Breeding silkied Cochin bantams to the Standard

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

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:

 

[nicalandia]

Why do you cull the imperfect instead of re-homing to someone who is not breeding and just keeping hens for pets and eggs?

Culling will not always end in the destruction of the culled specimen. Re-homing is also part of culling.

In Short. The true meaning of culling in breeding projects is remove undesirable birds from the breeding project.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Just a few pictures to share today!

Point of view: you're trying to get just one chick to pose nicely for 2 seconds to take a picture.

An attempt to get a good picture of one of the Splash pullets:

An attempt to get a good picture of the other Splash pullet:

Despite that they both pose weirdly for pictures, they are looking really nicely typey so far I'd ideally like to put at least one back in the Blue pen next year, so hopefully they keep looking nice as they continue to grow.


One of the corner coop blue pullets who is also looking pretty nice so far:

The best I could get of a Splash cockerel

Two of Gus's daughters, both potential keepers. I cannot tell these girls apart at all anymore, the only reason why I know this is two different ones and not the same pullet twice is because they were both standing near me when I was taking pictures. Liking the type on the first one a lot so far, just wish she held her wing a bit better! Second one could go either way.

Mamas with babies Perdi and her adopted trio:

Peanut Butter and her three--unfortunately all looking like cockerels

And my little birthday baby I do think she's a pullet, though I won't say 100% for another couple weeks out of an abundance of caution.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Look what I found in the Blue pen last night!!

This picture makes it look like it's huge, but it's actually a tiny, skinny, torpedo-shaped egg, so I suspect it's a pullet egg and not from one of the adult hens.

...Guess I really need to narrow down my breeders quite soon, huh?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

It's a common mistake, but as Nicalandia points out, culling does not always mean killing. To cull means simply to remove that animal from the breeding population. In the case of my birds, they are either rehomed or moved to my pet/layer flock when possible. If I simply can't find homes for my extras and just don't have the space to keep them, I may eat them, but the rest of my culls live out their lives to the fullest here or in someone else's flock.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Some of the silkied Cochins today and yesterday. The youngsters are about 6 months old, (plus one 8-month-old pullet). These pullets are the biggest pain in the butt to take pictures of! I crouch down to get the shot, and they immediately run over to beg for attention instead of posing nicely!

The cockerels:

Leaning heavily toward Zeke, here, as my male for the Blue group. He just seems like he has the best type and balance thus far... but I'm reserving final decisions for a while yet.

Here's a better picture of Pete, since he was pretty young still in the picture at the beginning of the thread. He's filled in nicely since then!

Dandelion, here, is the recessive white hen I mentioned at the beginning of the thread. She's a cull, lives in my mixed pet flock now. The camera doesn't like to take good pictures of her because she's so brightly colored.

Lastly, just for fun, this hen hatched out of my Reds years ago. She's pure Cochin and her parents are both Red, she's just an oddball for coloring. She is also in the pet flock, not a breeder, but she's pretty.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Here are the babies this afternoon! I set up their feeder and waterer and tried to show them the water, but they're still sleepy babies and weren't having any of it yet.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

First pip of batch 5! I almost missed it, it's so tiny!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I haven't updated on the April hatch babies in a long time, so since I have some free time this afternoon I decided to go ahead and grab some pictures of them. I unfortunately have no idea which chick is which now from their baby pictures. I kind of sort of can tell that one of the pullets is a little younger than the other two and I think one cockerel is older than the other, but beyond that I don't really know their ages other than that they're about 2-3 months old. I really dropped the ball on keeping track of these kiddos!

I also feel like I had more banded as keepers, but these five are the only ones with their bands still... Unfortunately, I don't really have a way of saying which could be the proper Gus x Boba babies to pick them out if some have lost their bands along the way, other than the obvious Blues are definitely not from them. But, as I am reading and learning more about breeding techniques, I'm finding that perhaps keeping chicks that are potentially of a cross between pens (in this case, Gus over the girls in the Blue pen) can be beneficial as well, so if it turns out that some of the others without bands grow out nicely before anyone reaches out to buy them, maybe I can find a place for them in my breeding program, too. I did go ahead and put the ring leg bands on the ones that still had their baby bands, so they should be more permanently marked now. The advantage of those feathered feet is that I can put big leg bands on them much sooner than on a clean-legged bird!

Anyway, here are the five marked as keepers from the April hatches, offspring of Gus and Boba:

I like the middle pullet's shape best so far of the girls. The first pullet isn't bad, either, but would not pose so it's hard to see in that picture. The first cockerel is very reminiscent of some of my better-looking guys at around this age, too, so he's one to keep an eye on.

Also it occurs to me now that I do have two more potential keepers among Athena's babies that I didn't grab pictures of, so I'll have to run back out and see if I can get some good shots of them. They are kind of wild children, so, uh, that likely is easier said than done.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

The two Gus x Boba babies that Athena raised. I do know their exact ages as the youngest of the April babies; they will be 8 weeks old this Friday.