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I need some Chonkers chocolates! I'm going to PCR test him and if he's good to go, then I'll be able to cross him with a chocolate pullet down the road. I'm sure his paints will be a mess, but I'd like to see a chocolate silkie and satin from him.

It has been here as well! We had snow last Saturday, huge flakes for about an hour, no weather stations had predicted it. Then it's been raining off and on and windy. Not good outdoor weather. Yesterday evening was nice though and we let two groups of chickens out. They usually go different...

Did you get more photos to determine the blues vs the blacks? Not sure how I missed responding to your post a month ago :oops:

You just added more criteria to consider when breeding the silkies, so I should track how young they begin to lay, how consistently, color, and broodiness, as I could at least move the needle on these a bit if I also consider them when choosing the "best looking" birds. I guess egg shape...

Oooooh! That totally makes sense, thanks for helping turn on the light bulb! My chocolate silkie lays a more chocolate colored egg, not a brown egg by any means, but like a really weak chocolate milk, I have thought it's cool because, well hey, she's chocolate 🤣

I kinda thought the egg color may depend on what the hatchery used in their lines, from what use read, it's not like the breeds are particularly purebred, but a BA could have other layer breeds mixed in to improve production as long as they end up looking kinda like a BA. I could be wrong on...

Based on your description of the Plymoth Blues I think they are indeed Black Astraulorps. The bottoms of their feet are pink. I don't know what hatchery these came from, we got them at a local-ish co-op, but the last few years they haven't been carrying chicks. These girls have been...

Sorry for taking so long to respond! I've read this a few times, went back and questioned if my black silkies were actually blue, decided they are black but likely silver based (homozygous silver?), they came from a paint pen a breeder had, so that would make sense. And I've been counting my...

I only have two Fizzy x BA eggs to set tomorrow, they seem to have decided to slack at just the wrong time! I plan to set more eggs early March too, so I can try a few more then. As this cross may produce 50% blue, I've seen "blue" range from what visually looks darn near black to me, to light...

Here he is

Must re-read again... but I just have to say, WOW, your Endymion is gorgeous 🤩 and her face and neck does look a lot like Maple! My thought on hatching a few of the EExBA mixes is that they should be good egg layers and hearty, egg color isn't important to me on this one. I'm assuming the EE...

Here are some younger photos

I would LOVE to ask another question! I just put my EE rooster in with some layers, I'm wanting to hatch some chicks from the 3 Black Astraulorp hens I have in there. The rooster is 3 years old, was supposed to be a pullet, but the group of EEs I bought with him are great layers and the BAs...

Read once, going to have to re-read, but parts are starting to sink in :ya By this time next year I should be able to test the chocolate EE theory as I expect to hatch out both chocolate silkies and black Ameraucanas next month. And I can fairly confidently say that if I even only hatch out...

I had looked at both the simple and more complex genetics calculators before and quickly got lost 🤣 I am ready to give them another try though, I was trying to over simplify their genetics and it was just causing me frustrations when it wasn't showing what I thought it should. Or I didn't even...

Thank you so much again for sharing your knowledge! Do you have any recommendations on sources that are easy to understand for me to read and start learning some foundational knowledge about chicken genetics? I've found some articles before that were so far over my head I decided genetics...

I've added all the info, details, and tidbits into my Excel spreadsheet I've created to track my hatches, genetics, who's who in my flock, age, comments etc about each bird 😃 I now have a Chonkers section with his possible genetic make up, what the crosses with each layer breed will produce...

Gotcha, so not knowing who the hen was, I'll have to wait and see what color feathers start growing in, and even then it might still be a guess. I'll see how many open spots I have in the incubator and I might throw a few eggs from that coop in for fun. 😁

They are a pale tan, the normal silkie color. The one I know is hers is the 1/20 Sk, w marked egg.

Yeah, I'm setting silkie eggs and some other breeds from a local breeder to replenish my layer flock this week. I'll be setting eggs again late February, so I can sneak a few eggs from Chonkers coop in both of those hatches. If I set a few eggs, not knowing if they were Barred Rock, Rhode...