Quote: There are so many things that even one Silkie would change if added to a line of AMs that it would be obvious for at least 10 generations - including 5 toes, black (NOT WHITE) skin, crests, black eyes, blue ears, feathered legs and toes (almost impossible to get rid of totally for probably more than 50 generations, just look at all the culls with stubs in early AM breedings when they used a featherleg, they STILL have problems pop up 30 years later), totally different body shape, bantam size, etc.. etc...
I do believe them when they say it was a spontaneous mutation of the feather gene. Add the above Silkie information to the fact that they have had to breed full siblings and parents back and forth to try and keep it and their birds have suffered in health and had other problems because of that excessive inbreeding. If you could just toss a Silkie in the pen and take the chicks and breed back and keep the Silkied feathers they wouldn't have needed to do that. Silkied feathers are recessive, you need two copies to show.
These are some EE babies from my second to last (planned) hatch.
