Silkie thread!

[QueenMisha]

This chick came from a Silkie sized egg & the father is a Silkie but the smooth wings have us puzzled. What are people's thoughts on this chick? It is about 2 weeks old.

Momma hen may have been a Sizzle not a Silkie. Or maybe a Silkie cross. I have some chicks that are 3/4 Silkie 1/4 Cochin (mom was Silkie/Banty Cochin mix) and they look like pure Silkies, just some have flat feathers.

 

[howfunkyisurchicken]

Momma hen may have been a Sizzle not a Silkie. Or maybe a Silkie cross. I have some chicks that are 3/4 Silkie 1/4 Cochin (mom was Silkie/Banty Cochin mix) and they look like pure Silkies, just some have flat feathers.

Agreed. It looks very much like a Silkie, so I'd guess either a Sizzle or a mix thats got a lot of Silkie as the parent. Sizzles are wonderful, I've been breedimg them for some time now. Here are a couple of my smooth Sizzles

 

[Duck Drover]

It is hard to know just how "pure" Silkies are because cross breeds can still have silkied feathering, five toes, black skin, foot/leg feathering, walnut combs and crests. Silkies have been crossed with Polish chickens to get bigger crests and Cochins for more dense leg feathering so even the show winners are not "pure" Silkies. We started with hatchery mutt Silkies because we just wanted them to hatch duck eggs. Our Little Giant incubators work so well that we hatch most of our Silkie eggs in them, unless we leave eggs under the broody hens to give them something to do.

Many years ago I laughed at Silkies and could not understand why anyone would want them. Their utility as brooders made me decide to give them a try but I initially did not care what they looked like (especially when they were free). We had mixed colors and pretty much nothing all that special to look at but their being so small and docile makes them more like pets than production or meat birds.

Now we only keep and hatch breeder to show quality Silkies, not pet quality, except for the pet quality chicks we sell as hatchlings due to toe issues. We have a chick that hatched yesterday that has a slight inward curl to the toes so we probably will not keep it for breeding even though it is fine otherwise (it is vaulted which some like and others don't like). We keep our best chickens and sell the rest so we can keep getting higher quality from our flock.

Any Silkies with disqualifications should be called Silkie crosses, in my opinion, but that is between the buyer and seller. I have had chicks from other breeders that had straight combs but I do not consider a bird with a straight comb a pure Silkie because the comb defect had to come from another breed and that would invalidate the purity of the bird in my opinion. Unless a bird meets ALL the standards for that breed, I would personally call it a cross.

 

[WVduckchick]

Agreed. It looks very much like a Silkie, so I'd guess either a Sizzle or a mix thats got a lot of Silkie as the parent. Sizzles are wonderful, I've been breedimg them for some time now. Here are a couple of my smooth Sizzles

Love these!

Can you explain a little more about Sizzle breeding? I just hatched 6 chicks from silkie mothers, and a frizzle bantam cochin daddy. Only 1 has 5 toes, but they all have very dark skin. One for sure is frizzled, another was looking so, then not, now kinda looking frizzled again. They are 8 weeks old now.

 

[QueenMisha]

Love these!

Can you explain a little more about Sizzle breeding? I just hatched 6 chicks from silkie mothers, and a frizzle bantam cochin daddy. Only 1 has 5 toes, but they all have very dark skin. One for sure is frizzled, another was looking so, then not, now kinda looking frizzled again. They are 8 weeks old now.

I'm sure you'll get a ton of great answers on this but here's what I'll say.

Sizzles are Silkies in all ways except their feather type. Now of course this is multi-generational Sizzles I'm talking about; your birds are what would be called first gen Sizzles. They're technically crossbreeds, but with work you could create a decent sizzle in a few generations. Based on the breeders I've seen working with them it will take 15-20 years to get a proper Sizzle.

The birds you have currently will be 50% Frizzled, 50% flat feathered, and 100% will carry the recessive silkie gene but of course not show it. Toe numbers and pigmentation will vary. If you wanted to proceed in makin Sizzles, you would want to cross the Frizzled offspring with the most Silkie-like characteristics back to a good Silkie. This will yield 75% Silkied and 25% flat feathered offspring, and 50/50 Frizzled and non-Frizzled offspring. So this cross has the potential for flat feathered birds, frizzled birds, silkied birds, and birds with both genes. Their Silkie characteristics will vary.

 

[Frindizzle]

Happy Mother's Day! Hope it's been a good one for you all.

 

[generaldsherman]

Agreed. It looks very much like a Silkie, so I'd guess either a Sizzle or a mix thats got a lot of Silkie as the parent. Sizzles are wonderful, I've been breedimg them for some time now. Here are a couple of my smooth Sizzles

what's a sizzle?

 

[QueenMisha]

what's a sizzle?

It's a Silkie with frizzled or flat feathers instead of silkied feathers; they may also have both frizzled and silkied feathers. They originated in crosses of Silkies and Bantam Frizzle Cochins.

 

[Duck Drover]

It's a Silkie with frizzled or flat feathers instead of silkied feathers; they may also have both frizzled and silkied feathers. They originated in crosses of Silkies and Bantam Frizzle Cochins.

My understanding is that Sizzles are an unofficial crossbreed of frizzled Cochin to Silkie. They are not a true breed because two Sizzles bred together do not breed true. The only way to get the desired characteristics is to cross breeds. Sizzles can be either smooth or frizzled.

I have bred first generation with good results but breeding Sizzle to Sizzle resulted in a mess of traits so I never did it again. In fact, I decided not to breed Sizzles anymore and stick to Silkies.

 

[QueenMisha]

My understanding is that Sizzles are an unofficial crossbreed of frizzled Cochin to Silkie. They are not a true breed because two Sizzles bred together do not breed true. The only way to get the desired characteristics is to cross breeds. Sizzles can be either smooth or frizzled.

I have bred first generation with good results but breeding Sizzle to Sizzle resulted in a mess of traits so I never did it again. In fact, I decided not to breed Sizzles anymore and stick to Silkies.

I'm talking about true multi-generational Sizzles. These will breed true and are like Silkies in all aspects except feather type. My local breeder has Sizzles on their 18th or 19th generation and many are show quality. All Sizzles originate in Cochin crosses but it takes several generations to create anything close to a real Sizzle.