can silkies be added to a flock of standards?

[kkgall]

Hi! I have a new flock that are all 6 months old. we are 'starting over' after a we lost our girls in an electrical fire in April. We love our girls but would love to add silkies. We had a Polish bantam hen in our last flock and she got along great with the others (she was actually one of the 'mean girls'. We've got a variety of chickens including easter eggers, cinnamon queen, buff orphingtons, california white, olive eggers and copper maran.
I've chatted with a few silkie breeders they mentioned that silkies need to be in a coop by themselves and can't integrate with 'standard' flocks-is that true? I would love to add them but don't want to worry about keeping them in a separate coop. Please let me know your thoughts when you have a minute, thanks!

 

[sourland]

In my experience silkies raised in conjunction with large fowl have done okay, but silkies introduced into an established large fowl flock have rapidly become targets of abuse.

 

[DobieLover]

Hello and welcome to BYC! Glad you joined.

 

[the_peanut_coop]

In my experiences, size makes no difference if the chicks were raised together, however, integrating new birds is tricky. (but can be done.) Good luck and have a great day

 

[Northwest PA chicken dad]

Sorry to hear about losing your girls in a tragic fire we have one silkie roo and tragically we had one silkie hen with a mixed dominques,orpingtons and cinnamon queens the silkie hen was always being bullied even though they were raised from day one together the stress was to much for her we lost her 2 weeks ago but she was half there size but the silkie roo is half the size of our other 2 dominque roos and he stands his ground and they back off but size does matter in this case especially if they weren't raised together

 

[Grammy60]

Hello and welcome to BYC So happy you have joined us.

 

[Yardmom]

I would say the size is not an issue, but the demeanor of the birds could be an issue. I think they can be housed together in an all girls flock as long as you don't have any aggressive hens.

 

[kkgall]

In my experience silkies raised in conjunction with large fowl have done okay, but silkies introduced into an established large fowl flock have rapidly become targets of abuse.

would you consider 12 a large flock?

 

[007Sean]

Howdy Welcome to Backyard Chickens.
Enjoy your time here!

 

[Kenneth Zweerink]

Welcome to BackYard Chickens. And a Big Hello from Eastern Nebraska !