Silkie thread!

[peepblessed]

How many hens should a rooster ideally have for the best fertility? I don't have a lot of room and I'm wanting to only keep 2 roosters and I don't want to overextend them. I want to have a splash roo with blue/black hens and a blue roo with splash hens.
Or I am considering having 2 bachelor pens and rotating a couple hens through each pen at a time and keeping the rest in a bigger pens with the growing chick, but I'm not sure how well that would work. Any opinions?

It depends on the roo. Some are very active and can and will cover 10 hens. Some are not active and 4 can be too many. Some boys have a couple of favorites that they make ragged and leave the others unfertile.

 

[Maligator Love]

What color is this? She is about 10 weeks old. Not 100% sure that it is a girl but compared to the other chicks she is a she or a weird boy.

 

[fluffyfeathers]

LOOKS like a grey to me from what i can see...but the red in the chest would make it tortoise. Do you have a picture that shows the whole bird including tail and feet?

What color is this? She is about 10 weeks old. Not 100% sure that it is a girl but compared to the other chicks she is a she or a weird boy.

 

[BY Chicken Lady]

Hi everyone

I would like to buy some bearded silkie eggs Any color But I love the white and bluff. Please pm me if you have any thank you

Check with Kelar, she sells silkie eggs under the name of CatDance. She is really easy to work with, does a beautiful job of packing the eggs for safe shipment and she has a great reputation here on BYC!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/u/58318/kelar

 

[OohLaLa]

Holy cow that whole don't walk under ladders thing is for a reason. One of my white silkies caught a direct hit of poo down one whole side. She must have been standing under one of the corner roosts.

 

[moomoodiddy]

Holy cow that whole don't walk under ladders thing is for a reason. One of my white silkies caught a direct hit of poo down one whole side. She must have been standing under one of the corner roosts.

lol sounds tramatizing abunch of my silkies get under my feet at meal time and often get hit by things

 

[moomoodiddy]

Blipit007 you can imagine how nerve racking its been here! Now I have another egg started to pip just looks like a little chip out of it noticed it at noon today and its 8:00 and NO CHANGE! Oh no! Not again. Please little chick come out on your own! What to do? I'm scared I'll screw up again and do the wrong thing. I guess I'll leave it till tomorrow at noon then I don't know, I would think its time to help. Oh mercy.
Mumsy is doing well still hobbling around on her hurt leg. She needs a friend, please hatch little Faith. I've decided to name this new egg faith. I can hear her peeping in there why did she stop piping?

is ur humidity too high and stop opening the incubator so much

 

[Suzierd]

is ur humidity too high and stop opening the incubator so much

No it was to low, and they weren't in a incubator. I now have them in a home made incubator out of a styrofoam ice chest and I got the temps and humidity good. Whew such a relief! They started being way more active, three eggs now have holes and a lot of cracking and pushing going on and I'm happy now.

Update on Mumsy, she is doing well except for a very sore foot, I'm beginning to think its broke. Here she is holding it up.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: What do you see here that says she is opening the incubator too much? I certainly don't see anything that indicates that that is happening

 

[RockerHen]

No it was to low, and they weren't in a incubator. I now have them in a home made incubator out of a styrofoam ice chest and I got the temps and humidity good. Whew such a relief! They started being way more active, three eggs now have holes and a lot of cracking and pushing going on and I'm happy now.

Update on Mumsy, she is doing well except for a very sore foot, I'm beginning to think its broke. Here she is holding it up.

Poor baby. Is it swollen? I've dealt with broken toes/feet twice with my turkeys this year. Once with an older poult who broke its middle toe, I used a popsicle stick and taped it up and it healed fine. Another with a young poult, about a week old. I think it was one of the foot bones, not the toes. I couldn't do much about it, and it limped pretty bad for about a week, but it healed up fine on its own and walks perfectly normal now at three months old. How did little mumsy get hurt?