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

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

There was one person about a year ago that had some that seemed like they had decent tails. Nit as long as my flockmaster, but they looked like pheonixes at a glance

I'm thinking that in order to keep the tails, they will have to be housed differently than mine currently are, where they won't be having their tails stepped o and snagged all the time.

Silkied phoenixes. Sounds like a beautiful and unique bird. Good luck with your project.

 

[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.