Black or white silkies - which look grubbier in their natural state?

[lceh]

Okay silkie lovers -- the kids have convinced me to add a couple of silkies to our little backyard flock. There will be both black and white silkie chicks at TSC in a couple of weeks. Alas, all of the photos I've seen of silkies show beautifully bathed birds looking like white or black puffballs. But how do these guys look au natural, so to speak? Are the white ones prone to looking dirtier an unbathed state than the black ones? Our girls will be kept in an ark and moved to fresh grass every day, so there's no dirt-floored pen to worry about. We all like the white ones best, but I worry that they'll look like dirtballs rather than the fluffy cuties we see in the books....maybe black is a more practical choice. What do you all think?

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

OH ya the white are harder to keep clean by a LONG way LOL Silkies tend to get dirty faster then any other chicken anyhow IMO. I just sit just their feet in warm soap water for about 5 min and clean them off every once in a while. Keeping their litter clean helps too

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

BTW your going to LOVE the silkies! They are SO nice however they are VERY VERY docile so the other chickens tend to pick on them. Be careful with that. If they are raised together there may not be a problem. The good thing is I can usually add chicks to my big flock of silikies (I only have two large silkies right now) and they are nice to them

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

Just some pics for you...my white stays pretty clean except for her feet

She is so fluffy her feet tend to collect any fresh poo!

This white I simply grabbed right from her pen (hasn't had a bath in a while) she looks pretty good except her feet.

Now my black/dark blue you can't even tell her feet are dirty. You can see pine shavings in there though.

 

[lceh]

Thanks for the great pics! These chickies will be raised with the others (all day-olds), so hopefully they'll get along okay.

Gosh, your unbathed white silkie still looks pretty snuggly to me! Is it just the feet that get yucky, or the body too?

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

Just the feet so far. She is pretty good about not taking dust baths in dirty areas at least LOL It's so funny watching them though. And they seem to LOVE attention. Good to hear they will be raised with the others. Then it should be just fine. Although silkies don't roost so I hope you get two or more so they can keep each other company on the floor

They also need deep litter when it gets cold .

 

[Ky Chicken Fan]

FWIW, I have 1 white pullet. She was hatched out from my partridge/buffs (not sure who her mom is, they all lay in the same nests) and I couldn't resist keeping her. She is a PIG. Remember that kid on Peanuts with the dust cloud, Pigpen? That should have been her name instead of Wendy. She loves any mud puddle she can find. She has a very poofy head, but whenever it rains she has brown string-y wet hair hanging around her head. Sometimes I wonder if she has a complex about being the only white and is trying to turn herself brown-ish to blend in with the buffs and partridges

All that said, even dirty she still a very pretty girl, and when she is dry you don't realize at a glance what a pig she is. Soooo based on my experience I wouldn't worry too terribly much about them looking grubby, especially since you will move them to fresh grass all the time. Good luck with whatever you choose to get, you are gonna love the silkies.

 

[Ky Chicken Fan]

Quote:
This is interesting, I always hear this and thought it too. When I rebuilt and enlarged the silkies' coop last summer, I added roosts because I was already considering building new silkie coops and giving theirs over to more bantam cochins. About half of mine love the roosts that I put in and use them every night, even when it is really cold. Anyone else have any that use them?

 

[Foxhound lady]

All mine roost at night. As for "natural" the black will tend to stay "cleaner" looking because it doesnt show dirt or staining on the feathers.

 

[CityGirlintheCountry]

What KY Chicken said.

My white loves to run around in the rain and the mud. On rainy days she looks a mess. Once she dries out you would never know she had been icky. It's like she has a little chicken hair salon out there somewhere.
My blue grey never looks muddy, but she too gets stringy when she's wet.

Mine also roost. They haven't slept on the floor since they were babies. They tuck themselves up with all the other banties and are happy as they can be.