- Aug 23, 2020
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As I'm heading into my second hatch for the year, I wanted to begin a thread documenting this hatch, and hopefully future hatches, as well as follow my grow outs. I'm working to get a few pens set up to breed silkies to the SOP and also begin a journey with Swedish Flower Hens and Ermines. We will still have a mixed layer flock and likely a few totally adorable bantams, we currently have 2 little Ameraucana bantam chicks and may have a few more hatching out to join them soon!
I have 10 silkies growing out from two different breeders that are 8 and 14 weeks old give or take a week or two, 1 light blue, 4 splash, and 5 silver based black from paint breeding.
In January I hatched out 5 silkie chicks from a breeder, 1 chocolate, 1 chocolate paint (say what!?!!!!), 1 blue, 2 blacks, 1 splash, 3 Swedish Flower Hens, and the 2 Ameraucana bantams, a bunch of silkies from my flock and a couple layer cross chicks. The hatch % was very low, maybe half the eggs I set were viable, and I had more quitters than I was expecting. I have since changed the feed (at the start of winter I moved them to an organic feed, and found out that it didn't have much in the way of vitamins for my girls), and I'm not using the NR360 where most of the quitters happened which was were the bulk of the eggs from my flock were. I had the breeder's eggs in the Brinsea and only had 1 quitter per breeder's set of eggs.
I set the following eggs this morning:
13 Ermine / black
20 SFH
16 extra special silkies from @Debbie292d (there was 1 egg-trocity by USPS)
8 Fizzy the EE / Black Australorp
4 Fizzy the EE / Barred Rock
1 Dark Brahma
8 Chonkers / EE
4 Chonkers / Brown eggs (BR, BA, RIR)
11 Blue satin / chocolate
12 Blue satin / blue partridge
2 Ameraucana bantams
6 D'Uccles
3 D'Uccles / silkie
It is still early in the season so I'm not sure what % will start, we will know next Saturday!
My dream is to have breeder / show quality silkies in black, blue, splash, maybe a paint at some point, and for fun, chocolates. I also plan to hatch out these Ermines and SFH's and work on setting up, small, but high quality, breeding pens for them as well. The Fizzy / BA chicks should be great layers, the BA's are my oldest hens and still laying well as 4 year olds, and the EE hens Fizzy came with are also very consistent layers, so I'm hoping for very healthy and consistent layers that will lay some shade of pale blue or minty green.
I have 10 silkies growing out from two different breeders that are 8 and 14 weeks old give or take a week or two, 1 light blue, 4 splash, and 5 silver based black from paint breeding.
In January I hatched out 5 silkie chicks from a breeder, 1 chocolate, 1 chocolate paint (say what!?!!!!), 1 blue, 2 blacks, 1 splash, 3 Swedish Flower Hens, and the 2 Ameraucana bantams, a bunch of silkies from my flock and a couple layer cross chicks. The hatch % was very low, maybe half the eggs I set were viable, and I had more quitters than I was expecting. I have since changed the feed (at the start of winter I moved them to an organic feed, and found out that it didn't have much in the way of vitamins for my girls), and I'm not using the NR360 where most of the quitters happened which was were the bulk of the eggs from my flock were. I had the breeder's eggs in the Brinsea and only had 1 quitter per breeder's set of eggs.
I set the following eggs this morning:
13 Ermine / black
20 SFH
16 extra special silkies from @Debbie292d (there was 1 egg-trocity by USPS)
8 Fizzy the EE / Black Australorp
4 Fizzy the EE / Barred Rock
1 Dark Brahma
8 Chonkers / EE
4 Chonkers / Brown eggs (BR, BA, RIR)
11 Blue satin / chocolate
12 Blue satin / blue partridge
2 Ameraucana bantams
6 D'Uccles
3 D'Uccles / silkie
It is still early in the season so I'm not sure what % will start, we will know next Saturday!
My dream is to have breeder / show quality silkies in black, blue, splash, maybe a paint at some point, and for fun, chocolates. I also plan to hatch out these Ermines and SFH's and work on setting up, small, but high quality, breeding pens for them as well. The Fizzy / BA chicks should be great layers, the BA's are my oldest hens and still laying well as 4 year olds, and the EE hens Fizzy came with are also very consistent layers, so I'm hoping for very healthy and consistent layers that will lay some shade of pale blue or minty green.
I am also on the edge of my seat on the Fizzy eggs, I will be anxiously be following the cockerels. Hopefully they carry his "gorgeous" genes but not his ornery genes! 
Loving his chocolate paint baby 
