Where can I find Silkied varieties of rare, or uncommon breeds.

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I have not had them for years. They did not survive well for me back then. It might have been that they were more susceptible to Marek's, which is a big problem in my area. The non-silkied Ams never had those problems. I have heard that silkie bantams are also more susceptible to Marek's, so perhaps there is a link there. I now vaccinate, so if I still had them, they might be ok, but all traces of the gene are gone from my flock. I supplied Sand Hill with their Lavender Am stock, that is where the silkied gene came into their birds. They do not vaccinate at all, so it is unlikely that you would ever get silkied chicks from their stock.
Before I exited the silkied Ams. I sold chicks cheaply to breeders all over the country to try to ensure their continued existence. It is certainly possible that some of those breeders still have them and simply don't know they are the last breeders with that gene.
A friend that lives several hours away has one of my chicks that grew into a nice hen and is still alive, but too old to produce viable chicks at this point.
I am now working with silkied cochin bantams. I am vaccinating the chicks and building a flock that could support shipping to other breeders. So far, they have not given me any problems like the SiAms.
I am also working with Mottled Ameraucanas, another variant that has given me more problems than the "normal" colors. I am struggling to get shippable chicks this year, as I will probably sell my breeding flock this summer to allow me to concentrate on my main projects.

I similarly have not had any issues with my silkied Cochin bantams being frail over the 8 years I've had them. We don't have the same issues with Marek's here, so my birds are all unvaccinated. I have never had issues with my pure Silkies, either, though. It's interesting to me that it seems to be an issue with the Ameraucanas particularly. Sad.

I've been thinking a lot about crossing pure Ameraucanas to the silkied Easter-eggers being sold by My Pet Chicken to see if I could work those back into a passable silkied Ameraucana that perhaps would be a bit more robust. It wouldn't quite feel the same as having them out of a spontaneous mutation within the breed, but at least maybe they'd be able to keep going as a variety that way. But, that would take a lot of time and work to do, not to mention the EEs are one of those 'designer breed' type mixes that has an awfully high price tag for a mutt... so that would have to be a project sometime out in the future for me.

 

[SourRoses]

The silkied Ameraucana weakness affected all breeders and everyone said it was due to early inbreeding depression. The lady who had the mutation show up bred the first birds to each other, subsequent buyers (not all, but many) tried to keep the fully silkied expression rather than breeding splits. And the seller of those first silkied eggs had not seen the mutation show up before, yet suddenly there it was in full expression which leads one to believe she was crossing related birds.
By the time breeders were concerned about the health of the stock it was too late.

We got some silkied Ams here in FL back 10 years or so ago, the breeder we bought from soon quit offering them. They did poorly, but we did get one really nice hen who I wish we had hatched chicks from. She was an every single day layer. At about two years old she passed suddenly.

I was more recently trying with the Mottled Ameraucana, but the roosters seemed to have very poor fertility. I couldn't keep the line moving forward, even though I was only breeding to other colors of Ameraucana to get as much genetic distance as possible.
I did wind up with some leghorn mixes that have been breeding well for a couple generations now (in spite of me, rather than because of, lol) which leads me to believe that inbreeding depression was once again the culprit. There's a pretty mottled pullet out there who I know will be a good layer, and an interesting paint+mottled cockerel. I'm trying to decide whether to keep on with the Mottled EE's or not.