Great Pictures!I need more Banties!
) Oh, well, guess I'll just have to tough it out until spring for chicks! 
Wasn't sure you've watched it or not. They took standard silkies, & bred them down to bantams using other bantams. Once genes from a foreign chicken is added to a breed that's pure, they take away alot of the original features, & behaviors the original breed had.Sorry for not replying sooner to tags! I was at the Ohio Nationals all day yesterday--I got home just before coop-up time for my birds and had to wash up real quick to get them locked up for the night.I have a ton of pictures to share, just need to sort out the bantams for this thread.
Thanks for the info on Eagle Nest!I went to the Nationals yesterday!! Didn't find any OEGBs in the colors I wanted, so it looks like I'm going for chicks from Eagle Nest in the spring! Actually, there was a pair of Blue Reds at the very back of the sale area, but I decided that if I'm going with Blue Reds, I may as well save myself some quarantining and go with chicks.
And that gives me the opportunity to pick up some of those Wheaten Ameraucana bantams along with them.
So, so sorry about Nugget.
Uh-huh, I've watched that before.Outcrossing to introduce new genes is nothing revolutionary.
As a side note, I just feel super bad for that Silkie boy they bathe in this video. He seems so miserable, and he's gasping like he couldn't breathe very well, or maybe breathed water when they dunked him...Makes me so sad.
I'll see if I can find the link with the study, again. I read it like a year ago.Yes, I'm familiar with the concept of outcrossing from personal experience, and some genetics and agriculture classes I took in college that looked into mechanics a bit more deeply. I know how outcrossing works.
Do you have any links to these studies on Silkies and Leghorns? I'd be interested in reading further.
Will have to do some digging, myself, when I get the chance and see what I can find. 
I’m so sorry to hear this.I'm devastated tonight....it appears I lost one of my first two "homemade" OEGBs.Nugget, to be specific. Sprout was especially needy this evening, almost as if she sensed her solitary state.
~Alex
That’s as cold as we have been in the mornings for a few weeks and then in warmed up a ton! And of course then rain... it is Portland!! I was in Ohio a few Octobers many years ago and it was the coldest I’ve ever felt!!! But it was sooooo beautiful!!Brr, already so cold there! We were only around -2° C here this morning (nothing on your temps, I know!), but everyone's running around out in the yard still, even my practically naked Cochin bantam, Bryony, who decided to lose 80% of her feathers at the end of October!
