Silkie cross roosters

[Gotta love them chicks]

I have two silkie cross roosters from crossing a silkie rooster with an ISA Brown hen. If I mate them with a silkie cross hen will any resulting hens have more of the silkie broodiness? Or should I pair these roosters with silkie hens? They are slightly bigger than a regular silkie rooster but not as big as a regular big one. I don't want my silkie hens to be hurt because of their size. Any help or information is greatly appreciated.

 

[Debbie292d]

Any pullets you get from breeding with a crossed silkie may pick up some of the silkie's genetic traits, the same as the traits of the one it's crossed with. If you hatched, say, six chicks out of this combo and all were pullets (don't we wish!), about half would have picked up the silkie traits (including feathered feet, broodiness, etc.), and the other half the other breed. I would think it would be muddied down though so not quite as broody as if it was a purebred silkie.

People breed regular sized chickens to silkies all the time, so I'm sure it would be okay, unless you had any especially small silkies.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have two silkie cross roosters from crossing a silkie rooster with an ISA Brown hen. If I mate them with a silkie cross hen will any resulting hens have more of the silkie broodiness? Or should I pair these roosters with silkie hens? They are slightly bigger than a regular silkie rooster but not as big as a regular big one. I don't want my silkie hens to be hurt because of their size. Any help or information is greatly appreciated.

A bantam Silkie probably weighs about 2 pounds. A full-sized Silkie might weigh around 6 pounds. I don't know which ones you have. I don't know how much difference in size there really is. When they mate, the hen squats on the ground. That gets the rooster's weight into the ground through her body instead of just her legs. A rooster is standing on her back on his feet which are spread out. Spreading them out gets his weight into her body over a large area instead of a point load. That's why roosters can mate with a smaller hen without hurting them.

ISA Browns are production hens. They are bred to be relatively small in size and to lay a lot of relatively large eggs. They are also bred to not go broody very often. Silkies are known to go broody a lot but that does not mean every Silkie will.

Chickens do not get half of their traits from one parent and half from the other. That's not how it works. Ignoring the sex linked genes (which we can to keep it simple) chicks get one gene from each of their parents at each gene pair. Which traits they get out of that depends on which of those genes are dominant or recessive. Of course it is more complicated than that but let's try to keep it simple for discussion purposes.

I don't know how much broody genes your cross roosters inherited from their Silkie father. Roosters don't go broody so you can't tell by observing them. Hens do go broody though, whether Silkie or Silkie cross. If they go broody they have broody genetics. So if you hatch eggs from a Silie or Silkie Cross hen that has gone broody, you have a greater chance of getting a pullet that will go broody than if you hatch eggs from one that has never gone broody. It doesn't matter of the hen that has never gone broody is a Silkie or a Silkie cross, if she has never gone broody she has never gone broody.

If your rooster hatched from an egg laid by a hen that has gone broody he has a pretty good chance of passing down broody genetics to his daughters. I did that once and most of his daughters went broody.