Silkie thread!

[FirstTimeClucky]

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.

Hmm sounds like the best thing for me to do is use the tarp but put shavings in, instead of sand. That will at least prevent the shaving mess. With those big fluffy feet they can kick a surprising amount of shavings around. I hoped that the play sand would be ok for their feet, and cleaner because I can scoop the poop out. They're indoors, so the sand would only get wet from their droppings and possibly near their water. But I'll save the sand for the quail. Scooping isn't a problem, I already scoop two cat litter boxes every day.

I just thought of something - is it a good idea to offer them a pan with sand every so often for dust baths?

Re the blue earlobes: When I first got my Silkies I had three of them, two were partridge. Unfortunately the other partridge died suddenly. It was a couple of weeks older than the others, and had the bright blue earlobes. Maybe the white one will develop the blue lobes. Right now his lobes are pretty small.

Here are a couple of pics of the partridge's new orange feathers. They look a bit paler today. He still has a lot of new feathers coming in.

 

[NNYchick]

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.

I was wondering why DLM wouldn't be good for silkies? I planed on using straw and dried leaves in half of my covered run. I currently have a small pile of dried leaves in a pile in the corner of their temperary run, they like to dig in it. Will it cause problems later on?

 

[Hinotori]

Hmm sounds like the best thing for me to do is use the tarp but put shavings in, instead of sand. That will at least prevent the shaving mess. With those big fluffy feet they can kick a surprising amount of shavings around. I hoped that the play sand would be ok for their feet, and cleaner because I can scoop the poop out. They're indoors, so the sand would only get wet from their droppings and possibly near their water. But I'll save the sand for the quail. Scooping isn't a problem, I already scoop two cat litter boxes every day.

I just thought of something - is it a good idea to offer them a pan with sand every so often for dust baths?

Re the blue earlobes: When I first got my Silkies I had three of them, two were partridge. Unfortunately the other partridge died suddenly. It was a couple of weeks older than the others, and had the bright blue earlobes. Maybe the white one will develop the blue lobes. Right now his lobes are pretty small.

Here are a couple of pics of the partridge's new orange feathers. They look a bit paler today. He still has a lot of new feathers coming in.
View attachment 1119392 View attachment 1119393

I'd like to see a very clear side head/neck as well as comb picture in very bright light. Flash may or may not help.

That might be female.

 

[Hinotori]

I was wondering why DLM wouldn't be good for silkies? I planed on using straw and dried leaves in half of my covered run. I currently have a small pile of dried leaves in a pile in the corner of their temperary run, they like to dig in it. Will it cause problems later on?

Deep litter breaks down to basically soil. I toss a few shavings in every now and then, but the worms and microbes break them down quite quickly. Poop under the roosts only lasts a few days at most. No smell in there. I've dug some of this out and used directly in raised beds with no bad effect. (Squash love it). This is not a little coop. It's 15 x 8. The build up in there is 8-12 inches. More under roosts.

Silkies like to sleep on fluffier (and warmer) stuff than soil if they will not roost

 

[Hinotori]

18 weeks showing earlobes. The female wasn't being cooperative. Male doesn't care what I do to him as long as it's attention. He's more red than I like but has other redeeming qualities.

 

[Hinotori]

Range of color here on this batch. 3 female, 2 male. Males are on ends. Notice combs are wider. 8.5 weeks old

 

[TattooedChicks]

I need to catch the little bugger to get a picture, but what are the odds that a 5.5 week old black silkie chick is male based on comb development? Looks like a very small, wrinkled black pea at the top of the beak. Or is this normal female growth too? Only ever had single comb birds, so I have no idea what to make of this little alien in my coop.

 

[ShowTimeSilkies]

Sorry to high jack the thread a bit but I'm now the proud mamma of two beautiful splash Silkie chicks. Out of a horrendous hatch with a very bad local breeder I managed to get these two lovelies to hatch yesterday. The local breeder that I bought 2 dozen eggs from sold me extremely old eggs that were poorly packaged. When I say old I mean OLD. These eggs had aircells the size of eggs that had been incubating for 10-14+ days. And when I inquired about a refund she wouldn't respond. But out of all that I have my two lovely babies River and Forest. River is the more puffed up one and Forest is the one with the worse case of sticky chick lol. Forest has lovely dark black skin while Rivers is more of a dark grayish black but Rivers foot and leg feathering is amazing even at only a day old lol

 

[Hinotori]

This is a picture of Silkieville from December. It's 20x60 overall. 20x20 central area I can open each of the 4 pens into.

Each pen is 10x20 with 3/4 of that covered. They have dog houses or the similar chicken coops. They only sleep and lay eggs in them. Any other time they are outside. I try to keep no more than 10 birds in each pen.

 

[TattooedChicks]

Here's the little fluff ball, and there's actually a bird under all that fuzz!

Any thoughts on the comb? And is that red leakage on the back or just damage from playing in the sun?