Silkied Cochins are a rare variety of Cochin bantam resulting from a random mutation giving them silkied or 'hookless' feathering, the type of feathering that looks like fur. They are pure Cochins, not mixes, and have none of the characteristic Silkie traits beyond feathering type, and no Silkie blood in their background. I am working to preserve this unusual variety of Cochins and will be selecting toward the standard for smooth-feathered Cochin bantams as I do.
As this is my first foray into breeding chickens toward a standard, I'd like to have a thread as a journal of sorts, and perhaps a place to ask advice from those experienced with Cochin bantams or just familiar with the standard itself as I work towards improvement of my birds. I do have a copy of the 2020 American Bantam Association standard to reference. As it is at the time of posing this, I have a total of 3 cocks, 4 cockerels, 7 hens, and 5 pullets that I'm working with. I will post their pictures below. I had planned to form three breeding groups out of those birds with the idea of keeping them in a rotational or clan breeding style of setup; the best males from each pen will rotate to the next pen over, while the best females will stay in the pen they hatched from. I'd like to be able to breed them for a long, long time without having to bring new blood in which is why I'd chosen this type of setup. I also intend to focus only on BBS for now, despite an unyielding urge to breed in a bunch of other varieties... But I really want to focus my efforts toward preserving the silkied variety of Cochins and improving what I have rather than losing focus trying to work on a bunch of projects with them.
Here are the birds I have to work with right now. They are grouped by age at the moment. I have some ideas of which birds I'd like to group together for breeding, but am open to suggestions from those experienced with this sort of thing, of course. Out of the 2022 birds, most are a little over 5 months old, but I also have a 7 month old pullet who was hatched out of the 2021 birds. Other than her, the rest, including all of the older birds, were hatched from eggs I bought from another farm. Oh, and some of the 2021 birds' pictures aren't super great to show their type and such, but they're all molting now and look awful, so that's the best I have of them at the moment unfortunately.
Editing, this page should have the most up-to-date groupings for my breeding pens on it and most likely will have more recent pictures for most of the birds as this thread ages, along with other info recorded there such as hatch dates and parentage of individuals hatched here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/pipds-peeps.72248/page/silkied-cochin-bantams.95/
2020 birds:
These three are Black and may carry recessive white; a recessive white hen hatched along with them, but is a cull due to recurring prolapse issues she's had. The below two hens have not had the same issues.
Gus:
Myrtle:
Zinnia:
2021 birds:
Blacks:
-Pete:
-Jack:
-Juniper:
-Bella:
-Coco:
Blues:
-Harley:
-Washburne:
2022 birds:
Blacks:
-Dean:
-Trixie. She's the 7-month-old; her father is Pete and I'm reasonably confident her mother is Harley.
-Boba:
Blues:
-Wyatt:
-Zeke:
-Levi:
-Athena:
-Inara:
-Ottilie:
As this is my first foray into breeding chickens toward a standard, I'd like to have a thread as a journal of sorts, and perhaps a place to ask advice from those experienced with Cochin bantams or just familiar with the standard itself as I work towards improvement of my birds. I do have a copy of the 2020 American Bantam Association standard to reference. As it is at the time of posing this, I have a total of 3 cocks, 4 cockerels, 7 hens, and 5 pullets that I'm working with. I will post their pictures below. I had planned to form three breeding groups out of those birds with the idea of keeping them in a rotational or clan breeding style of setup; the best males from each pen will rotate to the next pen over, while the best females will stay in the pen they hatched from. I'd like to be able to breed them for a long, long time without having to bring new blood in which is why I'd chosen this type of setup. I also intend to focus only on BBS for now, despite an unyielding urge to breed in a bunch of other varieties... But I really want to focus my efforts toward preserving the silkied variety of Cochins and improving what I have rather than losing focus trying to work on a bunch of projects with them.
Here are the birds I have to work with right now. They are grouped by age at the moment. I have some ideas of which birds I'd like to group together for breeding, but am open to suggestions from those experienced with this sort of thing, of course. Out of the 2022 birds, most are a little over 5 months old, but I also have a 7 month old pullet who was hatched out of the 2021 birds. Other than her, the rest, including all of the older birds, were hatched from eggs I bought from another farm. Oh, and some of the 2021 birds' pictures aren't super great to show their type and such, but they're all molting now and look awful, so that's the best I have of them at the moment unfortunately.
Editing, this page should have the most up-to-date groupings for my breeding pens on it and most likely will have more recent pictures for most of the birds as this thread ages, along with other info recorded there such as hatch dates and parentage of individuals hatched here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/pipds-peeps.72248/page/silkied-cochin-bantams.95/
2020 birds:
These three are Black and may carry recessive white; a recessive white hen hatched along with them, but is a cull due to recurring prolapse issues she's had. The below two hens have not had the same issues.
Gus:
Myrtle:
Zinnia:
2021 birds:
Blacks:
-Pete:
-Jack:
-Juniper:
-Bella:
-Coco:
Blues:
-Harley:
-Washburne:
2022 birds:
Blacks:
-Dean:
-Trixie. She's the 7-month-old; her father is Pete and I'm reasonably confident her mother is Harley.
-Boba:
Blues:
-Wyatt:
-Zeke:
-Levi:
-Athena:
-Inara:
-Ottilie:
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