@diamondsilkies' Serama Journal

[diamondsilkies]

I decided to start this thread as sort of a journal about my journey with keeping seramas. If anyone wants to follow along, that'd be great!

I'll start this off with a little background:
I got my first seramas in August 2017. Two roosters and two hens. Unfortunately, due partly to predators and partly to illness, I only have one remaining rooster from that group. Since then, I have acquired one other rooster and five hens.

I breed these guys a little, although it is very much a hobby at the moment. I have two incubators, both of which are running right now, with hatch dates set for Jan. 26 and Feb. 10! There are two serama eggs (I think, they look a lot like my silkies' eggs) in the first batch, and ten in the second batch (although we'll see how many are actually fertile during the day 5 candling, I've been having some fertility problems with them in the past couple weeks).

My last hatch, which was in September, was riddled with unexpected silkie x serama crosses (fingers crossed these next hatches will be closer to what I'm expecting), so I am working on a little coop for my seramas, which should be done around March. This should also open up some space in my current coop for some silkies I've got coming in the next couple months. I am also on the lookout for one or two more serama hens, just for a bigger daily egg count.

I'll post pictures of them all in the next post!

 

[diamondsilkies]

Okay, I know most people on this website love pictures, so here we go.

This is King, the one rooster I have left from the original four seramas. The laced feathers on his chest really come through in his chicks, which are mostly buff with some black.

This is Prince, who I got from someone in town. He has some missing parts of his comb due to a scuffle he got into in his previous home. One of my roosters has some recessive genes for silkied feathers, and I think he may be the one.

This is Bean. I got her from a poultry show in 2017, when she was about 6 months old. I haven't gotten a whole lot of chicks from her yet, but she does lay very consistently.

This is Pippi, who I got at the same time as Bean from the same breeder. She's one of my smallest seramas, I'm guessing her to be about class A.

This is Ivy, who I got from the same breeder as Prince. I know for sure that her dad was a silkied serama, so she is the carrier of recessive silkied genes among my hens. She is my biggest serama, weighing 20 oz (which is technically a little too heavy to even be qualified as a serama by the American Poultry Association) but I don't show her and she has surprisingly produced tiny chick after tiny chick.

This is Tulip, who I bred myself in January 2018. I know her mom is Ivy, and I'm guessing Prince is her dad. She is my tiniest chicken and just began laying a couple months ago. She is also incredibly sweet, so I do have a little bit of a soft spot for her.

Finally, we have Camille, from the same hatch as Tulip. I *think* she may be from one of my serama hens who passed about a year ago. Luckily, I had some of her eggs already stored for a hatch, which is where I believe Camille comes in. She has really good posture (although I can never catch a good photo of her, as she's very shy).

And that's it! I'll be updating this journal with the results of the hatches, updates on the coop and my search for some new hens, as well as anything else that comes up!

 

[drumstick diva]

Thank you for letting me see your beautiful seramas.

 

[Clubber1234]

I'm following Thier beautiful!

 

[diamondsilkies]

Thank you!

7/8 chicks hatched in the batch due Saturday! 6 silkies and 1 serama. Originally, 12 eggs were set (6 of each breed), and 8 made it through the candling stages.
I candled the batch due on Feb. 10, and 6/11 eggs were developing, plus one blood ring. The others were all infertile. Just a little better fertility than my last serama batch, but we'll see how it goes. I'm collecting some more eggs for a big hatch that I'll probably set next week.

I also got started on my serama coop this weekend! I figure it should be done in about a month, give or take a week. This is what it looks like now:

 

[drumstick diva]

good start