Silkies - They’re simply SPECTACULAR!

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

This is a bit of a read, but with my past and how Silkies helped me, I wanted to tell it in full.
Warning you now, though, this does get a touch dark, being in a bad mental headspace! If reading stuff like that bothers you, DO NOT READ THIS!

TLDR: Quill buys bantams, winds up with one silkie, later buys silkie eggs on a whim, eggs hatch and the babies help pull her out of a dark mental place.



I'll admit, I was one of those people that didn't take to them at the start. When I was first getting into chickens and wanting to raise them, I thought they were a bit off-putting. My simple mind at that point was seeing fur, not feathers, and that pushed me away. Three years ago, I decided to try my hand at bantams, wanting to see if they would do well where I lived since we had a lot of brush they could hide under better for free range (it's three acres of woods where I am).

We had just finished setting up the eventual adult coop when chick days rolled around at our local tractor supply and so I talked my dad into getting four bantams. At the time, I was thinking of cochins, liking the look of the feather-footed birds and learning how they made decent pets generally. There was one feather-footed baby in the masses, and I made sure to get it as part of the four minimum. I had my mind set in it being a cochin, convinced that the fuzz would give way to feathers in time.

That little fuzzy baby was Hiero, and he was about to prove me and my assumptions wrong in every way possible.

While they were still young, I was making sure I was handling them at least once a day, wanting them to get at least a little used to being picked up. Two of them took to it right away, actively trying to jump in my hand whenever I'd put it down. One of them was a bit indifferent to it. And then there was Hiero, who wanted nothing to do with being handled. If I could keep him on my hand for more than two seconds, I was lucky. As he got older and I noticed that his fuzz wasn't really going away like it was with the others, I figured out that what I had was a silkie. Back then, I wasn't the most thrilled about it, but I decided to make the most of it and see what I could observe with the one I had.

From an early age, he seemed to play the role of peacekeeper, making sure everyone got along to some degree, as well as watching over the smallest (he wasn't massively tiny, more that he was just growing slower while the other two were shooting up like weeds) of the four bantams. Maybe this was why he didn't like being picked up as a baby, because the other two bigger bantams would pick on the smaller one, and he wanted to make sure they left the littlest one alone. After seeing that there seemed to be two different flocks, I set up another brooder container and moved Hiero and the smaller baby, Nero, to it to keep the peace.

When everyone got big enough and it was warm enough at night, I moved them out into the coops we had set up for them where I intended them to spend the next few days before setting them loose so that they knew this was where they needed to go at night. After that, I wasn't able to handle them as much, and they didn't seem to want it anyways as they always bolted when I opened the doors to let them out. Then we were gifted a goose and a few ducks. After breaking apart a couple fights, I had to come to the conclusion that the bantams would be locked up once more for their own safety.

While no one was exactly happy with it (to this day, the goose still tries to go after the bantams. I still catch him every so often pressing up against the wire, trying to get in) it had to be done. This didn't exactly make Hiero feel any better, as every time I went to close him up for the night, he would come over and bite my hand. One night, when he was being stubborn and not going into the coop, I picked him up, intending to put him in manually, only to be shocked when he didn't struggle in my grip like he had as a baby. A bit confused, I put him in for the night, received my nightly nip once I set him down, and locked him in. The next day, I went out a bit earlier, wanting to see if he would let me hold him again. Sure enough, I picked him up, sat on the ground, and simply held him on my lap for a good ten minutes before it was time to put him in for the night. So began our new nightly routine for the next year, and if work had me miss one of our cuddle sessions, he made sure to let me know how mad he was with a double bite rather than a single nip like he did before.

Seeing this new softer side to Hiero started to change my outlook on silkies. After getting a new incubator, I made the decision to see about hatching some silkies of my own. Finding some that was selling 6+ eggs for $25, I grabbed my card and bought them, only to spend the next few days panicking when I saw the weather report that it was going to be in the upper 20's the next few nights. Sure, it wasn't that far to Jacksonville, but the eggs would still wind up being in a massively cold building for at least one night. Thankfully the eggs came safe and sound, and, after a very long 21 days of getting up every four hours to turn the eggs by hand (as well as making sure mom or dad turned them at the exact hour I had laid out for the turning schedule while I was at work) we had eight little fluffballs out of nine eggs to hatch.

Before these eggs hatched, work was getting to me, far more than it probably should have. I didn't feel like I could trust my co-workers to get things done, especially when it came to closing duties. When we got backed up on register, no one would come to help, no matter how many times I called, and the managers insisting I needed to call for backup whenever that happened, despite them not showing up to actually help. Dealing with that for a year on end was hurting my mental state. I would go out on my lunch break and sit in my car, crying my eyes out in a slight form of stress release. It got to the point where I actually had to go to the doctors and they prescribed me antidepressants and had me do therapy sessions to try and talk out what was going on in my head. When the therapy councilor sounded and acted like she didn't want to deal with you, that's not exactly the best impression. The medication worked, but also made me feel so sick the mere thought of food had me feeling nauseous. Once that ran out, I never refilled it, because the only way I would be able to was to go back to one of the therapy sessions.

I was over the moon when the eggs hatched. Two of them didn't make it, though I had braced myself for that after how weak they had been with needing help out of the egg. With these six surviving babies, I was determined to see what I could get color and pattern wise. These were Due-ran, Roe-roe, Rixxy, Cloud, Quinta, and Sylvan. Cloud and Sylvan were named by my two closest friends after they sat with me and listen to me go on and on the whole time about how excited I was to get these eggs to hatch day. These six became my entire world. Yes, I had my other birds: the chickens, the ducks, the goose, but those six gave my life a new meaning. I wasn't just a mama bird that took the others under my wings. To them, I really was the mama bird in every sense of the word. To this day, they are my Silkie Babies as a collective whole.

Hiero wasn't done surprising me, however. When everyone was old enough to spend some supervised time outside, I brought them out and let them run around near Hiero's pen, wanting to see if I could start familiarizing the silkies so that when I built the larger pen, I could put most of them together and just trade out roosters every so often. After about a week of this, I decided to see what would happen if I let Hiero wander around outside with the babies, figuring that as long as I kept an eye on him, everything would be fine and I could grab him if he so much as pecked at one of them. What I got was far from what I expected. Hiero was acting like it was his job to keep threats away from those babies, and that included my hand. I'd go to nudge one of the wandering babies back with the rest of their siblings, only for Hiero to dash over and grab my hand in a very firm bite. He made sure I knew that while he was out, he was the one in charge of watching the babies. Every egg I've hatched since then, I've had the baby with Hiero at some point in time. He's looked after his own babies, the standard chickens' babies, even young ducklings at this point.

It started with one, now they've basically become my reason to still be alive today. Without Hiero and the Silkie Babies, I'm not sure my mental state would allow me to be here to tell this story. Sorry for the long read, hopefully it was coherent enough to make some semblance of sense.

Awesome testimony! I too struggle with stinkin depression and am beyond thankful my adult kids got me 4 babies last May! They give me a reason to get up and out of the bed on the worst of days.. they depend on me in order for their survival! And in turn I get to luv on em, treat em and just admire them as they play and forage!
I totally understand!!!

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

This is a bit of a read, but with my past and how Silkies helped me, I wanted to tell it in full.
Warning you now, though, this does get a touch dark, being in a bad mental headspace! If reading stuff like that bothers you, DO NOT READ THIS!

TLDR: Quill buys bantams, winds up with one silkie, later buys silkie eggs on a whim, eggs hatch and the babies help pull her out of a dark mental place.



I'll admit, I was one of those people that didn't take to them at the start. When I was first getting into chickens and wanting to raise them, I thought they were a bit off-putting. My simple mind at that point was seeing fur, not feathers, and that pushed me away. Three years ago, I decided to try my hand at bantams, wanting to see if they would do well where I lived since we had a lot of brush they could hide under better for free range (it's three acres of woods where I am).

We had just finished setting up the eventual adult coop when chick days rolled around at our local tractor supply and so I talked my dad into getting four bantams. At the time, I was thinking of cochins, liking the look of the feather-footed birds and learning how they made decent pets generally. There was one feather-footed baby in the masses, and I made sure to get it as part of the four minimum. I had my mind set in it being a cochin, convinced that the fuzz would give way to feathers in time.

That little fuzzy baby was Hiero, and he was about to prove me and my assumptions wrong in every way possible.

While they were still young, I was making sure I was handling them at least once a day, wanting them to get at least a little used to being picked up. Two of them took to it right away, actively trying to jump in my hand whenever I'd put it down. One of them was a bit indifferent to it. And then there was Hiero, who wanted nothing to do with being handled. If I could keep him on my hand for more than two seconds, I was lucky. As he got older and I noticed that his fuzz wasn't really going away like it was with the others, I figured out that what I had was a silkie. Back then, I wasn't the most thrilled about it, but I decided to make the most of it and see what I could observe with the one I had.

From an early age, he seemed to play the role of peacekeeper, making sure everyone got along to some degree, as well as watching over the smallest (he wasn't massively tiny, more that he was just growing slower while the other two were shooting up like weeds) of the four bantams. Maybe this was why he didn't like being picked up as a baby, because the other two bigger bantams would pick on the smaller one, and he wanted to make sure they left the littlest one alone. After seeing that there seemed to be two different flocks, I set up another brooder container and moved Hiero and the smaller baby, Nero, to it to keep the peace.

When everyone got big enough and it was warm enough at night, I moved them out into the coops we had set up for them where I intended them to spend the next few days before setting them loose so that they knew this was where they needed to go at night. After that, I wasn't able to handle them as much, and they didn't seem to want it anyways as they always bolted when I opened the doors to let them out. Then we were gifted a goose and a few ducks. After breaking apart a couple fights, I had to come to the conclusion that the bantams would be locked up once more for their own safety.

While no one was exactly happy with it (to this day, the goose still tries to go after the bantams. I still catch him every so often pressing up against the wire, trying to get in) it had to be done. This didn't exactly make Hiero feel any better, as every time I went to close him up for the night, he would come over and bite my hand. One night, when he was being stubborn and not going into the coop, I picked him up, intending to put him in manually, only to be shocked when he didn't struggle in my grip like he had as a baby. A bit confused, I put him in for the night, received my nightly nip once I set him down, and locked him in. The next day, I went out a bit earlier, wanting to see if he would let me hold him again. Sure enough, I picked him up, sat on the ground, and simply held him on my lap for a good ten minutes before it was time to put him in for the night. So began our new nightly routine for the next year, and if work had me miss one of our cuddle sessions, he made sure to let me know how mad he was with a double bite rather than a single nip like he did before.

Seeing this new softer side to Hiero started to change my outlook on silkies. After getting a new incubator, I made the decision to see about hatching some silkies of my own. Finding some that was selling 6+ eggs for $25, I grabbed my card and bought them, only to spend the next few days panicking when I saw the weather report that it was going to be in the upper 20's the next few nights. Sure, it wasn't that far to Jacksonville, but the eggs would still wind up being in a massively cold building for at least one night. Thankfully the eggs came safe and sound, and, after a very long 21 days of getting up every four hours to turn the eggs by hand (as well as making sure mom or dad turned them at the exact hour I had laid out for the turning schedule while I was at work) we had eight little fluffballs out of nine eggs to hatch.

Before these eggs hatched, work was getting to me, far more than it probably should have. I didn't feel like I could trust my co-workers to get things done, especially when it came to closing duties. When we got backed up on register, no one would come to help, no matter how many times I called, and the managers insisting I needed to call for backup whenever that happened, despite them not showing up to actually help. Dealing with that for a year on end was hurting my mental state. I would go out on my lunch break and sit in my car, crying my eyes out in a slight form of stress release. It got to the point where I actually had to go to the doctors and they prescribed me antidepressants and had me do therapy sessions to try and talk out what was going on in my head. When the therapy councilor sounded and acted like she didn't want to deal with you, that's not exactly the best impression. The medication worked, but also made me feel so sick the mere thought of food had me feeling nauseous. Once that ran out, I never refilled it, because the only way I would be able to was to go back to one of the therapy sessions.

I was over the moon when the eggs hatched. Two of them didn't make it, though I had braced myself for that after how weak they had been with needing help out of the egg. With these six surviving babies, I was determined to see what I could get color and pattern wise. These were Due-ran, Roe-roe, Rixxy, Cloud, Quinta, and Sylvan. Cloud and Sylvan were named by my two closest friends after they sat with me and listen to me go on and on the whole time about how excited I was to get these eggs to hatch day. These six became my entire world. Yes, I had my other birds: the chickens, the ducks, the goose, but those six gave my life a new meaning. I wasn't just a mama bird that took the others under my wings. To them, I really was the mama bird in every sense of the word. To this day, they are my Silkie Babies as a collective whole.

Hiero wasn't done surprising me, however. When everyone was old enough to spend some supervised time outside, I brought them out and let them run around near Hiero's pen, wanting to see if I could start familiarizing the silkies so that when I built the larger pen, I could put most of them together and just trade out roosters every so often. After about a week of this, I decided to see what would happen if I let Hiero wander around outside with the babies, figuring that as long as I kept an eye on him, everything would be fine and I could grab him if he so much as pecked at one of them. What I got was far from what I expected. Hiero was acting like it was his job to keep threats away from those babies, and that included my hand. I'd go to nudge one of the wandering babies back with the rest of their siblings, only for Hiero to dash over and grab my hand in a very firm bite. He made sure I knew that while he was out, he was the one in charge of watching the babies. Every egg I've hatched since then, I've had the baby with Hiero at some point in time. He's looked after his own babies, the standard chickens' babies, even young ducklings at this point.

It started with one, now they've basically become my reason to still be alive today. Without Hiero and the Silkie Babies, I'm not sure my mental state would allow me to be here to tell this story. Sorry for the long read, hopefully it was coherent enough to make some semblance of sense.

I love that your silkies have brought you so much joy. I also until recently, 7 1/2 months ago to be exact thought silkies were weird, ugly alien chickens. When I got back into chicken keeping after a many year absence from day 1 my daughter wanted a silkie. I used every excuse in the book to avoid them. I liked my big stock normal chickens, more importantly my Marans better. Little by little as different coops were added my excuses as to why we could not have them slipped away. Then my neighbor up the road who had silkies asked me to incubate some eggs for her to test their fertility as she did not have a incubator. I was still iffy and then one of my Marans gave off the warning signals she was going broody so I agreed to incubate if she went broody, which of course she did. The whole time she was incubating I kept telling my daughter we were not keeping them. Then it changed to if they hatch you can keep 1 but only a hen. Well, they hatched, and by the first week I was smitten, but still holding firm to only keeping 2 hens. I had 2 favorites picked out by 2 weeks old, and hoped both were girls, my absolute favorite by about 8 weeks old showed signs he was a boy. The other 2 appeared to be hens and I decided you know what, there is nothing wrong with a trio of silkies, and my boy is not going anywhere. A day shy of being 6 months old one of my "hens" crowed at me. Talk about heart breaking but I knew I could not keep 2 boys to 1 girl so I found him a perfect home. I then spent almost a month searching and finally found another silkie hen. I never thought it possible but I love everything about silkies now and they are so comical to watch and my boy Branch is the best.

 

[Chickeria]

thank you. he died. RIP

Oh no I'm so sorry you lost him, chickengr. Sending hugs

 

[Chickeria]

Well, I have 4 of Chiquita's eggs now, I'm hoping for a 5th today. She does not lay every day, I've found she goes 2 days, one day 3 between eggs. I'm setting up the incubator this morning since it has not been used in 7 months and if it holds temp I'm setting the eggs this evening. Almost all my bigger girls are laying like crazy and to stop myself from filling all 42 spots in the turner I've only been properly storing the silkie eggs. I may be wasting my time, I noticed last year when I did my first hatch in the incubator about this time that the fertility was off and it really did not improve until about March so we will see. Chiquita and Poppy have really bonded and are a inseparable pair now. I've kept Branch away from Chiquita so far in hopes that if her eggs are fertile they are by either the buff or white silkie boy she was previously housed with. Once she lays this 5th egg I'm going to start introductions with Branch. And Poppy, 7 1/2 months old, still no egg even though she continues to go through the motions of laying and nest building daily. That little girl is a tease. I do think if I left chiquita's eggs out there though, she would be one that would go broody before she even laid her first egg. She is so interested in other hens eggs, even the big girls eggs. I can't leave a egg out there to test my theory though as it has been so cold that I'm having to get the eggs not long after they are laid to avoid them freezing.

Fingers crossed that Chiquita's eggs are fertile
I love that Chiquita and Poopy are such good friends, it's so heartwarming.
That's interesting that Poppy shows so much interest in the other girls eggs! I think you are right - she could go broody before laying! Do you think Chiquita and Poppy would brood together and bring up together chicks being such good friends?

 

[Chickeria]

Yall Mango has finally noticed Milli ...he "misses" every now and then even with Vanilli but her bottom doesn't look like this! Milli looks awful! There are signs of mites or lice. I have noticed their dust bathing area is moist...between Mango "missing" and her dust bathing could it have done this to her bottom end?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Personally I don't have experience with mites or lice, but I read a thread in the emergency section recently where a hen had very 'wet' looking feathers around her vent (there's a picture) and heavy infestation with mites and lice were one of the things supposed in the helping answers:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/why-does-my-hens-back-feathers-look-like-this.1509066/
Because you mentioned that there are signs of mites or lice I think this really could be the reason. Thankfully Milli isn't looking as wet. But the spot is the same, so it could be the reason.
But if there were no signs of mites and lice I would think Mango "missing" and the dust bath situation are the reason. My little James is a sex-addict and there were times some of my girls looked pretty similar.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Fingers crossed that Chiquita's eggs are fertile
I love that Chiquita and Poopy are such good friends, it's so heartwarming.
That's interesting that Poppy shows so much interest in the other girls eggs! I think you are right - she could go broody before laying! Do you think Chiquita and Poppy would brood together and bring up together chicks being such good friends?

I really don't know if they would co-brood they might try. Honestly I would worry if they did try it. While I have had multiple broody girls none have ever co-brooded and they've always staggered their hatch a week or two apart except for 1 time. I had my game hen, and her daughter go broody a day apart. They chose separate nest sites and when the chicks hatched at the same time it was a nightmare situation. Both girls wanted all the chicks. I had to spend almost 2 weeks keeping them and their chicks apart or serious fights occurred between the girls. I know silkies are different then game hens, but that whole scenario will be in my mind if they attempted it and I let them try.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Personally I don't have experience with mites or lice, but I read a thread in the emergency section recently where a hen had very 'wet' looking feathers around her vent (there's a picture) and heavy infestation with mites and lice were one of the things supposed in the helping answers:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/why-does-my-hens-back-feathers-look-like-this.1509066/
Because you mentioned that there are signs of mites or lice I think this really could be the reason. Thankfully Milli isn't looking as wet. But the spot is the same, so it could be the reason.
But if there were no signs of mites and lice I would think Mango "missing" and the dust bath situation are the reason. My little James is a sex-addict and there were times some of my girls looked pretty similar.

I am so sorry! i hate when my phone (or my head lol) misses such a crucial word!
yeah there are NO signs of mites or lice.
Idk what is making their dust baths moist...even the one in the coop is like that too...is it cuz it is so cold?! 14°F here overnight

 

[kurby22]

thank you. he died. RIP

Oh I’m so sorry you lost your boy hugs to you

 

[LadiesAndJane]

thank you. he died. RIP

I am so truly sorry for the loss of your boy.

 

[LadiesAndJane]

This is a bit of a read, but with my past and how Silkies helped me, I wanted to tell it in full.
Warning you now, though, this does get a touch dark, being in a bad mental headspace! If reading stuff like that bothers you, DO NOT READ THIS!

TLDR: Quill buys bantams, winds up with one silkie, later buys silkie eggs on a whim, eggs hatch and the babies help pull her out of a dark mental place.



I'll admit, I was one of those people that didn't take to them at the start. When I was first getting into chickens and wanting to raise them, I thought they were a bit off-putting. My simple mind at that point was seeing fur, not feathers, and that pushed me away. Three years ago, I decided to try my hand at bantams, wanting to see if they would do well where I lived since we had a lot of brush they could hide under better for free range (it's three acres of woods where I am).

We had just finished setting up the eventual adult coop when chick days rolled around at our local tractor supply and so I talked my dad into getting four bantams. At the time, I was thinking of cochins, liking the look of the feather-footed birds and learning how they made decent pets generally. There was one feather-footed baby in the masses, and I made sure to get it as part of the four minimum. I had my mind set in it being a cochin, convinced that the fuzz would give way to feathers in time.

That little fuzzy baby was Hiero, and he was about to prove me and my assumptions wrong in every way possible.

While they were still young, I was making sure I was handling them at least once a day, wanting them to get at least a little used to being picked up. Two of them took to it right away, actively trying to jump in my hand whenever I'd put it down. One of them was a bit indifferent to it. And then there was Hiero, who wanted nothing to do with being handled. If I could keep him on my hand for more than two seconds, I was lucky. As he got older and I noticed that his fuzz wasn't really going away like it was with the others, I figured out that what I had was a silkie. Back then, I wasn't the most thrilled about it, but I decided to make the most of it and see what I could observe with the one I had.

From an early age, he seemed to play the role of peacekeeper, making sure everyone got along to some degree, as well as watching over the smallest (he wasn't massively tiny, more that he was just growing slower while the other two were shooting up like weeds) of the four bantams. Maybe this was why he didn't like being picked up as a baby, because the other two bigger bantams would pick on the smaller one, and he wanted to make sure they left the littlest one alone. After seeing that there seemed to be two different flocks, I set up another brooder container and moved Hiero and the smaller baby, Nero, to it to keep the peace.

When everyone got big enough and it was warm enough at night, I moved them out into the coops we had set up for them where I intended them to spend the next few days before setting them loose so that they knew this was where they needed to go at night. After that, I wasn't able to handle them as much, and they didn't seem to want it anyways as they always bolted when I opened the doors to let them out. Then we were gifted a goose and a few ducks. After breaking apart a couple fights, I had to come to the conclusion that the bantams would be locked up once more for their own safety.

While no one was exactly happy with it (to this day, the goose still tries to go after the bantams. I still catch him every so often pressing up against the wire, trying to get in) it had to be done. This didn't exactly make Hiero feel any better, as every time I went to close him up for the night, he would come over and bite my hand. One night, when he was being stubborn and not going into the coop, I picked him up, intending to put him in manually, only to be shocked when he didn't struggle in my grip like he had as a baby. A bit confused, I put him in for the night, received my nightly nip once I set him down, and locked him in. The next day, I went out a bit earlier, wanting to see if he would let me hold him again. Sure enough, I picked him up, sat on the ground, and simply held him on my lap for a good ten minutes before it was time to put him in for the night. So began our new nightly routine for the next year, and if work had me miss one of our cuddle sessions, he made sure to let me know how mad he was with a double bite rather than a single nip like he did before.

Seeing this new softer side to Hiero started to change my outlook on silkies. After getting a new incubator, I made the decision to see about hatching some silkies of my own. Finding some that was selling 6+ eggs for $25, I grabbed my card and bought them, only to spend the next few days panicking when I saw the weather report that it was going to be in the upper 20's the next few nights. Sure, it wasn't that far to Jacksonville, but the eggs would still wind up being in a massively cold building for at least one night. Thankfully the eggs came safe and sound, and, after a very long 21 days of getting up every four hours to turn the eggs by hand (as well as making sure mom or dad turned them at the exact hour I had laid out for the turning schedule while I was at work) we had eight little fluffballs out of nine eggs to hatch.

Before these eggs hatched, work was getting to me, far more than it probably should have. I didn't feel like I could trust my co-workers to get things done, especially when it came to closing duties. When we got backed up on register, no one would come to help, no matter how many times I called, and the managers insisting I needed to call for backup whenever that happened, despite them not showing up to actually help. Dealing with that for a year on end was hurting my mental state. I would go out on my lunch break and sit in my car, crying my eyes out in a slight form of stress release. It got to the point where I actually had to go to the doctors and they prescribed me antidepressants and had me do therapy sessions to try and talk out what was going on in my head. When the therapy councilor sounded and acted like she didn't want to deal with you, that's not exactly the best impression. The medication worked, but also made me feel so sick the mere thought of food had me feeling nauseous. Once that ran out, I never refilled it, because the only way I would be able to was to go back to one of the therapy sessions.

I was over the moon when the eggs hatched. Two of them didn't make it, though I had braced myself for that after how weak they had been with needing help out of the egg. With these six surviving babies, I was determined to see what I could get color and pattern wise. These were Due-ran, Roe-roe, Rixxy, Cloud, Quinta, and Sylvan. Cloud and Sylvan were named by my two closest friends after they sat with me and listen to me go on and on the whole time about how excited I was to get these eggs to hatch day. These six became my entire world. Yes, I had my other birds: the chickens, the ducks, the goose, but those six gave my life a new meaning. I wasn't just a mama bird that took the others under my wings. To them, I really was the mama bird in every sense of the word. To this day, they are my Silkie Babies as a collective whole.

Hiero wasn't done surprising me, however. When everyone was old enough to spend some supervised time outside, I brought them out and let them run around near Hiero's pen, wanting to see if I could start familiarizing the silkies so that when I built the larger pen, I could put most of them together and just trade out roosters every so often. After about a week of this, I decided to see what would happen if I let Hiero wander around outside with the babies, figuring that as long as I kept an eye on him, everything would be fine and I could grab him if he so much as pecked at one of them. What I got was far from what I expected. Hiero was acting like it was his job to keep threats away from those babies, and that included my hand. I'd go to nudge one of the wandering babies back with the rest of their siblings, only for Hiero to dash over and grab my hand in a very firm bite. He made sure I knew that while he was out, he was the one in charge of watching the babies. Every egg I've hatched since then, I've had the baby with Hiero at some point in time. He's looked after his own babies, the standard chickens' babies, even young ducklings at this point.

It started with one, now they've basically become my reason to still be alive today. Without Hiero and the Silkie Babies, I'm not sure my mental state would allow me to be here to tell this story. Sorry for the long read, hopefully it was coherent enough to make some semblance of sense.

Thank you for sharing your lovely story. Animals are so therapeutic.