LynnaePB
Free Ranging
Thank you for the feed back! I emailed the breeder as well with the same photo. He just replied. He says he is 5th generation smooth "sizzle" which does not have the sizzle feathers, but is used for breeding sizzles?? Guess he has the gene for the sizzle (silke/frizzle?) feathering, but needs to be bred to the right bird to produce frizzles? Cool, though not sure where I will find the appropriate mate for him. All my other silkies are just plain old silkies!![]()
I don't breed satins/sizzles myself (just regular silkies) but I have researched into it a bit.
Sizzles/satins/feather types get kind of confusing. I think sizzle is the old name for satin but maybe there is more to it. Neither sizzles or satins are a recognized breed at this point but it is my understanding that they are a non silkie feathered bird that can come in either smooth or frizzle that is otherwise bred to the silkie standard.
5th generation likely means your little one has a bit more cochin mixed in than some other sizzle/satin projects that are further along in generations.
Frizzle is a dominant gene so your little smooth baby is not carrying the frizzle gene (if it was it would show). Smooth satins/sizzles are good to breed to a frizzled satin/sizzle however and with that pairing you should get around 50% smooth feathered and 50% frizzle feathered offspring.
Smooth feathered parents are very important in ethical breeding of frizzles because if you breed a frizzle to a frizzle you have a 25% chance of producing something called a frazzle. Frazzles unfortunately do not usually do well as their feathers are often very brittle causing them to be partially bald and I've heard internal problems with their organs are common as well.
Silkie feathering is recessive so your little one could potentially be carrying one copy of the silkie feather gene. You can find out if that is the case by breeding to one of your silkies. If he is carrying the silkie feather gene around 50% of the babies will be silkie feathered and 50% smooth feathered like him.
You can even have silkie feathered birds that are also frizzles (same rules apply, you don't want to breed two frizzle feathered silkies together either if you want to avoid frazzle offspring). It's a little harder to tell if a silkie is a frizzle as the feathers don't curl quite as obviously as with regular frizzles but they look a bit more "frizzy" than regular silkies and there is some curl to their feathers.
Sorry for the long explanation, I hope I didn't further confuse things.
