First time with silkie chicks

[Island Juli]

Freaking out a bit as they are so tiny!! This one, we can Minion because she is all yellow. This is her 2 days old.


They are now, 5 days old, she's already feathering in on her wings, but not getting any bigger. She's eating, drinking and running around like crazy. Just concerned she's not going to get much bigger, poor thing!

Here she was yesterday showing the wing feathering.

Also, you can't see if from this pic, but she, and one of her sisters has what looks like a double toe on each foot. They both has feathers/down on their legs too. I assumed they would be mixes as dad and mom(s) are mixes. Can the gene be recessive and be passed down to make a true silkie?

 

[Jensownzoo]

They are mixes, but cute little mixes!

I'm not completely sure about the genetics, but I think the 5 toes tend to be dominant. Leg feathering is a little more complicated as several genes can be involved, but I think in Silkies it is incompletely dominant--meaning you can get some feathering with just one copy of the gene, but more feathering with two copies. It does look like your chicks have lost the fibromelanistic characteristic of Silkies...not sure if the parents are the same way.

 

[ChickenGuyBry]

I feel your pain! I'm also a first time silkie owner and i can't believe how much smaller mine is at 5 weeks in comparison to my other chicks! The others are almost fully feathered and about ready to be in the coop full time. I'm almost wondering if i should get a few more chicks for the brooder box to buy some time so i don't have to put the silkie in the coop yet.... she was the runt to begin with, too.

 

[frenchiegirl21]

Are your silkies bantams or full-size? I'm raising my second set of bantam silkies and have noticed they (and really all bantams) appear to grow much slower and in my experience take more time to fully mature. My silkie roosters didn't start crowing until they were almost 7 months! I think part of the appearance of slow growth is because bantams don't have as much growing to do when compared to full size chicks. Does that make sense?