Day 22, 2nd one is hatching right now

[Oldredhen]

Silkies are so beautiful! I want to get some Cochin Frizzles, a woman in my town breed them, they're full sized Cochins that are identical to the bantam frizzles I used to have (little mops!) Hope you had a good hatch.

 

[cluckcluck42]

Oh I am so glad you had one survive.

My hatch day is on Wednesday, I'm just a night owl lol.

 

[BirdMom]

Got two silkie crosses Monday early a.m. and mid-afternoon, and I just checked a few minutes ago and have two full silkie eggs pipped! Now if the other six eggs in the bator would get on the ball...

We didn't know we were going to have silkie crosses, even though the silkies were in with the other chickens, until the first baby hatched out, and I noticed first off that he had feathered feet, (his mama doesn't, she's some sort of LF black with white lacing) and then my daughter noticed that he had five toes! Then we noticed the silkie vaulted head, darker skin and beak... Those two silkie roos had only pretended to ignore the large hens. They sure were busy when we weren't looking, because the second baby, out of a regular LF white hen with black lacing, also had five toes, feathered feet, very dark beak and skin, vaulted head... Hmmm. Guess the EE roo in with the girls wasn't getting his job done. Unless he was busy with the little silkie hens! Guess we'll find out when these ones hatch. It's so much fun to watch mystery chicks grow up and see what they look like.

Hope everyone is having a good hatch. My kids really want frizzles too. Maybe one of these days. We sure got bit by the silkie obsession though. Love those huge black eyes and cute fluffy heads and bodies. Very anxious to see what these crosses look like as they grow. One is a normal sized for LF chick, and he's chipmunk striped, but with the black beak, rose comb (or whatever kind it is the silkies have) and vaulted head, so will be very cool to see what he grows into. The other one is much smaller, though came out of the same size egg, and silver and black, with much darker skin and beak, and an even higher vaulted head.

OldRedHen, what kind of babies did you get hatched?

 

[kathyinmo]

OK, I'm done with this part of my hatch... 14 Silkies and 2 mutts (one from a green egg). You can tell the mutts from the yellow beak and feet. My Silkies are all penned together for the winter ... buff, white, splash, and blue. These were done just for fun, for a girl I work with.

OldRedHen ... what did you end up with ?

 

[Madcap621]

Since my little zipper is a silkie, I may know in the am, but, what is a 'vaulted head'?

 

[BirdMom]

A "vaulted head" is just where the skull has part of it raised up, rather than a smooth rounded head. Where it's raised up is usually where the silkies have their big head puff of feathers come from.

I got four babies out of the five silkie eggs we'd set, and the two silkie crosses from the silkie roos and the LF hens. Well, as I'm looking at the silkies that hatched from the silkie eggs, one of them looks relatively "chipmunk" in coloration, faint, but definitely there, and it's larger than the other ones. So perhaps our EE roo got to that hen!

It's going to be so fun to see these babies grow up. I think out of our ten eggs that were in there developing, these six are all that are going to hatch, the other four looked like quitters over the last week or so when I candled them last night.

They are all so adorable! The first to hatch, from a LF egg, is about twice the size of most of the others, and so they like to run to him and try to hide under him. Then he runs away until they all collapse into little puddles. So cute and fun to watch.

Here is the first one with his five-toed yellow feet. Don't know what his mom is, she's black with white lacing, LF, doesn't look EE at all. I think she might be a Wyandotte or a cross. We hatched her out from some varied eggs I bought from someone on craigslist. The dad is a white silkie.

Here's the second one to hatch, from a white LF hen with black lacing and a white silkie roo. You can sort of see the vaulting on her head, but our camera is just a camera phone, not very good. On the pure silkies, it's even more noticeable, but I haven't got pics of them uploaded yet.

So OldRedHen, how did that baby do? Got one or two to hatch? My last two hatches were very poor, one was zero, one got three ducklings, one died in the first few hours, one had major problems and died after a few weeks. With this one, we put the humidifier in the bathroom we'd put the incubator in during lockdown, so we had very stable temps and very stable humidity, and it went really well for a winter hatch, I think. Especially considering our incubator is a homemade one from a styrofoam cooler and a desk lamp with a 40 watt bulb in it.

kathyinmo, those babies are adorable! Nothing cuter than a mini-flock of fluffballs.