Silkie with smooth feathers?

[Qualara]

Hi, I bought a mama hen and her 6 little babies from a breeder and one of the chicks has smooth feathers. I've met the father (also a pure breed silkie, the mother is too) and I've seen the cage that they were all in, it was just her and 6 other black silkie hens and the silkie father. Where on earth could this little guy come from? He has the extra toes and feathered feet too. The breeder literately didn't have any other breed of chicken, just silkies. Any ideas?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Perhaps a throw back to when they were normal feathered, a genetics thing.

 

[Michael OShay]

Can you post a pic of your chick, and is there any way you get some pics of its parents and post them? Based on everything I know about Silkies, one of the parents has to have traces of some smooth feathered breed somewhere in its ancestry (a common occurance with hatchery quality Silkies) as no pure Silkies have smooth feathers. Silkie feathering is recessive, so any pure Silkie out of two Silkie feathered parents will have the hair-like feathers. If any smooth feathered bird not carrying the Silkie gene is bred with a Silkie feathered bird, 100% of the offspring will be smooth feathered. I think your chick has to be a mixed having picked up a non-Silkie gene from some smooth feathered breed somewhere in its ancestry.

 

[Qualara]

Can you post a pic of your chick, and is there any way you get some pics of its parents and post them? Based on everything I know about Silkies, one of the parents has to have traces of some smooth feathered breed somewhere in its ancestry (a common occurance with hatchery quality Silkies) as no pure Silkies have smooth feathers. Silkie feathering is recessive, so any pure Silkie out of two Silkie feathered parents will have the hair-like feathers. If any smooth feathered bird not carrying the Silkie gene is bred with a Silkie feathered bird, 100% of the offspring will be smooth feathered. I think your chick has to be a mixed having picked up a non-Silkie gene from some smooth feathered breed somewhere in its ancestry.

I don't have a picture of the dad, but I did see him. He was a cream splash, and he was a normal silkie.

Here is mum:




Here is the baby:








None of her brothers or sisters are like this.

 

[Michael OShay]

I don't have a picture of the dad, but I did see him. He was a cream splash, and he was a normal silkie.

Did the dad have a walnut comb? I don't know where it came from or how it happened, but there is some breed besides just Silkie in that chick.

 

[Qualara]

Did the dad have a walnut comb? I don't know where it came from or how it happened, but there is some breed besides just Silkie in that chick.

I think I remember he did have quite a large walnut comb.

 

[Qualara]

The breeder is going to send me photo tomorrow morning. So I can so you. He's said that he has always only ever breed silkies, it's pure breed!

 

[sourland]

Did the dad have a walnut comb? I don't know where it came from or how it happened, but there is some breed besides just Silkie in that chick.

Absolutely.