Breeding silkied Cochin bantams to the Standard

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Here are the babies more fluffed up and starting to stand up! Not the best picture because the darker chicks blend into that background, but I'll get a better shot of them tomorrow on a light background if I have the time.

I wrote about this on my other thread, but the light chick that's furthest to the left, here, I'm starting to suspect might actually be recessive white instead of Splash! Her beak and legs are just yellow-orange as opposed to the dusky / gray-tinged beaks and legs of the other three, and she's more yellowish than faintly grayish in her chick down. The farm I got all of my foundational stock from has had recessive whites pop up, and I got one, myself, in my original batch from them, so it's pretty likely that the gene is floating around in my birds. We'll see once those feathers start coming in!

 

[Party_Chicken]

Here are the babies more fluffed up and starting to stand up! Not the best picture because the darker chicks blend into that background, but I'll get a better shot of them tomorrow on a light background if I have the time.

I wrote about this on my other thread, but the light chick that's furthest to the left, here, I'm starting to suspect might actually be recessive white instead of Splash! Her beak and legs are just yellow-orange as opposed to the dusky / gray-tinged beaks and legs of the other three, and she's more yellowish than faintly grayish in her chick down. The farm I got all of my foundational stock from has had recessive whites pop up, and I got one, myself, in my original batch from them, so it's pretty likely that the gene is floating around in my birds. We'll see once those feathers start coming in!

If you get enough the whites would you start breeding the whites? Adorable chicks

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I'm not sure, I don't really have any spare pens I could devote to them. I'm inclined to incorporate them into my current pens if they have nice type and everything, I just don't know how people feel about recessive white being a possibility in BBS lines.

 

[Egg Snatcher]

I'm not sure, I don't really have any spare pens I could devote to them. I'm inclined to incorporate them into my current pens if they have nice type and everything, I just don't know how people feel about recessive white being a possibility in BBS lines.

If it were me I wouldn’t cross them. Mainly because I don’t want to mess with the recessive part.

I noticed your chicks on towels. How long do you keep your chicks on towels?

 

[Party_Chicken]

I'm not sure, I don't really have any spare pens I could devote to them. I'm inclined to incorporate them into my current pens if they have nice type and everything, I just don't know how people feel about recessive white being a possibility in BBS lines.

Is there any way to breed it out of the line or do they all carry it?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

If it were me I wouldn’t cross them. Mainly because I don’t want to mess with the recessive part.

Yeah, that's where I'm torn. I figure it's already there if I've got a White from them, but I'm not sure if I should put it back in the flock and really lock it in there. I might just have to do some budgeting to see if I can get another pen put together... That's all assuming the little one is a White after all, of course!

I noticed your chicks on towels. How long do you keep your chicks on towels?

I play it by ear, but generally only a week or two. It depends on if I have staggered hatches coming up that I want to integrate together and if my bigger brooder is occupied. These guys will probably be on the towels for at least a couple weeks because I have more chicks due the next couple Sundays, and my Easter chicks are still in the big kid brooder. It rapidly reaches the point where the towel has to be changed out daily, though, so I try not to keep them on towels any longer than I have to.

Is there any way to breed it out of the line or do they all carry it?

There is a way, but it's tricky because of it being recessive. You either DNA test each of your birds for the gene, or you test cross each one individually to a recessive white bird to see if any of their chicks hatch White as well. There's no outward sign of it being there on non-white birds until a White chick hatches all of the sudden. If that little one really is White, then that means I know for sure that the rooster in that pen and at least one hen in there both carry it, because the gene must be inherited from both parents in order to express. More than likely not all of the birds in that pen carry it, though, or I probably would have seen it before now.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Buck's first five babies have hatched! All five are Blue, as expected when you cross Splash to Black, so hopefully that means those girls really are Black and not dark Blues. Obviously, 5 isn't very many chicks to prove that, especially out of 6 hens, so I'll still be keeping an eye on future Buck batches for any Splashes popping up in them.

Here are last weekend's babies as well. Far left is the maybe-White. Her little wing feathers sure look whitish to me, especially next to the Splash babies' wing feathers, but I'm just not confident enough yet from that to say for sure that she's White and not just an extra light Splash...

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

One busy brooder! Look at those little tinies in there compared to the week-olds Hard to believe they were that small, too, just a week ago!