Silkie chick hatched with pink skin, pinkish brown beak and brown legs

[LillyAcresFarm]

I hatched 5 silkies yesterday. Four of them came out just fine. Flopped around and up on their feet. The little yellow one off to the side seemed to have quite a bit of trouble hatching. It’s the smallest one as well. It had its beak completely out of the pip hole for several hours but eventually pulled it back in and zipped itself out. Immediately it acted way different the others and I noticed its legs were splayed. I have a small band around them now to keep its feet under it and it’s in a brooder by itself as the other chicks kept pecking at it. However I noticed that it has pink skin, brownish beak and legs. These were all supposed to be silkies. Could it be a mix. Or will it darken up. Also with the splayed legs and the odd pigment could it have some other issue and not make it?

 

[nchls school]

Sounds like it could be a mix breed. Count the toes-often a mix will have four toes on one or both feet. A silkie has five toes. Are the legs feathered? You will have to wait on its chances of survival. When a chick hatches it has enough absorbed nutrients from the yolk sack to last three days. Should the chick be thriving on day 4 it has an equal chance of survival as its siblings.

 

[LillyAcresFarm]

Sounds like it could be a mix breed. Count the toes-often a mix will have four toes on one or both feet. A silkie has five toes. Are the legs feathered? You will have to wait on its chances of survival. When a chick hatches it has enough absorbed nutrients from the yolk sack to last three days. Should the chick be thriving on day 4 it has an equal chance of survival as its siblings.

it has 5 toes and feathered feet as well.

 

[nchls school]

it has 5 toes and feathered feet as well.

Still likely a mix, but would be interesting to see what happens as it grows.

 

[LynnaePB]

Could it have been from a paint pen? It looks like a white from paint to me (two copies of dominant white). Paints and white from paints very often have lighter pigment at hatch. If it is from a paint pen it is very likely it will darken up nicely (especially seeing that the beak is already darker than pink). A lot of the white from paints I've hatched have pink skin and beaks at hatch. They usually darken up a lot in the first few weeks and by 6 weeks or so you should have a decent idea of how the pigment will look going forward. It's pretty common for these little ones to have pink/light skin on the bottoms of their feet when grown and they may have lighter spots in one or both of their eyes or a lighter eye and a darker eye or two lighter eyes. Paints are still pretty new in the silkie word and getting pigment darker is often a work in progress. Breeding back to dark pigmented birds can help (usually they are bred to black in paint flocks or to a paint with very nice dark pigment).

I've had a recessive white hatch with lighter skin before as well but that is a lot less common and your little cuties down matches a dominant whites down.

Here is a chick that hatched out pink skinned from my paints and as you can see she darkened up a lot.