Silkie thread!

[Fancychooklady]

Breakfast,grinded corn,sunflower seeds,and starter grower and fresh grass

Very cute babies you have . It's best not to feed grass clippings, but to let them pick their own. When we pick it , it's usually too long for their systems and the grass can form a ' mat ' in the crop leading to crop impaction.

 

[RubyNala97]

Great conversation, guys! Very informative! Keep the info on breeding toward sop coming!

I'm assuming you meant ' those without ' feathering to middle toe. http://www.browneggblueegg.com/Standard.html

Thanks for this link!! Good info!

You want feathering to at least that middle toe. I personally like it on the 4/5th (the inside toes) too but just a perk. When you are breeding for showing, it doesn't pay to raise those up if you already know they don't have much promise. For someone that just wants pretty pets, its not a big deal.

Now I have to go check all my youngs ones 4th & 5th toes! You've got me curious! [ name="destiny_56085" url="/t/297632/silkie-thread/56880#post_16080842"] As for the culling part, I usually do mean euthanize. Unfortunately there are only so many pet homes to be found and people only want so many roosters no matter how pretty they are. Like over on my bantam faverolles... I can tell sex already at a week or so of age if they are going to be male or female. Why raise 50+ lil cockerels up if you know you can't get rid of them? Even full grown, they aren't big enough to process and they turn into lil trouble makers when they mature. Even on the silkies, I'm not doing the breed any justice if I let those with DQ's into the hands of breeders for them to generate more crappy birds. I know it seems harsh, but for all those beautiful pullets out there that everyone wants, there is also everything else that came out of the shell that wasn't so pretty and/or crows. Sylvester.... you are more like me than you may realize. I live in town and always have. I make it work though... From the time I was just a kid, I took riding lessons and boarded my horse in the country. Way back when, I showed horse and my siblings were the ones showing birds... They had a pigeon coop in town and rest of the birds they kept at friend's farms. When I graduated college I missed my animals. Moved back to my hometown and realized that buying a farm wasn't even remotely in the budget. On the flip side, there is also a ton of old barns sitting empty up here. Got to talking to some of the old guys in town and for last 15 years have been renting an old dairy farm. Its an old guy that rents out all his land and has too many heart problems to continue milking cows. He loves having the animals back out there and goes to check on them more than me probably. He also has the security to know someone will be out there checking on him too every day and helping to keep that driveway open in winter among other things. So I put a few extra miles on my truck every day... Its worth it. I used to breed partridge until 2006. Its one of those colors that can be frustrating though since it requires a double mating system to get the colors right on respective sexes. I remember only 1 person exhibiting them here in the state once about 10 years ago. Give it a whirl again.... [/quote] I was actually going to ask you about your culling but didn't want to put you on the spot, publicly. Thanks for sharing. I'm learning a lot. Can I ask what colors do you breed? And what did you mean by partridge being a "double mating system"?

 

[chicken hawk 33]

I looked again and,mine have feathers on all toes

 

[Rocky64]

Can anyone help me tell which gender this chick is. It's about 2 months old. I'm leaning more towards rooster but I'm no expert.

 

[destiny_56085]

I was actually going to ask you about your culling but didn't want to put you on the spot, publicly. Thanks for sharing. I'm learning a lot. Can I ask what colors do you breed? And what did you mean by partridge being a "double mating system"?

On the silkies, I have black, white, buff, and now partridge again. I bred blue and splash up til just a couple years ago too. Pics of breeding stock are on www.piehlspoultry.com .

In the color standard for partridge, it requires a double mating system to achieve what they want. The males they want darker with black breast, females more the chesnut color. I'd have to go find my standard if you want an exact definition... But anyways to get those colors, you need to run 2 separate breeding pens to get the correct colors on both sexes. Your 'male line' will produce females that are way too dark, but you'll get decent males. Your 'female line' will produce those correctly colored females, but males are too light. Either way, its not just a matter of throwing your best birds together in a pen and calling it good.

 

[Sylvester017]

My whites stay very clean. That is actually how I came up with my byc name. A lovely old man came to an open garden we were holding and he remarked ' my goodness look at those fancy chooks ,you must spend a lot of time washing them ' . Tomorrow I'm dying some of my whites for the local Agricultural show animal nursery.

Our soil must be a clingy type because the slightest bit of watering, rain sprinkles, or gardening makes paste out of our yard. God-forbid the girls take a dust bath in the damp dirt LOL! That's why I have an appreciation for the Partridge girl because dirt/stains are not so noticeable. When the little Black Silkie takes her dust baths I don't dare stand anywhere near her -- she seems to enjoy shaking out a cup of moist dirt all over my shoes! There is plenty of dry dirt patches but my hens love the cooler damper areas.

I've never had Silkies but I'm going to get some soon!

You will absolutely LUV them! I thought they were only good as pets and read their egg production was low because of being a broody breed. So I got some LF for eggs -- I didn't need too. The Silkie bantams are the largest of bantams and therefore have larger eggs - mine are consistently 1.25 oz. So, we use 5 Silkie eggs to make a normal 3-egg omelet -- no big deal. And I would much rather deal with the gentler smaller sweeter Silkie than a couple of bully LF. Silkies require a little TLC but once you get educated on care and health maintenance it's a breeze to handle them -- easier than LF health care maintenance IMO.

As for the culling part, I usually do mean euthanize. Unfortunately there are only so many pet homes to be found and people only want so many roosters no matter how pretty they are. Like over on my bantam faverolles... I can tell sex already at a week or so of age if they are going to be male or female. Why raise 50+ lil cockerels up if you know you can't get rid of them? Even full grown, they aren't big enough to process and they turn into lil trouble makers when they mature. Even on the silkies, I'm not doing the breed any justice if I let those with DQ's into the hands of breeders for them to generate more crappy birds. I know it seems harsh, but for all those beautiful pullets out there that everyone wants, there is also everything else that came out of the shell that wasn't so pretty and/or crows.

Sylvester.... you are more like me than you may realize. I live in town and always have. I make it work though... From the time I was just a kid, I took riding lessons and boarded my horse in the country. Way back when, I showed horse and my siblings were the ones showing birds... They had a pigeon coop in town and rest of the birds they kept at friend's farms. When I graduated college I missed my animals. Moved back to my hometown and realized that buying a farm wasn't even remotely in the budget. On the flip side, there is also a ton of old barns sitting empty up here. Got to talking to some of the old guys in town and for last 15 years have been renting an old dairy farm. Its an old guy that rents out all his land and has too many heart problems to continue milking cows. He loves having the animals back out there and goes to check on them more than me probably. He also has the security to know someone will be out there checking on him too every day and helping to keep that driveway open in winter among other things. So I put a few extra miles on my truck every day... Its worth it.

I used to breed partridge until 2006. Its one of those colors that can be frustrating though since it requires a double mating system to get the colors right on respective sexes. I remember only 1 person exhibiting them here in the state once about 10 years ago. Give it a whirl again....

That's why we need people like you in the bird world. You understand the necessity of culling. It's one of the reasons I won't raise or order chicks even if I had the room. I used to breed Persians and was lucky to have a good network for breeding but it is still difficult to find a home for the one animal that is lacking.

On my folks' farm raising chickens wasn't a problem. Used mostly for eggs and then ultimately the dinner table. My DH is a city boy so our LF-turned-bullies he wouldn't eat and found suitable flock homes for them instead. One good thing about having popular LF heritage or layer breeds to re-home is that folks want them for the eggs and it hasn't been difficult to place them here in the city. I enjoy our little retirement cottage backyard flock and really have the right amount of birds for our tiny space. Having to drive somewhere else to enjoy a large flock of birds is defeating my purpose of enjoying them at my sliding door where I have a panoramic view of their continuous antics while having a cup of coffee.

I think raising Silkies of any variety is a challenge. Our Partridge Silkie boy was a sweetheart, his color was so impressive, but he had the red comb that really spoiled his looks yet his sister had a nice dark little comb. I would've kept him if he weren't so darn noisy! We still have the Partridge sister going on 5 and still giving us a few dozen eggs in Spring and in Fall. She's my little matriarch alpha now and she earned the title after all the years of abuse I ignorantly put her through with bullying from LF breeds that we had to re-home. If a LF chicken doesn't play nice with our priority Silkies then they're outta here LOL!

 

[destiny_56085]

Here's a reprint of an old article:

SINGLE vs. DOUBLE MATING
from The A.B.C. of Breeding Poultry for Exhibition, Egg-Production and Table Purposes

1919

WHAT IS SINGLE MATING?
In certain breeds the standard decrees that the characteristics of the male and female should be different, which necessitates double-mating, explained below. Where the standard for the two sexes is practically the same, then single mating is sufficient. By single mating I mean the breeding of both sexes as exhibition specimens from one mating or single pen of birds.

WHAT IS DOUBLE MATING?
Double-mating means the mating of two pens, one to produce exhibition cockerels and the other exhibition pullets. This process of breeding has done much to spoil many good old breeds, for few little men have accommodation sufficient to keep two pens. Many poultry fanciers give this double-mating question some hard knocks, but we have only the Club Standards to blame. When a new breed comes into being, the first desire of the faddists is to draw up a standard that is hard to breed to. They contend that it is better to have a breed that is difficult to obtain high-class specimens of, than where we can easily breed winners. As things are at present, double-mating is necessary in many breeds, and I leave it at that.
In the case of laced varieties, such as the beautiful Gold and Silver Laced Wyandottes, we have perforce to adopt the double mating principles. If we mated the Palace winning Cock to the Palace winning Pullet we should breed birds that were of very inferior quality. By fitting up a cockerel-breeding pen and a pullet breeding pen our chances are excellent. In the cockerel-breeding pen of any variety the male will be a tip-top show specimen and his mates females that are not show birds, but merely breeders likely to throw high-class cockerels when mated to the exhibition male. The pullets from this mating will, of course, be "duds” and not fit for show purposes. The females in the pullet-breeding pen will all be first-class exhibition birds and the male not a show bird, but a breeder most likely to breed tip-top exhibition pullets. The cockerels from this mating will be "duds" and unfit for the show bench. The whole modus operandi can be thinned down to this: The cockerel-breeding male must possess all the necessary characteristics to breed exhibition cockerels, whilst the pullet breeding male must boast of those characteristics that will go to breed exhibition pullets. The system is not so complicated as it would appear at first sight and is interesting to follow out, but there must, of course, be many "wasters" in the progeny whether male or female respectively. In many cases fanciers are satisfied with breeding one sex only and winning honors with same. They specialize in pullets or cockerels, keeping the pullet-breeders or cockerel-breeders only as the case may be. This naturally does not entail so much work as would be necessary if the two sorts were bred.

 

[Banaynaychicken]

Can anyone help me tell which gender this chick is. It's about 2 months old. I'm leaning more towards rooster but I'm no expert.

The way this chick is standing, so upright, i would take a guess that they could be a rooster, but my white silkie hen walks/stands like this as well, so you can never know really, until this little cutie crows or lays. Beautiful white though! so cute!

 

[silkiecuddles]

@Rocky64 if say you've got a lovely little roo

 

[Rocky64]

The way this chick is standing, so upright, i would take a guess that they could be a rooster, but my white silkie hen walks/stands like this as well, so you can never know really, until this little cutie crows or lays. Beautiful white though! so cute!

the chick was trying to get out of that purple bucket and it's mom was just outside of the bucket where he was looking so he was standing up straight to look at her, it normally doesn't stand that straight up. Yeah that's very true, with silkies you can't tell 100% till they either crow or lay. It doesn't matter if it's a rooster or hen, I have room for both, but I'm leaning towards rooster( crazy ik) because I only have one silkie rooster right now and he's getting up there in age. Thanks, Sky is a cutie no matter what it is, that's for sure.