Silkie thread!

[Sylvester017]

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 Don King swept-back crest hairdo is the way one Silkie owner uses to identify their little roos early on. But look for a larger comb and streamers in the crest and tail feathers also.

 

[RubyNala97]

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.   

I really liked the website! Beautiful silkies! Thanks for all the info. I first hatched buff and I'm selling them because I decided not to stick with it. Plus, they had grey leakage in the tail feathers. Do you find buff to be a "harder" color to breed? I've decided to go with "paint"!

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.



 

Very interesting info! Thank you for posting. What book was this from?

Does anybody's Silkies Roost?? Mines Are 3 Months Old & My Roo Crows But They Don't Roost. I'll get a picture right now to show you guys. Anybody's Silkies don't roost either ?

None of mine roost! I have one roost that was only a few inches off the ground and still no roosting! :/

 

[codieshell]

5 broody hens

 

[Banaynaychicken]

Does anybody's Silkies Roost?? Mines Are 3 Months Old & My Roo Crows But They Don't Roost. I'll get a picture right now to show you guys. Anybody's Silkies don't roost either ?

My silkies are about 4 months old, and they dont roost at all either, my bantam silkie rooster and my bantam silkie pullet (my only 2 silkies) like to snuggle up together in a box with my younger chickens, and my hens stay in their own boxes, or roost on the sides, or in the middle on our 2 bars.

 

[dandymandie]

Does anybody's Silkies Roost?? Mines Are 3 Months Old & My Roo Crows But They Don't Roost. I'll get a picture right now to show you guys. Anybody's Silkies don't roost either ?

Mine roost, they even choose to roost on the higher pole even though there is a lower one available. Once one did it they all followed. :/

 

[chicken hawk 33]

New findings.The one that looks like a roo his feathers are more stream line,an the other two are more fluffy,and he is bigger then the other two

 

[destiny_56085]

I really liked the website! Beautiful silkies! Thanks for all the info. I first hatched buff and I'm selling them because I decided not to stick with it. Plus, they had grey leakage in the tail feathers. Do you find buff to be a "harder" color to breed? I've decided to go with "paint"!

Very interesting info! Thank you for posting. What book was this from?
None of mine roost! I have one roost that was only a few inches off the ground and still no roosting!

Buffs... my stubborn project that are almost impossible to get right. I'll try and keep it simple.... The standard itself is self up for failure. They want the gorgeous golden buffs like in other breeds, however they forget that silkies have black skin to deal with. Genetically speaking, you are dealing with 2 main bases for buff: wheaten and partridge. Wheaten bases are those pure golden buffs that we all desire to get. That however goes hand in hand with the lighter skin color, which is a disqualification if you get the red combs, lighter eyes, etc. Add in the partridge base and you get back to the dark combs, eyes etc. That is also responsible for the dark in the tails, wings....aka smutty coloration. You aren't DQ'd like for the red combs, but you are faulted if there is a lot of smut. You pretty much need the perfect balance of the 2 genes and raise ALOT of babies to get those few perfect ones. Deal with all those color issues on top of basic conformation (type, wings, toes, etc), depth of feathering, etc and you really have your work cut out for working with this color.

Paints are pretty and have come a long ways in the past few years. They just aren't in the standard yet and can only be shown as NSV - non-standard variety. They can't compete for overall breed classes and thus can't get on champ row.

I actually found that article on Show Bird Bid forum and I think there is some discussions back on TheCoop.Org on the topic.....

My silkies don't roost at all either... My bantam polish can sometimes fly up to try and roost, but can't figure out how to get back down. Fun dealing with crested/bearded breeds....

 

[Fancychooklady]

My silkies are about 4 months old, and they dont roost at all either, my bantam silkie rooster and my bantam silkie pullet (my only 2 silkies) like to snuggle up together in a box with my younger chickens, and my hens stay in their own boxes, or roost on the sides, or in the middle on our 2 bars.

I've supplied a 3 m old timber ladder that runs along one wall and up to the top of the nest boxes. Many of my non bearded will happily climb along the ladder to roost , but I have noticed that the bearded ( vision impaired ) are more inclined to huddle in the corner. Depending on your set up it is often safer for them to be up off the ground, here the rats hassle them if they aren't on the roost.

 

[Fancychooklady]

My little ' Flossie's ' are ready for the animal nursery. Hope no little fingers mistake them for fairy floss.

 

[silkiecuddles]

My little ' Flossie's ' are ready for the animal nursery. Hope no little fingers mistake them for fairy floss.

THEY ARE so cute! How did you dye them??