Sloth’s Silkies

[Farmgirl283420]

I have been inspired by others on here like @Debbie292d to make a single post talking about my chicken adventures! I’ll warn you this first post is long, but more just for my own records, and I’ll keep track of my hatches and birds here for journaling purposes!

My story started a few years ago when I built a coop from scratch, while simultaneously incubating shipped silkie eggs and a few locals. But then we had to relocate and I left my coop and chooks with some friends. They took great care of them and I came back to some of my original chickens (and a few that had hatched after I left.) We lived a few hours away from where we were originally so enlisting the help of a CRANE, we extracted my homemade coop and run and relocated it to our new place!

So here I find myself a chicken mama once more and I couldn’t be more thrilled! Silkies hold my heart, I love almost everything about them. They’re small size, fluffy feathers, crests, beards, fluffy feet, shape, style, colors, black skin, waddling, and sweet nature… I love everything about them! Seriously it’s like the breed was created for me!!

My favorite colors are paint and lavender but I have never been able to get my hands on lavender. I currently have 6 hens. Three paint silkies, two black silkies with leakage, and one black copper marans who I’m not especially fond of lol!

My dream is to work on a line of colored-egg laying silkies, breeding towards silkie SOP. I can’t really have roos where I live but I’m going to see what I can do haha. I think it will be a very slow process.

I got myself an incubator and have started hatching already!

The first batch hatched on Leap Day (2/29). They are from a breeder in Iowa who ships eggs more securely and carefully than anyone else I have ever seen, and her pricing is very reasonable. Her name is Brenda Smith and she is on FB. I had a couple of shipped batches from her a few years ago and one of my remaining paint hens was hatched from her eggs! I have 9 black and/or black mottled silkie babies from her eggs. I haven’t ever had a mottled silkie before (not a fan of the light beaks and wattles and combs on mottled and cuckoo) but it seems like breeders are getting more of the black pigment now. These babies are all pretty dark! So I can’t wait to see how they turn out. I put them in my outside brooder yesterday (1.5 weeks old) with a heat pad cave and they are doing really well!

The next batches of eggs are in the incubator now and they are a batch of show silkies from Bobbi Porto (I have always wanted her eggs!!) she is so so sweet and amazing. Out of 19 eggs, only 6 are developing. They really got jostled in the mail! But I am really crossing my fingers that some may hatch - there are 5 blue cream (very excited about this color) and one lemon cuckoo.

The other batch in the incubator are 4 eggs from someone on this forum kind enough to send me some of their silkied EE eggs - beautiful blue silkie sized eggs, and they already have a lot of the silkie traits! They will be white. I am excited to get some blue egg layers from them!

Okay then I did a bad thing, and ordered more eggs to fill all the empty places in my incubator… so now I get the joy of doing a staggered hatch in my one incubator. I think these eggs will be my last hatches for awhile!

The first batch is 7 eggs from Akers farms, she has two frizzled satin silkie hens who lay a blue egg and she was kind enough to send me eggs only from them. One egg looks very small, so I don’t think it will fare well, and the others are kind of on the big size (larger than my silkies eggs) but I’m super excited to see what they look like!

And last but certainly not least, I ordered my dream eggs, for which I have zero expectations for, as they are lavender eggs and lavender silkies have a very very hard time hatching (and living in general haha) so we will see, but I’m not trying to keep my hopes up. They are from Geri Godina who comes very highly recommended. They arrive tomorrow. I believe she sent 7-8 eggs. So excited to try! (A few years ago I got lavender hatching eggs but they were mangled in the mail and not one ever even started to develop. Hoping for a better outcome this time!)

Anyways, that was basically a novel of an introduction!! Sorry about it and be ready for all my chicken adventures to be posted here.

The girls and their set up, and the mottled chicks a few days after hatching.

I’m looking forward to see what happens! I really hope your Lavender eggs hatch! The chicks are adorable!

 

[Slothinc]

I’m looking forward to see what happens! I really hope your Lavender eggs hatch! The chicks are adorable!

Thank you so much!!

 

[Farmgirl283420]

Thank you! I really hope they make it too. So far so good! I’ll take pictures tomorrow after they have had sufficient time to rest. Ah! So exciting you have a pip!! I’ll have to hop onto your thread and see how things are going with your hatch!!

Glad those three are healthy!!!!

 

[Farmgirl283420]

Sorry things are working out! It seems there is always some kind of chicken drama!

 

[Slothinc]

Thank you! And now the chicks have been acting a little weird so I’m not sure if they are going to be normal or not! A couple have weird leg spasms. They otherwise seem fine but I feel like it could go either way for them!

 

[Slothinc]

How are the chicks!?!

Thanks for asking! Unfortunately I lost one of the chicks - the white silkied EE. It was such a sweetie, I was so sad. However I talked to the breeder and she is sending more eggs! And I made one last order of silkie eggs to go into the incubator with them… THEN I will be done hatching for the season .

In the meantime I had 3 beautiful babies hatch from the Akers farm blue eggs. They all likely have the same mom but could possibly have different dads as there are multiple Roos in the pen. They are from a “silver laced satin” pen! Also I believe the mom is a frizzle. All three have different coloring and markings. The last one to hatch I had to help out a tiny bit as it was a little bit sticky, and it has the funniest black “unibrow” and eyeliner. Too cute.

I also still have 3 eggs in the incubator right now! Two eggs from Norsk farm that are lavender bantam ameraucana, and 1 lavender silkie that has somehow survived, despite me realizing halfway through incubation that there was a hairline crack in the shell I put wax on it, but I’m not sure if it was too late or not. They are due to hatch on the 11th.

 

[Slothinc]

They are so cute! I hope your other eggs hatch! Just wondering do the eggs have a better chance if you got them from your own chickens? Or is hatching eggs just hard in general?

Oh they would definitely have a wayyyy better chance at hatching if from your own chickens. Most of the issues with the eggs I’ve had came from being handled roughly in the mail. Many of the eggs had completely detached and watery looking air sacs (almost every single lavender silkie egg, in both batches was like that, which is why out of 20 eggs that I was shipped only one is still in the incubator, and it looks like it’s fading.) Now if these were from
My own chickens I would expect most if not all of them to develop just fine because they didn’t go through the shipping process! I don’t have a rooster so I can’t try it out right now But yes shipping is brutal on eggs!

 

[Slothinc]

I'm so glad I found your silkie thread! Thanks for sharing your story, it is so awesome you have your original coop!

I really hope you can get your Lavender silkie dreams fulfilled, it seems we are all having some struggles getting the colors we want! Debbie has been trying so hard to get buff and I think only has hatched 1 or 2? I wanted chocolate so ordered eggs in and had 1 chocolate from the 3 eggs ugh!

The low hatch % sure makes those shipped eggies expensive! I've heard about the Lavender being fragile, I wonder why?

Thanks @2ndTink !

I don’t know for sure, but the lavender gene is linked to shredded feathers in regular feathered birds (usually it’s just the tail feathers looking ragged) so maybe adding that gene in with silkies who already have shredded feathers creates extra fragility? That’s the only thing I can think might affect them. It’s weird, everyone who owns lavender says they are way more fragile than regular silkies.

 

[Slothinc]

I cringe to even figure out how much these birds I DID get cost me to try get buffs.

4 dozen eggs of mixed buff/cuckoo/paint/mottled, and wanting ZERO naked necks, I wound up with 18 birds. 1 frizzle buff and 1 NN buff (if these are both females, that's fine.) The rest are cuckoos and mottled with one paint being a NN and there's a NN cuckoo.

I'm happy though, with the exception of the NNs, to have gotten what I have. I never would have these beautiful birds had I not tried for buffs. Someday, I may try again.

@Debbie292d I have found the same with my hatch percentages being way way lower so far this year on shipped eggs, compared to 4 years ago when I incubated all summer.

Ugh I’m so sorry about your quest for buffs that hasn’t been too successful yet! Bobbi Porto has gorgeous buffs - last I saw she was hatching the buffs for herself but I would totally recommend her if you decide to try and hatch out more buffs. She is the nicest lady ever!!!! And you can tell her you don’t want NN!

 

[Slothinc]

Can't you buy lavender silkies chicks? I personally never trust hatching eggs to much can and does go wrong. I use to have buff silkies now i just have blacks and chocolates

I had thought this as well, but I think it’s nearly impossible to get shipped lavender chicks from any of the good breeders…. And I came across a hatchery website that ships lavender silkie chicks… guess what the price is? I almost choked when I saw it! $300 per chick, straight run. I literally have never seen chicks that cost that much. And especially not from a hatchery. It is insane, imo. Also their pics look like they have had a purplish tint added. Very weird. But yeah, they are just very rare and extremely hard to get ahold of.