I am hoping to get some EEgers, a Delaware and two silkies. Has anyone been successful or unsuccessful keeping these types of chickens together? I have a life long wish for silkies, need eggs and cannot have coops all over the place. Help!
There should not be any issues with that. Especially if you get them at the same time, as day old chicks. Otherwise, the only problem may be integration of 'new' chickens into an established flock...
I added my silkies (about the same age as my original flock) later and they accepted the rooster but tormented the 2 girls. I now have a partially bald silkie recovering in the basement. I am just happy that they don't stink. Will be building a silkie coop in the spring.
I have my silkies seperate but I know people put them together. My fear is that silkies skulls are open on top and if they get pecked hard by a large breed bird it could kill them.
My Silkie rules the roost. Was added after my other hens had been here for about a month. BUT the new one I just got is seperate from them so Its a timing thing I think.Get them together and they will be fine.
We bought ours all together. I had EE's, silkies, orpingtons and some white crested polish bantams all together. At about 8 months old one of the orpingtons started pecking all the other chickens really badly. No matter what I tried I could not get her to stop and it took a while to pin down which one was the culprit. Meanwhile the orpington went after one of the silkie hens and almost killed her. I ended up moving both my silkie hens into their own little coop near our backdoor. The silkie hen she went after is, um, for lack of a better description mentally challenged. The other silkie hen is a lot brighter and never had a problem. My silkie roo is still in the main coop. By the time I figured out who the bad orpington was, she conveniently died. We have not tried to put the silkie hens back in the main coop. I do not think the one with the issues would handle it well and we like having our little silkie hens right out the back door.
Mine are fine together - 2 silkies, 2 EEs, 2 SS, 4 turkens, 3 SFs and a bunch of meat birds. The meat birds were added at 3 weeks of age and still everyone gets along fine.
I got my silkie chick at the same time as the astralorps and slw's and she is doing fine after 5 months.
I have my Silkies mostly separate from my standards... I am running three different coops right now and am hoping to get down to two before the snow really starts to fly. With my Silkies I did put one standard EE with them because she was getting picked on in the laying coop. The Silkies accepted her without any complaint or problems. Her feathers have grown back and she is pretty again! I have 14 silkies - at least 4 of which are boys and one EE together.
no problems yet(edited to say all the silkies in the pic are roosters) thats not even half of my free range flock
