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I didn't think so.
I dbout im going to find perfect buff silkies, because there is on 'perfect' animal out there. So i would probably want to breed them, but I don't want to have a lot of pens to keep pairs/trios/quads, can i still help improve the breed/variety and not be over my head with chickens?
Well then you probably don't want to work with buff silkies. The very standard written for them is set up for failure. If you want the nice dark skin required on a silkie, you have to breed for the black tailed/partridge based buffs. You are going to encounter alot of smut in the tails and wing primaries in a quest to get the dark skin. If you want the nice clear golden/wheaten based buffs, you encounter problems with too light of down color and going back to red or light greyish skin color again. To get good buffs for the show ring, you have to raise alot. Be prepared to send alot to pet homes. Its nothing more than a fine balancing act to try and get a bird with dark enough skin and very little smut in the coloration. Those birds aren't always going to breed true either. Hatch 100 chicks and you might end up with 5 truly good enough to show. This is just looking at coloration...take into consideration conformation and you might have 1 decent one. Buffs also change color with molts too. A chick that starts out clear may have alot of black by the time its 10 months. Some of your darker ones will molt out clearer. They are frustrating! I've played with them so many times over the years and sold out/given up many times.
Amen! I've got some decent ones,.. and it's a struggle no matter how good the initial stock is. Although, the problems in black males is almost as bad... but not quite
