Any potential here?

[lilwanderer]

So i just got some silkies-
1 Partridge roo, 3 partridge hens, and a white.
I'm fine if they aren't good quality, I'll be more upset if they are complete trash and they have no hope . If they have potential and can be worked with I'll feel better.
I can already see the roo lacks blue ears and has a lot of red, is there a way i can eliminate that in offspring?
What about his color? What needs work?

Now some of the hens lack blue ears as well, and I've noticed with them some have an incomplete fifth toe on one or both feet. Can that be fixed? What about their body structure and skin color? What can I do here?

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Also have a question about the age of these birds- Any way to tell? I should have done research on them, but I didn't.
I just got them yesterday, waiting to see if they'll lay. Just worried they may be too old and not lay anymore, but the rooster has spurs (pictured below).
I believe they may be the same age, not positive.
Two of the hens had long nails, just trimmed them- Heard thats common in older hens.
They weren't expensive at all, so I wont be too upset. Just will be dissapointed as I'm trying to start something here.
Also, noticed incomplete front toes- So little worried there.

 

[gtaus]

Nice pictures. Thanks.

I'm not into breeding birds, so I don't have much to say there. All I know is that if you want to meet breeding standards, I think it's best to start with stock that meets the standard and try to improve it.

I met a guy who breeds birds for show and resale. He said that he immediately kills any chicks that are not up to standards. I guess if it's a business, and you have a reputation to be concerned about, then you don't want to sell any birds that fail to meet the standards.

Are you getting any eggs? That might give you a good idea of the age of the chickens.

 

[Cloverr39]

You could test breed and see what their chicks look like. See if there's any improvement in any of them. They're not completely hopeless, but getting up to show quality or even just birds that have all traits that fit the standard will take a long time and you'd have to be quite picky about the chicks you keep. If you want to improve a little quicker and easier I recommend getting some better quality silkies or a better quality rooster to add to the flock.

I got into silkie breeding about 2 years ago and I also started with birds of poor quality. The first year the chicks from my original silkies were so bad I didn't keep any. Instead I got some hatching eggs from slightly better quality silkies and went from there. Kept my original hens, added some new hens and got a better rooster. I kept any chicks that were in improvement on the parents and sold the rest as pet quality silkies.

My first silkie hens took a week until they finally settled in and started laying, so there's still hope The rooster is at least a year old, because in my experience roosters start growing spurs after being 1 year old. I would recommend getting a better rooster if you can though.

That's my advice, but I'm also fairly new to silkie breeding.

 

[NatJ]

I can already see the roo lacks blue ears and has a lot of red, is there a way i can eliminate that in offspring?

He is missing the gene that turns skin & tissue black (fibromelanosis, found in Silkies and Ayam Cemani and a few other rare breeds.)

If the hens have the gene (it looks like at least some might), you could potentially breed them and get some chicks that show the correct skin color.

If you get chicks that look right, they may still carry the genes for not-black skin, which would mean some of their chicks would show black skin and some would show other colors. Starting from these birds, it would take a lot of work to get birds that all show the correct black skin and also are pure for the correct genes. It should be possible, but I can't say whether it would be worth the work or whether you should just look for better birds.

I don't know about any of the other points you asked about.

 

[lilwanderer]

He is missing the gene that turns skin & tissue black (fibromelanosis, found in Silkies and Ayam Cemani and a few other rare breeds.)

If the hens have the gene (it looks like at least some might), you could potentially breed them and get some chicks that show the correct skin color.

If you get chicks that look right, they may still carry the genes for not-black skin, which would mean some of their chicks would show black skin and some would show other colors. Starting from these birds, it would take a lot of work to get birds that all show the correct black skin and also are pure for the correct genes. It should be possible, but I can't say whether it would be worth the work or whether you should just look for better birds.

I don't know about any of the other points you asked about.

I decided ill be rehoming them.
I got 7 more partridge, 6 hens and rooster, what do you think of these ones? I made sure they had 5 toes and blue ears.

 

[lilwanderer]

He is missing the gene that turns skin & tissue black (fibromelanosis, found in Silkies and Ayam Cemani and a few other rare breeds.)

If the hens have the gene (it looks like at least some might), you could potentially breed them and get some chicks that show the correct skin color.

If you get chicks that look right, they may still carry the genes for not-black skin, which would mean some of their chicks would show black skin and some would show other colors. Starting from these birds, it would take a lot of work to get birds that all show the correct black skin and also are pure for the correct genes. It should be possible, but I can't say whether it would be worth the work or whether you should just look for better birds.

I don't know about any of the other points you asked about.

I decided ill be rehoming them.
I got 7 more partridge, 6 hens and rooster, what do you think of these ones? I made sure they had 5 toes and blue ears.View attachment 3596346View attachment 3596352

 

[Cloverr39]

I decided ill be rehoming them.
I got 7 more partridge, 6 hens and rooster, what do you think of these ones? I made sure they had 5 toes and blue ears.View attachment 3596346View attachment 3596352

These look a lot nicer. I also think it's good that they're all the same color. I'd say learn as much as you can about the standard of perfection, see what needs improvement in your birds or what you want to work on. Then start hatching chicks and keeping the ones that are better in those things that needed improvement and breed out any faults.

 

[lilwanderer]

These look a lot nicer. I also think it's good that they're all the same color. I'd say learn as much as you can about the standard of perfection, see what needs improvement in your birds or what you want to work on. Then start hatching chicks and keeping the ones that are better in those things that needed improvement and breed out any faults.

I was looking at the SOP a lot last night- According to that the rooster needs more black in his crest and some other places if I'm not wrong. I'll have to look into it more, now that i have some decent ones.

 

[NatJ]

I decided ill be rehoming them.
I got 7 more partridge, 6 hens and rooster, what do you think of these ones? I made sure they had 5 toes and blue ears.View attachment 3596346View attachment 3596352

I don't enough about Silkies to really say. A little bit of genetics information (black skin) was the only thing I knew that I thought could be useful here.