We just had a buff orpington hen hatch 13 chicks most of them BR roo over BO and i was just wondering if this cross would make a reliable broody hen with good laying capabilitys.
Well those breeds do go broody but i have 2 buff orps and had 8 barred rock hens(now 1)but only one barred rock went truly broody 3 times only successful once(had too many eggs)she hatched a little barnyard chicken which i named Muttly she's 4 years old now and her mom Daisy 8 years old sadly all the other barred rocks got killed from dogs and one recently drowned i've never had that happen!Altogether my hens aren't very broody but overall the 2 breeds are normally broody.Daisy like i said is 8 years old and will still lay an egg ever other day i actually just got an egg from her yesterday!This is Daisy.
Given the two parent breeds involved, there is a pretty good chance of a BR X BO hen going broody. BOs tend to go broody more often that BRs do.
A reliable broody with good egg laying capability is kind of an oxymoron, you can't as a rule have both. A session of brooding puts a hen off laying usually a minimum of 2 months, that's a lot of lost production time. A silkie x Orpington should make a wonderful broody bird, and cute to boot! I wonder if niclandia's statement about sex linkage would work with that cross--he said a silkie rooster over a yellow-legged hen (he used Leghorns) made sex linked chicks, males have light legs and females have dark. It would be interesting to see if that bears out.
Even more likely to go broody as Silkies are typically the best brooders and mothers of all the chicken breeds. We used to have some Black Silkie hens and they raised several broods for us.
How often will a silkie go broody. i have to male silkies but no females (i will get some soon) but when i do how many times can i expect them to go broody per year?
Most likely they are molting this happens usually once or twice a year. If your too worried about it you can by feather fixer food witch will usually work other than that i dont know. Shes probably
It seemed like my Silkies were broody all the time. ) But in reality, I think they became broody 4 to 6 times per year, depending on the individual hen. I think it would be easier to tell you how often they weren't broody. )