Silkie thread!

[Fancychooklady]

Looks like a boy!

Yes it certainly does, the hawk took the pullet.

 

[sonderah]

I had a breeding pair of lavender silkies shipped from CA.  They arrived Feb 5th and I just got my first egg from the hen last Wednesday, so it took her 6 weeks to lay.  Thought I was going to go crazy waiting!! But now I have 3 eggs in 4 days.  Hoping to get one or two more before I put them in the incubator Monday or Tuesday.  Hope you don't have to wait that long. 

Oh my!!! Well, maybe she will go broody then. Be of some use besides just adorable! Lol

 

[chick rookie]

The hatchery EEs in feed stores can be nice birds. The hatcheries will sex day-old chicks for feed stores so pretty certain you are getting the right sex. It's usually bantams that aren't sexed because it's too dangerous to sex them.
Again, lucky if you have slate legs on your EEs. That's a good thing. I love the beautiful color variations on EEs. I hope yours turns out to be a girl - it looks Buff but you can't tell at this age - a real cutie because I personally love Buff colors. There ARE all-white EE pullets but its a rarity. I never heard about only roos being white as I have seen photos of the snow white EE pullets - just rarely. But if yours turns out not a girl, chick season will be in full swing for a few months to get another if you need to. Chick leg colors (and feathering) can change as they age. My Dominique chick was all black with a small white dot on her head and white solid underbelly and dark patches on her shanks. As she feathered out she lost the solid black and she developed the striped black and white Dom feather pattern and her legs lost the black patching down her legs turning yellowy. Chicks change a lot.
You're right - hatcheries or feed stores keep labeling EEs as Ameraucanas. My feed store is aware of that and informs his customers but some feed stores don't care or some employees don't know the difference. In U.K and Australia they call their Ameraucanas with tails as "Araucana."
I still love the EEs because they are related to the actual Ameraucanas - just don't meet SOP. I like the surprise of what color egg the EEs will lay. My APA Ameraucana definitely lays blue or she wouldn't be "Ameraucana." But with EEs you can get pink, mint, sage, blue-green, stone, cream, brown, even white plus there's all the gorgeous plumage patterns. With those egg color variants in the egg basket you can have just a 1/2 dozen EEs and have 6 different egg colors. My friend has 1 Amer and 3 EEs and gets 1 blue, 2 different shades of green, and 1 pink tan. She sells eggs too and EEs and Amers are great LG-XL layers with sweet dispositions usually. Her customers are willing to wait for her eggs for their golden yolks. They will order 3 and 4 dozen at a time because they know they are on a "waiting list." I read once that eating greens helps the hen form the Omega-3 golden color in the yolk. Dunno if that's true but my free-range girls really have very golden yolks - even my friends and family notice.
Silkie breeders are everywhere. Threre's got to be a breeder near you where you can pickup pet quality juvenile pullets that sell cheaper than show quality simply because these breeders have a surplus of Silkies that don't meet SOP but are still good birds either for breeding or to use as broodies. All bantams at feed stores are "straight run" and not sexed but an older juvenile from a breeder should be more easily sexed. You may have to wait for one from a breeder because Silkies, or any chicken, you have to wait until they lay and hatch clutches and wait for the breeder to separate out the pet quality from show stock. I waited 6 months to get my Ameraucanas from a breeder - pet quality because the legs were not slate grey enough for show but does lay the XL Blue eggs and otherwise a gorgeous puffy cheeked cutie.
Silkies are known to be a larger sized bantam. A decent weight for Silkie pullets is in the 2-lb range. My Black weighs 2.2 lb average with the Partridge weighing slightly heavier but not by much. She feels just a bit heavier but size-wise they stand identically the same. The Partridge doesn't have the vaulted skull that the Black has so therefore the Black always has a fuller bonnet around her face. Being free-range they are always picking up debris and spider webs in their "hair" and sometimes we have to clean off their fluff. I like Silkies over other bantams because they don't have combs to frostbite in winter and are hardy in our So Calif heat in spite of all that fluff. We keep a mister going in the backyard if the temps go over 85 degrees and the chickens like to forage under the fine misting spray. Not a bad size egg 1.25 oz for a bantam. They dust-bathe a lot but we still treat them with Organic Poultry Protector 1 or 2x a month because wild birds can continually bring lice into the yard. That's why I worm twice a year also because of the wild bird population - Mourning Doves, Sparrows, Finches, Phoebes, Mocking Birds, Blackbirds, Crows, Hawks, etc. Uninformed people blame chickens for disease but it's the wild birds that carry and spread disease around because they are free-flying everywhere whereas poultry stays generally in a parameter. If disease spreads it's either by man moving birds from location to location or the free-flying wild bird populations flitting around the countryside spreading their "germs" from yard to yard.

have somI e chicks from RK now and am hoping they are all pullets but it really looks like I'm getting 1 roo out of each breed I have, that not good too many roo's not enough hens and way too much crowing and fighting. but will have to wait and see.

I want as many different colors as I can get as well as eggs.
Yesterday I got one of those e-mails from a friend of a friend of a friend.... this couple is thinning out their flock and heard that I need hens and he had 16 I could have if I wanted them. He said they were all just barnyard mixs and still laying but a few were 3 years old.
Well I'm sick of eating store bought rubber eggs so we went and got them, I thought I had really lucked out and got some Americana's, these grils have the ear muffs, beards and Slate legs.... I was so excited

but..... this is what I got this morning when I went to check on them,

got 2 of them , and they are big ones, so I'm still happy cause they are still Beautiful. o and one of them is solid white... yea!!!
I got in touch with a couple Silkies breeders on my state thread and they are going to see what they can come up with for me, but like you said I have to wait for them to grow enough to see which one is what. Thats ok cause my boys are only 10 weeks old anyway.
I used to let mine free range but this year I am building 2 no wait 3 different pens, and my goats are all kidding this month so we are running out of room. And not only that DH got a pup a while ago and I don't like his body language around the chickens so will keep every one penned up.
right now I have the silkies with 3 ISA Browns till they are big enough to go in the laying pen with the other girls.
yes I try to keep wild birds out of my coops , not much I can do about the runs and the yards. I like wild birds just don't like them around my chickens.
What do you use to worm your chickens with?

BTW here is a pic of my new favorite laying hen

 

[Sylvester017]

Here's the one the hawk didn't get.

I keep wondering with all the Tasmanian hawks/predators you lose your chicks to what you do to secure the monma and chicks from aerial predators? Are they in a net top or roofed enclosure? It seems brutal to keep letting the hawks attack the babies out in the open - or do you let them sink or swim in the elements to see which ones are the hardiest to survive? Maybe have a few low-to-the-ground roofed shelters for the Silkies to dive under? Not a criticism but just wondering out loud as everyone has their own style.

 

[Sylvester017]

have somI e chicks from RK now and am hoping they are all pullets but it really looks like I'm getting 1 roo out of each breed I have, that not good too many roo's not enough hens and way too much crowing and fighting. but will have to wait and see.

I want as many different colors as I can get as well as eggs.
Yesterday I got one of those e-mails from a friend of a friend of a friend.... this couple is thinning out their flock and heard that I need hens and he had 16 I could have if I wanted them. He said they were all just barnyard mixs and still laying but a few were 3 years old.
Well I'm sick of eating store bought rubber eggs so we went and got them, I thought I had really lucked out and got some Americana's, these grils have the ear muffs, beards and Slate legs.... I was so excited

but..... this is what I got this morning when I went to check on them,

got 2 of them , and they are big ones, so I'm still happy cause they are still Beautiful. o and one of them is solid white... yea!!!
I got in touch with a couple Silkies breeders on my state thread and they are going to see what they can come up with for me, but like you said I have to wait for them to grow enough to see which one is what. Thats ok cause my boys are only 10 weeks old anyway.
I used to let mine free range but this year I am building 2 no wait 3 different pens, and my goats are all kidding this month so we are running out of room. And not only that DH got a pup a while ago and I don't like his body language around the chickens so will keep every one penned up.
right now I have the silkies with 3 ISA Browns till they are big enough to go in the laying pen with the other girls.
yes I try to keep wild birds out of my coops , not much I can do about the runs and the yards. I like wild birds just don't like them around my chickens.
What do you use to worm your chickens with?

BTW here is a pic of my new favorite laying hen

3 year old hens will not lay as often as younger hens - Each year a hen lays 20% less eggs than the year before. We noticed this especially with our best White Leghorn layer. The good thing is that even though she lays 20% less quantity each year, she will still be a fair layer into her 5th maybe even 6th year. However prolific hens like Sexlink or Hybrids get spent faster because they lay so-o-o many eggs their first 2 years that they are pretty much soup after that. My egg seller friend has weeded out her Sexlinks, ISAs or whatever hers are called, down to one hen and since her Sexlinks were given free, she won't be replacing them. Sexlinks or hens bred only for high volume egg laying have a lot of health issues - eggbound, prolapse, ovarian tumors, reproductive issues, etc. My egg seller friend finally lost her problem Sexlink hen and it wasn't even 2 years old yet from eggbound again. The warm water treatment worked the first time but it didn't work the 2nd time. I suggested she make soup out of the Sexlink after the first incident but she didn't and now she's lost not only an egg layer but a dinner meal as well. Once a bird has health issues rather than having it suffer and lose it in future it's best to process it humanely for organic food while it's still healthy before the health issues reoccur. If I have a sick chicken I go immediately to my vet but I only have 4 hens. In my friend's flock it would be too costly to keep going to the vet and she has learned to treat her own birds. She's kicking herself for not processing the problem Sexlink because she not only lost an egg layer but a dinner for her family as well. In your case since you have so many hens at various ages you'll have a good supply of eggs even past 3 years old.

My egg seller friend has found someone to process the chicks that growup as cockerels for $5 per bird and he cleans them and gives everything on the bird back to you packaged nicely - even the feet which we cook up, de-bone, and feed back to the flock for extra protein. $5 seems like a lot for one bird to process but then its your own organic bird and not some fast-growing deformed Cornish cross sold commercially in the supermarket chains.

EEs can lay ANY color eggs including white, off-white, or cream. The nice thing is that the eggs are BIG. Your white EE hen is just GORGEOUS! Free birds are great to get. My egg seller friend takes in all my nasty tempered egg layers into her pens - she gets free egg layers and I get to re-home an otherwise ill-tempered hen from my flock.

Wild birds are impossible to keep out of the yard. We have a wild bird feeder separated away from the coop but it doesn't work to keep the wild away from the domestic in open areas. I love wildlife and have the feeders for all the wild birds including the Hummingbirds. Even if they weren't being fed by us, they'd still fly down to the yard to gather the chicken feathers for their wild nests. It would be ideal to keep predators and wild populations out of the yard but not really possible so we treat our poultry regularly.

Worming is a matter of preference. Large poultry farms probably wouldn't do like our smaller flock. The worming method we use is Ivermectin paste in a tube about $6 or $7 but it's plenty enough for a big flock of birds (Ivermectin is for horses to squeeze into their mouths for worming) but with chickens we use only one Q-tip drop per pound weight of each chicken on the skin directly under each wing. With Silkies we put one drop equivalent under each wing on the breast skin (that's one drop per pound of bird so 2 drops total - one under each wing). With the 4-lb fowl we use 2 drops under each wing for 4 drops total. If the fowl is 5 lbs then 2 drops under one wing and 3 drops under the other wing for 5 total drops). There are actual poultry wormers sold in feed stores but I never know if the hens are actually ingesting enough to do the job. I like precise measuring for medications so use either drops or paste method. It was posted a few places and also other websites that pumpkin seeds might be natural worming although there hasn't been conclusive research yet. Since the chickens occasionally eat them, I grind up the raw seeds and sprinkle in their wet food. They can pick and choose what they want to eat. My farm Mom said chickens will eat what their body needs.

For poultry vitamins I prefer to use children's Poly-Vi-Sol no iron for supplementation. We retrieve the hens (only 1 at a time in-house) after roosting time when they are mellow and DH brings them into the house and holds their wings on a table and we give them a health inspection, nail clipping, butt washing, Poultry Protector lice spray, or whatever they need after health inspection. The vitamins are given one drop only on the side of the chicken's beak. The annoying drop drips down their beak and they will lick it off. Sometimes they shake their head and the drop flies off. We put another drop on the side of the beak and usually the 2nd time they lick the annoying drip with their tongue. I don't force the beaks open as the liquid might possibly go down their lungs if they are struggling against being held. This way we just tickle their beak away from the nostril and let them ingest it calmly in their own way. 2 of our 4 hens actually look forward to the drop and one Silkie will drink a whole dropperful if we let her - but they get only ONE drop about 1 or 2x a week only. A broody might get an extra drop in a week if she is brooding tenaciously or hardly eating. We take broodies out of their nestbox about 3x a day to make sure they eat, drink, dust-bathe before they go running back to their clutch. My vet has approved all these medication applications. He didn't like people vitamins for the birds but in sparing applications it is ok. There are a lot of people foods and packaging not listed as approved for poultry either like yogurt, kitten food, whole wheat, rolled oats, etc but that doesn't mean it can't be beneficial for poultry LOL - just got to use common sense. I just found out this last winter that black sunflower seeds should be fed to poultry in the winter and not the summer because of liver fat buildup in warmer months. Who knew?

I'm so glad for your new flock additions! Yummy eggs!

 

[atrueb00]

My little chicken is getting all grown up! I gave him a bath and let him stay inside while he dried off. He crowed for the first time in front of me today!

 

[subhanalah]

My little chicken is getting all grown up! I gave him a bath and let him stay inside while he dried off. He crowed for the first time in front of me today!

awesome! How was it?

 

[atrueb00]

perhaps they see each other as "brothers" or some other sort of "two heads are better than one" relationship, where they both feel the need for another male to help fulfill all of the manly roles for the flock. The see each other as equals, they share the power and the responsibilities. And maybe they are both just that type of rooster, not really the biggest boss in town, but teamwork.

My Roos act like each other's wing man (ha, ha) with the hens. One is clearly the dominant one but they both try to make the other one look good to the ladies. Even got a video if them doing their mating dance together.

[VIDEO]

 

[atrueb00]

awesome! How was it?

He was so much quieter than my other silkie roosters. Actually got it on video too!

 

[subhanalah]

I love rooster crowing videos! My husband is "horrified" is how he described hearing your video. Doesn't look too good for any cockerels.