SILKIES ~ Updated pics on page17

[m2wandc]

Mine are growing rapidly on me...here are some pics from today

 

[Paganbird]

I bought silkie eggs from ebay. They were shipped eggs & it was a bad hatch - 2 out of 12. But... I LOVE my little silkies! "Zoot" is asleep in my left hand right now! So calm and sweet.
They even won over my DH - he said there was "no purpose" to owning silkies. Well, cuteness must be a purpose - he let me order 9+ more silkie eggs from a BYCer! Should get them tomorrow!
Right to left: "Fjior" my mille fleur, and "Dingo" &"Zoot" my partridge silkies!

 

[sarahsark]

Quote:
Ooooh, beautiful!

 

[sarahsark]

Hey, m2wandc!

So glad to see that you guys are all warming up to each other!! Those Silkies are so adorable. I love the little weird looking feet!!

I just spoke with the breeder and I should be getting my own newborn little Silkies within a week or week and a half... they're due to hatch on or around June 12, and I can come pick them up that day if I want!

Keep it up... keep touching them and handling them, whether they protest or not. Eventually things will be so much better for ya. You're a great chicken mom - don't take their skittishness personally!

 

[m2wandc]

LMAO....I was feeling badly about hijacking someone's thread and just realized I started this thread...LOL...mommie brain isn't what it used to be!

 

[Sugar Sand Farm]

Here are picture of my granddaughters new silkies They are 3 months old. She just got them and she can pick them up and carry them around. We got them from a breeder who starts off handling all her silkies ( she has many many many). All her birds were so gentle and so loveable here are Lovey and Hokey Pokey

Lovey

Hokey

I don't know if it will help to integate the chickens but twice now I have managed to mix ours by putting two different flocks into the same new pen in the evening. I shut the coop door and let them out the next morning and they were fine no fighting or injuries so far. This last batch were 21 5 week olds and 9 11 weeks old and so far its OK

 

[ClairedeLune]

Quote:
Ooooh, beautiful!

Wow, that Silkie's gorgeous! I love gray/blue/lavender chickens. They're beautiful!

 

[destiny_56085]

I'm new to this forum, but definitely not new to silkies. There are soo many reasons to love this breed. First of all they represent a challenge. They are a bit harder to keep in show condition than alot of other breeds. The quest to breed the perfect show bird takes alot of hard work and money. Sure they are cute and cuddley. The fact that they are very docile and probably one of the best parental breeds out there makes them high marketable too. They are one of the few breeds that actually pays back upon their investment. The pet market for them is huge right now. Show quality ones bring as high as $1800 each on Eggbid. Even the market for the worst looking culls is kept high as a result of Asian cultures viewing them as a delicacy and medicinal bird.

This is my 7th year in silkies. I've been hatching out and selling close to 400 per year. I cut down on colors to only black, white splash, and blue this year. Might be down on numbers to under 200 hatched finally this year. I currently have 65 of them in my growout pens for the fall shows and replacement breeder stock. Lots more eggs in the incubator. The way I see it...if you are going to spend every day feeding and watering and cleaning up after it, then you better at least like what you are looking at.
Amy... MN State Rep for ASBC & NSBA

 

[destiny_56085]

As for raising silkies with other breeds, I suppose it can be done. Compare it to breeds of dogs. Think of the silkie as a dainty lil maltese. Your RIR's and leghorns are more like high energy labradors. They can be put together, but the circumstances are definitely against you. Silkies are social animals just like any other bird. If you keep them with the bigger ones, they are still going to want to hang out with them and interact. The big ones and even some of the feisty bantams, play a lil too rough for the dainty silkies though. They will most likely get hurt in the long run. Not even so much in the fighting aspect...just getting trampled. Silkies don't roost and are pretty much defenseless on the ground. Just about anything can walk right up to them. You also have to figure in the fact that most silkies now have vaulted skulls. That is basically their brain bulging up there and the hard plates of the skull don't always close. You can feel soft spots just like on a newborn human baby. Even so much as a hard peck to that can leave them with crookneck, brain damaged, or dead. I keep all my silkies with my pigeons only. The cages are for their own protection and they get left out under supervision only.
Amy

 

[m2wandc]

Quote:
Silkies don't roost? ??? Really ???