Hello! I’m getting some day old silkie chicks and you guys seem familiar with the breed, and I know I’m looking pretty far into the future but I was wondering when the best time ( age ) is to integrate them into my big older hens? Any ideas?Love the floofs!
Hello! Are your older hens Silkies? It's always easier to mix all Silkies together than to mix Silkie chicks with standard breed chickens.
This is my first time with silkies, but everything that TwoCrows said is 100% spot on. My silkies are 3 weeks younger than the SLWs they are in with, since they got along I didn't want to separate them when the SLWs were ready to go outside so I ended up doing a transition where I had everyone on the screen porch for a few weeks. More protection for the younger silkies while it still gave the older birds more room that they were needing. By doing this I avoided needing to re-intograte them back into their flock.
Thanks for the good advice! My other chickens are mainly Australorps, with a very small mean RIR, and a EE. Then being mainly big breeds and silkies being smaller breeds I was just curious about if the age would be different than usual. At the same time, we are getting a EE & a Copper Maran from the same clutch so they will have some protection for the big ones. Just recently we built a separate enclosure for chicks when they can deal with the heat ( see no touch ) although our old ones used to like pecking at the old ones through the fence, sassy little ones lol! So we should be good on that front.
I love the grumpy faces my silkies have, I've now ordered 16x20 prints for the house, super excited to have grumpy chickens on my walls!
Still extremely, over the top adorable! Totally! I found a local ad on Craigslist for hatching eggs, a blue satin roo over splash silkie hens. I need them!!! But... I'm at capacity unless I process / sell some of the ones I currently have. Ugh, decisions! My friend has an incubator she said I can borrow, it would be so cool to hatch out some silkies to add to the Snow Pack!
You've got a lot of chicken math going around in your head.
BUT...hatching is SO much fun. Very magical! ❤
how am I supposed to remain a responsible adult and make choices the hubby will approve of??? Look at the floofs and the pretty blue down 
they're just too adorable to not buy hatching eggs 
And... my friend said she'd buy a couple of the chicks if I hatch them. Decisions, decisions... and a lot of convincing to be done with the hubby. They are 50/doz and I was thinking to get the best choice of chicks for both of us to pick from I would need to buy 2 doz. Then sell any extras. Maybe...You've got a lot of chicken math going around in your head.
