Self Blue (Lavender) Silkie Thread

[Three Cedars Silkies]

Well a huge AMEN to the natural breeder. Can we give a bit of testosterone to these feminine boys??

 

[SunshineSilkies]

My husband is a sport when it comes to my silkies..especially at show time. But he said there's only "one kind of AI" that will happen at our house!!!!!

 

[sonew123]

Quote:
OMG as I spew Maragrita on my computer screen! you guys are cracking me up!!!

 

[brenTx]

It is usually not from a lack of trying but we have bred them to have short backs, short legs and fluffy bums....what else can we expect. I am not getting good fertility right now in whites so I am trimming all their bums to see if that will get them going. It could be my two guys are as I just described...GREAT show birds but breeders????

 

[bacres]

If anyone has any lavender silkie eggs, peeps or pullets/hens please send me a pm I would love to talk to you about buying some!

 

[SundownWaterfowl]

Quote:
You folks never asked Deb and I did you? Secret???? heck you haven't met us at a show to swap stories either.

I LOVE to share about silkies and espcially Lavenders. When we are talking stripes there are different looking types of color in what I have seen you guys post. Mine are about 50% solid and 50% stripes. The non stripes are less fluffy at hatch but quickly catch up. Mine ALL look a pale pastel blue, lavender color though. I haven't seen any brown, beigh, partridge looking chicks. I can always pick the non striped chicks out as they get older by the dark dark combs and beaks. We still don't know if there is any advantage to one or the other. I think it is just what appeals to your eye. By the way...another word for your lavender chat...lizards. When Donnie saw the first non striped chicks that came from my black crosses he was quite puzzled and said "that looks like something prehistoric, a lizard". So that has stuck and I call these darker less fuzzed chicks lizards.

It makes sense to me.

Follow this and you can see pictures of my two types of chicks. Oh, I haven't been hiding this website either.

http://brensbirdsofparadise.com/2009 lavender chicks.htm

Those are some beautiful lav's bren.

 

[debstein]

Regarding the picture of the chicks......the top chick looks like what we call a "mutt". This chick will not grow up to be any established color, if it ends up black, it will have silver or gold scattered throughout. Some end up a black/silver/gold and red combination. You cannot tell by looking at any of the chicks in the post what their actual genotype is - that is why everyone has to keep records if they want to breed lavenders. You can't just put blacks, blues, and a bird you think is carrying a lavender gene and expect to get lavender or even to know if the resulting progeny is a split. the 2 grayish chicks might be lavenders, but they are probably light blue silkies. And the black is most likely a black, although if there actually is a true lavender bird in the pen, it could be a split.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here - but if you suspect that you have a bird that is carrying lavender, then the only way you will ever be sure is to do a test breeding to a true lavender bird. The moral of the story is that you can't look at what you think is a lavender bird and know for a fact that it is lavender, unless you also know how it was produced and that the genetics make sense. I know for a fact that we competed last year against a "lavender" bird that was actually a splash missing its spots. **it happens. The chipmunk striped chicks that we first produced were the same pale color but had darker grayish chipmunk strips around the eyes and down the back, not unlike the picture of the top chick, but it was all lavender color. I tried to find a picture in my files of those chicks, but bren has some on her site that show the chipmunk striping really well, here are the only 2 pics I could come up with:

The first pic shows the chipmunk striping, but the second shows a clear lavender chick. All are lavender birds and all will have nice lavender coloring as they mature. I'm sure that I am just complicating things, but if you have interest in breeding this color, you first have to understand it. The easiest thing to do is to learn how to create a punnet square and map out the genetics that you know from the parent birds. That will tell you the %s you should expect in the progeny. I hope this is helping and not further confusing everyone - we NEED and WANT people breeding, showing and loving lavender silkies! The qualifying meet for lavender silkies will be at the Shawnee OK show in December, and we want as many lavender silkies there as we can get!

Deb Steinberg

 

[bacres]

All this information is so fasicinating! I'm so glad that some people are willing to share their wealth of knowledge with rose of us who need to know about it!

 

[Three Cedars Silkies]

I can see that the "stripe" is definitely different from the solo chick in the earlier pic...can't remember the page. Hmmmmm...if the solo chick isn't a lavender, how could it come from a BBS pen with blk/lav boys and girls and splash?

I know for a fact that there is no partridge in their background.

 

[bacres]

Hummmm.... You got me stupped. I know that with rabbits that the broken color is all about the parents and what pattern they have maybe it's a light vs dark pattern?