This will sound like sacrilege to many of you, I'm sure, but I have always preferred the 'hatchery' or 'pet' quality Silkies that are clean faced and have smaller crests. I like seeing their faces, and something about them having wattles is more appealing to me. I'm not biased against beards, of course, because my Easter-eggers are some of my favorite birds. I guess it's the combination of the huge crest and the beard that puts me off. I also prefer clean-faced Polish to bearded Polish.
Anyway, if I get any more Silkies, I'd likely go out of my way to find breeding flock culls like my Margaret rather than top quality, super fluffy Silkies. It's just a personal preference.
My muscovy duck hens are smaller than a regular framed chicken hen. My older girls, Huey and Donald are both 4-5 pounds about and are well over 2 years old now. Very social ducks, and I just adore them. A pekin hen is twice the size of a scovy. They are a seasonal layer, start around march. I am still getting a few eggs from them, but not hatching anymore LOL! They brood very well if allowed and are excellent mothers. Muscovy are a tree dweller and will perch. My scovies live with my chickens, they lay in the nestboxes. The best thing with them is they are "quackless" and trill instead. A scovy will only "quack" if its afraid. UGH my pekins, my neighbor hears them! QUAAAQUUAAAWKquackquack Gees! They have ducks too, but raise runners.
Our sebrights were all roos but one lil girl. The boys were wild, and completely antisocial from the beginning. They were hatchery from TSC. The hen Fergie was just exceptional, and so sweet. I kept her inside the bantam coop with my OEGs, the boys were hopeless trying to contain them! They would thrash against walls trying to escape. It was very upsetting. I had to separate them in another brooder due to how they acted as chicks. I spend a lot of time handling, talking and getting to know my birds. It goes back to the breeder.. you are sure right on that!
We had that week of well below zero and my Fergie didn't survive it. OEG's were perfectly fine. My wild boys perished tooOne of them even spent most of his time on my cows back, it just wasn't enough warmth.We had a heated stock tank so he had water and his own perch for the night, its clueless to me.His brother was in the egg coop and passed the same day. I am sure that a heritage raised sebright is a much better choice! I did love how beautiful they are but not the fearful flightiness of the roos I had.
I was under the impression that Muscovies were huge! Guess I was wrong on that, huh? Calls are supposed to be seasonal layers, too, and lay about 80 eggs over the summer. I'm not in it for the eggs, personally. At least not at this point in my life. I'm mainly looking for pets and to expand my experience into yet another species.
That's how my luck is with straight run birds, getting all or almost all male. Unless I want them to be male.
But I have heard that Sebright boys can be pretty wild and aggressive. It's strange to me that your OEGBs would do bettern in the cold, since everyone always says rose comb birds do better in the cold than single comb birds! (OEGBs are single comb, right?) Just another oddity, I guess. My Rosie is far from heritage or show quality, but as you may have guessed from that story I posted before, I adore her just as much either way. She was the only Bright of the 5 I had at the time that showed any sign of having issues with the cold, but it was before that really bad cold snap. She was inside for a week or two because she had begun to have balance issues. Oddly enough, I watched her closely when the temp plummeted again after she'd gone back outside, but she had no more issues. 
Here's a unique chicken coop idea -- out of an old entertainment center!
Haha, I saw this the other day on Facebook! Trust me, I've been eying anything that could possibly be turned into a coop! I need no more ideas!
