Surprise winter chicks! 🤣🤪🥰

[Chickeria]

Rascal is a fine name for a boy. My childhood pet hamster was named Rascal. He was male. He lived to be four years old which is about double teddy bear hamster life expectancy, so it must be a good strong name too!

I like Abel for Mirabel! Great name!! Creative how you saw that in there. I think Mirabel is teeny due to the double frizzle genes. Our other frazzle Curly was about 2 pounds at 9 months old. Abel’s feathers still seem fragile to me like Curly’s were. Time will tell though!

Maybe Raya becomes Raymond too. (I really hope I’m wrong and Raya can be “her” name though! Both her mom & her aunt had red combs at three or four weeks old… but I don’t think their combs were as large.)

Rascal shall remain Rascal. (We started naming these chicks from animated movies except for Brownie & Rascal. Raya & the Last Dragon, Encanto (Mirabel), & Ice Age (Peaches). Prior chickens are/were Disney princesses and then color/pattern/breed names like Leggy the Leghorn, Splashy the Splash Maran, Whitey the white Silkie. We’ve also got Midnight, Twilight, & Starlight the black, partridge, and cream Silkies. We’ve named around 60 chicks since our first eggs hatched in 2016. (The only ones that didn’t get names were the Cornish rocks—they also didn’t get eaten but that is another story!) Chicken math is real! We started with one coop for 13… and have three coops & 27 birds now!

Wow, 4 years is an absolutely awesome age for a teddy hamster (or any hamster!)
Oh that's great that you do like Abel
That's so interesting about frizzle and frazzle! Your thread made me read about them, before I didn't know anything other than they do exist! Was Curly a serama-mix, too?
Perhaps Raya does have a bigger comb than her mom & auntie because she also does have Silkie genes I hope she is a little surprise-girl (and so a double surprise )

Yay chicken math

(I built a coop for 12 but at the moment in that a coop are 7 soooooo - )

I love all your names and name themes
Oh wow you do have cream Silkies!

 

[gimmie birdies]

I hatched out about 40 chicks over Dec- and a little into Jan. I rehomed some and some of my oldest are 2 months old. I plan on moving them to a bigger pen once the cold weather gets over itself next week. I have a couple of NN and some OE in my batch.

 

[MixedFlock23]

Wow, 4 years is an absolutely awesome age for a teddy hamster (or any hamster!)
Oh that's great that you do like Abel
That's so interesting about frizzle and frazzle! Your thread made me read about them, before I didn't know anything other than they do exist! Was Curly a serama-mix, too?
Perhaps Raya does have a bigger comb than her mom & auntie because she also does have Silkie genes I hope she is a little surprise-girl (and so a double surprise )

Yay chicken math

(I built a coop for 12 but at the moment in that a coop are 7 soooooo - )

I love all your names and name themes
Oh wow you do have cream Silkies!

Curly was a white silkie from a breeder. I got him as a three day old chick and the breeder said he was frizzle. Perhaps the breeder didn’t realize two frizzles were getting together. Curly had quills only for wing feathers. Very similar to the photo on this page:

https://feathers-scales-and-tails.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F189888273359

Good luck keeping your flock to 12 or less!

Here’s a pic from this morning of my cream colored Silkie. She’s a showgirl silkie. I don’t really know what color to call her.

 

[Chickeria]

Curly was a white silkie from a breeder. I got him as a three day old chick and the breeder said he was frizzle. Perhaps the breeder didn’t realize two frizzles were getting together. Curly had quills only for wing feathers. Very similar to the photo on this page:

https://feathers-scales-and-tails.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F189888273359

Good luck keeping your flock to 12 or less!

Here’s a pic from this morning of my cream colored Silkie. She’s a showgirl silkie. I don’t really know what color to call her.

I see about Curly. I'm sorry he became a mean rooster.

Thank you (...and...I could built another coop...)

Oh I love her! I love Showgirls! She is adorable - her color (whatever it is called - I'm very bad with Silkie colors) is absolutely gorgeous!

 

[MixedFlock23]

So just now I glanced at FB and see a post about silkies for sale… red Pyle color… it’s a rooster in the ad but similar in color… I Google red Pyle hens… and that may be what I have!

Yes! Build another coop later!

 

[Chickeria]

So just now I glanced at FB and see a post about silkies for sale… red Pyle color… it’s a rooster in the ad but similar in color… I Google red Pyle hens… and that may be what I have!

Yes! Build another coop later!

I just looked it up - yeah your beautiful girl looks to be red Pyle! Awesome!
...Now I wonder if my boy Kasimir is a a red Pyle, too (darker version)
What do you think?
Kasimir:

 

[MixedFlock23]

I just looked it up - yeah your beautiful girl looks to be red Pyle! Awesome!
...Now I wonder if my boy Kasimir is a a red Pyle, too (darker version)
What do you think?
Kasimir:
View attachment 3000972

My best guess is yes, Kasimir looks like Red Pyle to me. I looked around the internet a good deal & couldn’t find anything closer.
I’ll attach all the colors I found… is calico in silkies really a thing?!?
I tried reading the very blurry color names on the first collage & typing what I think they say below the pic. At first I thought that bottom left said Columbian, but it must say Cuckoo because the pic doesn’t look like Columbian coloring.
Here are a couple of links with more info on colors:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/silkies-colors-and-gender-guide-may-need-tweaks.1483675/

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/red-white-pyle-silkie-what-is-that.412717/
That one says red Pyle replacing all black feathering with white. Buff can have black in the tail, it seems, so yours isn’t buff. I think.

Though this breeder in FB has what they call a buff that does look similar to yours. Can’t tell if there’s black in theirs in the tail or if that’s just the shadows & background. Photo #3 top pic in the egg collage.

Kasimir is a really handsome chicken!

 

[gimmie birdies]

My frizzle looked lovely when feathered, but brittle feathered when molting. Her mom was normal feathered, and her dad was the frizzle

He was also brittle feathered. I don't know his background or the mother's back ground.
My frizzle hen lived to be about 8 and had many babies, I still have 2 daughters that are not quite 2. One is a smooth, and one is frizzle. The frizzle doesn't suffer the brittle feathers.
I also acquired a Frizzle/NN egg I hatched, last May, but have not bred her yet. I plan on breeding her with a smooth rooster, but she does have a few bad feathers. I was thinking on getting a frizzle from Meyers, but it does get cold here, and I don't think I want to add to the bad feathering. (Just going to breed her with a smooth.)

 

[MixedFlock23]

View attachment 3002593
My frizzle looked lovely when feathered, but brittle feathered when molting. Her mom was normal feathered, and her dad was the frizzle
View attachment 3002600View attachment 3002602
He was also brittle feathered. I don't know his background or the mother's back ground.
My frizzle hen lived to be about 8 and had many babies, I still have 2 daughters that are not quite 2. One is a smooth, and one is frizzle. The frizzle doesn't suffer the brittle feathers.
I also acquired a Frizzle/NN egg I hatched, last May, but have not bred her yet. I plan on breeding her with a smooth rooster, but she does have a few bad feathers. I was thinking on getting a frizzle from Meyers, but it does get cold here, and I don't think I want to add to the bad feathering. (Just going to breed her with a smooth.)
View attachment 3002605

Yes, just breeding frizzle to smooth will still give you frizzles 50% of the time since the frizzle gene is dominant (unless your birds have the frizzle modifier gene)… and zero chance of a frazzle (the double frizzle genes—brittle feathering).
With my accidental frizzle to frizzle breeding, I was supposed to have a 25% chance of getting a smooth feathered chick, but all five of mine are frizzle or frazzle. 80% frizzle & 20% frazzle. It was a very small case study though. Ha ha.
I hope to never have another frazzle. It’s hard watching them not grow as well & stay so small & have their feathers break. My frazzle chick seems to have cardio/respiratory issues as well. He takes much deeper breaths then the rest (his little cheeks suck in as he breathes).
https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/frizzle-chicken/

 

[MixedFlock23]

I finally figured it out. Rooster Ray is a frazzle. Today I held him and noticed his feathers are breaking and his wings feathers are only the shafts… just like Curly. Now it all makes sense as to why I have 100% curled chicks even though half the eggs were from a smooth feathered bird. A homozygous roo would always pass on the frizzle gene (which is dominant and only one copy is desired for frizzling). Mirabel (Abel) is Teeny’s chick for sure and received a frizzle gene from each parent making him a homozygous frazzle. I’ve now moved the frazzle roo into the secondary pen with all smooth hens, so no frazzle surprises can happen even if they sneak eggs from me again.