To spot the silkies from the others look for the black beaks.and the dark skin around the eyes.. The Cochins will have feathers on the legs too but will have yellow beaks unless they are black also. So far this year in my area (TN) the Cochins have been lavender and the Silkies have been buff which in baby down is yellow with silver tips. The little tiny chipmunk marked velocoraptors are OEG and they run around viciously pulling the feet fethers of the Cochins and Silkies. I have seen one or two that I thought were Booted Bantams because they didn't have beards like Danvers but were feather legged. Last year there were a lot of Fayoumis but I haven't seen any this year. They are dark brown down. You can go the Murray McMurray's web site and they have baby pictures for each breed. You can check out the bantam breeds baby pics and then you know what you are looking at when you go to TSC.
ut of 15 eggs I ended up w 6 pips. 5 in wrong end. One was in right place, and he had started zipping and I had to go to work. When I got home he had died in shell. One pip didnt start zipping at all and I waited 12 hrs to b sure he wouldnt get out on his own. I read sallys info on last resort helping and tried to follow her advice to the letter. With much patience, I ended up w a hatched chick who didnt look good at all. He laid there w occasional twitches but couldnt even hold his head up and rarely even opened his eyes. To my amazement, he survived the night and finally was up and running after about 24 hrs! He is about a week old now and doing great! With the high costs for the eggs n shipping, he has been named steve, my million dollar chick. Lol. I had also set 5 of my own eggs that I thought were from marilyn n elvis who r white silkies. Imagine my surprise when they came out and were obviously from my mille fleur bantams. I hve just recetly gotten back into chickens and all of these birds are all new. Out of 5 eggs, 1 was clear, and 3 hatched. Not too bad on those for my reentry at hatching. 
