Silkie thread!

[NNYchick]

I have extra roos too. If they're lucky, they find homes but even cute roos are hard to home. My extras will become soup. Not ideal but pretty much the only choice since we can't afford to keep a flock of roos.

I know I have thought of soup. I would have no problem with that, the part that really makes my stomach turn about that is they are such good quality and would do great in a breeder pen and of course the ones that are turning out roos are the ones we paid a lot of money for with the intent of breeding silkies.

 

[FirstTimeClucky]

8 week old pullet. She's going to have a huge crest like her older sister.View attachment 1118908

I'm curious - how can you tell she's a pullet? My two are about 10 weeks and I go back and forth every day trying to guess at their genders. All I know for sure is that nobody has crowed or laid eggs yet.

 

[Michelle Guynn]

Yea. I have one looks just like that one and I was thinking roo.

 

[Hinotori]

I am wondering what everyone does when they have too many rosters. I have tried rehoming without much luck. Right not it looks like out of 12, 5 are going to be roosters, 3 are pullets and 4 are still up in the air. My husband is in the process of building our covered run that is predator proof and will winterized, it will be 8'W by 16"L. I had planed on doing one end sand with feeder, nest boxes and an XXL igloo dog house and the other end deep litter for them to dig and forage as in the winter we get a lot of snow and cold temps so from Nov-Apr they will probably be inside the winterized run, but if I have too can I divided it into 2 8x8 pens and put roosters on one side and hens on the other. I know it is not the most ideal for them or me but any ideas we are going to be going into winter soon enough and just not sure what to do.

Soup here. Only the best are kept for later breeding. I never keep many.

 

[Japetus]

Silkies are supposed to have mulberry colored combs, not actually black.

Still, do they exist black combed ones?

 

[Hinotori]

I'm curious - how can you tell she's a pullet? My two are about 10 weeks and I go back and forth every day trying to guess at their genders. All I know for sure is that nobody has crowed or laid eggs yet.

I just know the lines on my birds well enough that some of the girls are obvious. She lacks the tiny bit of growth in the wattles, comb is narrow, smaller body, large crest coming in early.

This doesn't hold true for all lines and there are two others I think may be girls but am not positive yet.

The partridge are the only ones I can say sex for certain at 8 weeks on all of the birds. They have different coloration. The orange necks on the males is a dead giveaway.

 

[Hinotori]

Still, do they exist black combed ones?

It's possible, but the opposite problem usually happens with combs that are too red. I've seen some fairly black combs on white silkies.

You're not going to get the same coloring as an ayam cemani, though.

 

[FirstTimeClucky]

The partridge are the only ones I can say sex for certain at 8 weeks on all of the birds. They have different coloration. The orange necks on the males is a dead giveaway.

Yeah my partridge just started developing longer, shiny orange feathers on the back of the neck. He has also been getting a few "streamer" feathers in his tail. My white one of the same age is still as fluffy as ever. I guess I'd better order or make a rooster collar! It won't hurt to get one anyway, just in case. I'll take pics later on and post them.

Do bright blue earlobes indicate a male? My white one has them but my partridge doesn't. I've seen another partridge that had the blue lobes, but never found out if it grew up to be a roo.

Another unrelated question: would play sand make a good bedding in their pen? Right now I'm using wood chips, but they scatter them all over the place and the chips don't stay fresh for long. I would line the pen with a tarp attached to the "walls" of the pen to keep the sand in. I'd like to be able to scoop out their poop every day, similar to a litter box. I'm planning to switch my coturnix and button quails over to sand for similar reasons, as their eggs are difficult to find in wood shavings and they tend to bury them.

 

[sue25]

Unfortunately that is what you do with so many roos if you can't rehome them. There are some farms that will take your roos but they would.go to freezer most likely.

 

[Hinotori]

Yeah my partridge just started developing longer, shiny orange feathers on the back of the neck. He has also been getting a few "streamer" feathers in his tail. My white one of the same age is still as fluffy as ever. I guess I'd better order or make a rooster collar! It won't hurt to get one anyway, just in case. I'll take pics later on and post them.

Do bright blue earlobes indicate a male? My white one has them but my partridge doesn't. I've seen another partridge that had the blue lobes, but never found out if it grew up to be a roo.

Another unrelated question: would play sand make a good bedding in their pen? Right now I'm using wood chips, but they scatter them all over the place and the chips don't stay fresh for long. I would line the pen with a tarp attached to the "walls" of the pen to keep the sand in. I'd like to be able to scoop out their poop every day, similar to a litter box. I'm planning to switch my coturnix and button quails over to sand for similar reasons, as their eggs are difficult to find in wood shavings and they tend to bury them.

Silkies are supposed to have blue earlobes, male and female. Males will eventually have bigger earlobes than the hens.

Sand is hard on foot feathers. The biggest reason I don't use it for any of my birds is that wet sand gets everywhere and we rain so much here.

I use straw in the run and put down fresh every 2-3 months in winter. It's fairly cheap and as it has decomposed, it's raised the pen floors a bit higher than the surrounding area. Good here as any slightly lower ground gets standing water.


The silkies have pine shavings in their little houses, but hens will carry straw in for a nest sometimes if they are going broody.

I do know people who use sand in their coop and scoop it clean every day. That is so not happening here. I don't scoop the cat box every day and it's a lot smaller.

My large fowl have a dirt floor coop and I have deep litter working correctly in there. Poop breaks down in a few days. It is not for ground huddling silkies, though. Their run is deep straw in winter to keep mud off the eggs.