes and their base colour. While a Recessive White bird would need two genes. (Rec. White and Dom. White are two different genes, weird and confusing right?) The main way to tell what a particular bird is (dom or rec) is to breed it to a bird who, as far as you know, has no white birds in it's lineage. of course being 100% sure is a stretch but yknow.

Chances are your white silkie is probably a dominant white, but who knows, maybe they're recessive white