Just cuz Chicks are Cute! (Silkies)

[LadiesAndJane]

I hatched silkie chicks back in September, I got 1/6, she is very cute. And I’m glad I got her, it allowed me to hatch polish chicks later on. Here is her after she hatched....View attachment 2525743View attachment 2525744a few days later....View attachment 2525745Here is her about a month ago......View attachment 2525746Weird, but I though this was cute.

She is a beautiful example of a silver partridge.

 

[LateBirdFarms]

Absolutely horrible results for my last two hatchlings. Just goes to show how varied advice and chicken personalities can be. I have very extremely limited broody experience, and this is just another lesson under my belt.
With my last broody girl, I was told to move her and her eggs, since the nesting box she chose was too high for a chick to get back into and quite a distance to fall, and that she would climb back on her nest with no real issues. And true to the advice, she took the move with very little fluff or fuss. Now because of that advice and how well it worked for me, I didn't think twice about letting this girl set herself up in the same nest, I had figured I'd do the same thing and just move her... And then I started seeing other people be told the exact opposite of the advice that I was given! That there would be a snowballs chance in hades that a hen would just hop back on a relocated nest.. Well... Fizgig would have none of this nest moving nonsense, I prewarmed the new nest in the brooder area of the coop, and in the middle of the night tried a nest swap and she was FURIOUS! I mean out for blood mad! I tried to leave her with the eggs to see if she'd settle, I tried coaxing her back to them, and she'd check them out, them peeping through the shell, and then she'd scream bloody murder and throw herself into the dividing walls until I was worried something was going to get broken, her or my divider.. so I opened the door to try and squeeze out to grab some scratch, see if I could tempt her into settling for me but she stormed the door as I got it unlatched and went to her old nest, where there were no eggs, and as soon as she saw the no eggs, she lost it again and started attacking the others in the coop like she blamed each and every one of them for her missing eggs. This story is getting long winded, so after a few more attempts with her watching me move her eggs, and her still refusing to go with them, I let her be and prayed. They were only two days from hatching, one had pipped, so I figured I'd try again after the first one hatched. Well, nope, still wouldn't have it, and she wouldn't stay on the eggs if I took the chick and the last two were well on their way towards zipping, so I figured with the timing, they would hatch sometime after dark and as long as she stayed put everythingwould be okay. Nothing was okay. About two hours before dark and about an hour after my last peek at the situationon the coop cam, my broody jumped off the nest for maybe 45 seconds. Don't know why, to do her business, not sure. Doesn't matter. Reasons, excuses, results. Only one of those things matter in the end. Baby fell out of the nest, which was the last thing I considered, the lip was twice as high as she was. There's a way up to the nest that a normal sized chick could have managed, and mama pleaded and pushed and jumped up and down to coax the little one back in but my tiny silkie baby couldn't do it. So she had to make a choice, living baby, or hatching eggs, and she picked the living chick. I knew I should have been paying closer attention, but I thought I'd have time to cook and get back out there before something horrible like this happened. Both chicks died half unzipped. I tried desperately to warm them slowly in the hopes that they might still be hanging on, but there was no saving them, it was just too cold. So much went wrong this time that I guess I lucked out through the last time and I feel pretty sick about it. Surviving chick #1 is thriving and mama is doing great, in the brooder area happy as can be. The worst part is I had ordered an incubator for just in case, and it had arrived a few days before the first baby hatched but not only was it the wrong model, they sent a euro plug with it so I couldn't even fall back on that. So I guess what I'm trying to say is even if something went great the first time, there's no telling how a different hen is going to deal with the same request and Murphy is always lurking around the corner to turn human misjudgement into a flat out disaster.

But here's my survivor, Apricot. I need to get a clear pic of her back with her little stripes. I really would love to have a partridge silkie in the coop!

Ps. I am so very very long winded.

 

[BleuSaphir]

Oh man I am so sorry with your experience with mama hen. :/

 

[LateBirdFarms]

As I learn, fluffy flock growth must still go on! I really don't want a lonely single chick missing out on siblings, the idea of her being without chicks her own age, especially when mom grows tired of raising her, disturbs me on a soul deep level... maybe it's the only child in me crying out, I don't know, it just seems like a sad experience.

Soo... I picked up some adorable silkie babies of the same age to brood myself!

My phone was almost dead, and the flash didn't work so I'll have to get some pictures of them when I've got something better than dim lamplight. The light one is a pale warm beigey grey, one is a dark charcoal with a lighter chest and belly, one is yellow beaked but black skinned and possibly a barred fluff ball in the making, and one is a light grey with a lighter belly and chest. The two greys have amazing head poofs! Vaulted skulls maybe?

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Even with the masks and the several hockey sticks worth of distance, I still really enjoy meeting new chicken people who adore their chickens as much as I do mine! I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say they enjoyed these babies throughly while they had them, these are some fantastically sweet and cuddly chicks!