Breeding silkied Cochin bantams to the Standard

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

This is a feature, not a bug. You can hang a potted plant, a set of chicken-themed windchimes, etc. from the protruding board.

Very true! I'd love to grow something that I can just pluck bits off of to toss in to the birds occasionally. I have an old, old planter box near the coop with my mixed flock that's been left to grow whatever and mostly it just grows dandelion greens that I pluck and toss to the birds through the summer. I'll have to look into that!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

A peeper parade today! I got individual shots of most of the newbies as well, but the one that hatched this morning is still a little crusty and sleepy, so I didn't mess with her too much. That's her smack dab in the middle here, though:

After I took these pictures, I was struggling to match up the few whose hatch order I knew up with the patterns on their faces and finally gave up and put different colored leg bands on them for IDing purposes. I suppose knowing the individual isn't super important, but I do like being able to look back on their pictures as they grew and see how they develop. So, the bands are not present in the pictures, but each one should be labeled with the band color that the chick later got. This is roughly in hatch order, but I don't know who came first between the third and fourth pictures (those two are SO hard to tell apart!) and am only guessing on the fifth.

...And again, the last to hatch didn't have a picture taken yet. I'll get one tomorrow once she's on her feet more and fluffed out better.

Anyway, here is a catch up on the older babies, too! The one-week-olds, in hatch order:

And the two-week-olds:

At this moment, I'm thinking at least three of the newbies are Black, maybe four. I can't remember what I decided on last week's babes, if I had just one or if it was two Blacks in them, but at least the population of Blacks to Blues is starting to catch up now as it should with a Black male over Blue hens!

 

[kurby22]

They've been a bit hit or miss in the fertility department, honestly. The girls just seem so picky about the roosters they'll breed with! Last year I had almost no fertility with the girls that I had with Gus. This year he has some new girls and he's producing a decent number of chicks finally! But, they also seem to be sensitive to temperature swings based on the batch 5 eggs laid during a cold snap getting spotty after fertility being decent in the batch before it. It'll be interesting to see if the eggs under Athena are doing any better, as they were laid after that cold snap.




Was that Triple Creek Farm or someone else? Always looking for more farms to add to my list of places to get them.

I tried looking them up and the name of the Farm but it was definitely not Triple Creek if I recall correctly! The one that keeps posting is always holding on with her in her eBay pictures…I’m never sure about eBay!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Day three of opening the new pop door on the Cochin coop before the other door and they finally decided it was okay to go through there instead of waiting on the other door!

I tried looking them up and the name of the Farm but it was definitely not Triple Creek if I recall correctly! The one that keeps posting is always holding on with her in her eBay pictures…I’m never sure about eBay!

I don't know her ebay account (if she has one), but there is someone who posts on FB as Country Haven Farm or something to that effect and she's always holding her birds in her pictures. I wonder if that's the same person! I believe hers are mixed colors, though, not pure for color. Her Whites have visible color leakage in her pictures at least.

 

[kurby22]

Day three of opening the new pop door on the Cochin coop before the other door and they finally decided it was okay to go through there instead of waiting on the other door!





I don't know her ebay account (if she has one), but there is someone who posts on FB as Country Haven Farm or something to that effect and she's always holding her birds in her pictures. I wonder if that's the same person! I believe hers are mixed colors, though, not pure for color. Her Whites have visible color leakage in her pictures at least.

Yes! I bet it’s her! I noticed the same with her whites! She seems more interested in the Silkie part not the pure breeding SOP. You are definitely a rarity with your birds!!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Haha, well I do know of a few others at least that keep them pure to color, too! But it does seem pretty common in the silkied Cochin group I'm in on FB for people to run them in mixed color pens for some reason. I'm not in any other Cochin groups so I'm not sure how common it is in general to keep the breed, silkied or not, in mixed colors like that, though.





Bad news, y'all. I lost Harley out of Pete's flock. A while back, in my continued effort to integrate Juniper and Washburne out of that flock and into the mixed flock, I had both flocks free-ranging together with supervision, and Harley got into a fight with one of the large fowl hens in the mixed flock. Apparently in this tiff she had gotten an injury on her neck close behind her left wattle that I didn't notice at all. Well, it abscessed and swelled up in her throat, and it must have suffocated her. I feel horrible, that was definitely something I should have caught and addressed, but I've been so distracted with the pen build on the other coop and all the peeps hatching that I just never noticed she had a problem that I needed to attend to. A reminder, I suppose, to take more time to observe my birds any chance I get.

Now I'm questioning if I should leave Washburne in that group or not. She's the only Blue hen left in there now and I had hoped to keep at least one Blue in that flock in the interest of having Blue cockerels out of that group to rotate over to the Blue flock when the time came. But Wash was on the cull list because her type isn't the greatest... I'm going to have to think about that a little more, I guess. I do have several options, but all around, it still stinks.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Oh, I forgot, I did get the littlest one's picture today! Still a bit crusty, but she's fluffed out and is more active now. Everyone's learning to eat and drink just fine, so that means they'll start growing and won't be eensy tinies like this for very much longer.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I sat with my birds last night and really looked at Washburne and the others. While she isn't as typey as the other girls in that group, Wash is nice in many other aspects, so I don't think it would be too much of a setback to keep her in there. We've got rain in the forecast until Sunday so I don't want to move any birds until that clears so they aren't all sulking inside, but once it does, I'll be removing Juni from the group officially so that I can start setting eggs to look at fertility in that group as well.



Next batch of eggs goes into lock down tomorrow. Just three eggs this time around, though. I've been meaning to ask on this, do y'all find the constant updates on how many are drawing down, how many have pipped, how many have hatched as they hatch, etc., to be too much? I post all of that in my flock update thread (for things going on with all of my birds, not just the Cochins) and have just been cross-posting here because they're silkied Cochins that have been hatching, but it occurred to me that that's possibly a bit annoying as far as alerts and such go when it's maybe not all that interesting to anyone but me? I have no problem with just posting when they're locked down and then posting when they've hatched if that would be better!

 

[3KillerBs]

I sat with my birds last night and really looked at Washburne and the others. While she isn't as typey as the other girls in that group, Wash is nice in many other aspects, so I don't think it would be too much of a setback to keep her in there. We've got rain in the forecast until Sunday so I don't want to move any birds until that clears so they aren't all sulking inside, but once it does, I'll be removing Juni from the group officially so that I can start setting eggs to look at fertility in that group as well.



Next batch of eggs goes into lock down tomorrow. Just three eggs this time around, though. I've been meaning to ask on this, do y'all find the constant updates on how many are drawing down, how many have pipped, how many have hatched as they hatch, etc., to be too much? I post all of that in my flock update thread (for things going on with all of my birds, not just the Cochins) and have just been cross-posting here because they're silkied Cochins that have been hatching, but it occurred to me that that's possibly a bit annoying as far as alerts and such go when it's maybe not all that interesting to anyone but me? I have no problem with just posting when they're locked down and then posting when they've hatched if that would be better!

I don't mind the detailed updates. I just skim over anything I don't find actively interesting.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I don't mind the detailed updates. I just skim over anything I don't find actively interesting.

Same