Debbie's Silkies

[2ndTink]

Yesterday, I took a kitchen scissors out to the breeding coop with me and looked them all over. The buff pen is the problem though, and found no issues, but they all got butt trims anyway.

Today I was looking up supplements for roosters to increase fertility. Rooster Booster granules was one of the products. They already get that, but I only put a fraction of what's recommended in their feed. Maybe I'll up that. I also read Vitamin E and Selenium can help older roosters. He's not even a year old.

I think mostly the trouble is, Carol Burnette, the frizzle buff, is the only chicken in there that's over a year old. Do you think my problems are probably just a matter of maturity?

The batch that hatched yesterday/this morning has three buffs, but a batch I set last week had four eggs in it and one was fertile. So it's going in spurts a little bit.

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If anyone remembers I had gotten rid of my mottleds because they were satin. It appears I must've missed one, and it must be one of the black hens in the chocolate pen, as I'm getting chocolate and black mottleds now. I have no satins, and they aren't either, but I must've kept one that was silkie and just don't remember it? How else would I get those?

more buffs and some adorable mottleds! do you get to keep any of these buffs?

 

[Debbie292d]

more buffs and some adorable mottleds! do you get to keep any of these buffs?

No, that lady from Iowa is driving 5.5 hours this weekend for all of them. I had given her what that hatch was before it went into lockdown, so I could have snuck one and said it didn't hatch, but there'll be more.

 

[Slothinc]

Possibly one of your blacks in the chocolate pen is a mottled carrier - the carriers hatch out with less mottled coloring than a full mottle, and as they mature, the white goes away and they look solid black. So if you have a mottled carrier, then 1/2 of her babies will get one mottled gene and be carriers also. Unless your roo is also a mottled carrier then they could have two genes and end up as mottled!

 

[Slothinc]

Also maybe your young buff ladies are avoiding the boys? I feel like it is much more common to have an error with the mating happening correctly rather than having an actual fertility issue in a young cockerel. Have you seen those other buff boys successfully mating the hens? I’d be inclined to think that something is going wrong with the mating, unless you actually see very clearly that they are getting the job done! Sometimes I have girls that avoid the boys, or attack the boys when they try to mate, and they never have fertilized eggs.

 

[Debbie292d]

Possibly one of your blacks in the chocolate pen is a mottled carrier - the carriers hatch out with less mottled coloring than a full mottle, and as they mature, the white goes away and they look solid black. So if you have a mottled carrier, then 1/2 of her babies will get one mottled gene and be carriers also. Unless your roo is also a mottled carrier then they could have two genes and end up as mottled!

That's my chocolate pen. One rooster, Mocha. He was hatched before I even had mottled here, so it must just be one hen. There's Charlotte, the chocolate one that lays when she feels like it, and two black hens.

So I should grow one of these out and breed it back to the black hen if I figure out which one she is?

 

[Debbie292d]

Also maybe your young buff ladies are avoiding the boys? I feel like it is much more common to have an error with the mating happening correctly rather than having an actual fertility issue in a young cockerel. Have you seen those other buff boys successfully mating the hens? I’d be inclined to think that something is going wrong with the mating, unless you actually see very clearly that they are getting the job done! Sometimes I have girls that avoid the boys, or attack the boys when they try to mate, and they never have fertilized eggs.

It could be he's only getting success with one of them, which is all I've noticed. I'll try pay more attention.

 

[Slothinc]

That's my chocolate pen. One rooster, Mocha. He was hatched before I even had mottled here, so it must just be one hen. There's Charlotte, the chocolate one that lays when she feels like it, and two black hens.

So I should grow one of these out and breed it back to the black hen if I figure out which one she is?

You certainly could breed one of them back to her to get fully mottled chicks, if you want to do mottled again! Or if you simply want to figure out which hen it is, just move one of the black hens into a pen with no other layers so that you know you are getting her eggs (or find some other way to distinguish the eggs!) and if a chick hatched out with the mottled looking face, then you know you have your carrier!

Since you only have two possible hens carrying the mottled gene, it will be pretty easy to separate them for a few days (and she will continue to lay fertilized eggs during that time… I would try to set about 6 eggs from each hen) and label the eggs and then see which of the hens produces the mottled looking babies.

 

[Debbie292d]

You certainly could breed one of them back to her to get fully mottled chicks, if you want to do mottled again! Or if you simply want to figure out which hen it is, just move one of the black hens into a pen with no other layers so that you know you are getting her eggs (or find some other way to distinguish the eggs!) and if a chick hatched out with the mottled looking face, then you know you have your carrier!

Since you only have two possible hens carrying the mottled gene, it will be pretty easy to separate them for a few days (and she will continue to lay fertilized eggs during that time… I would try to set about 6 eggs from each hen) and label the eggs and then see which of the hens produces the mottled looking babies.

I could band the black hen in with MB (since I can't tell two of them apart) and put her in the chocolate pen, then put one from the chocolate pen in with MB. MB's the frizzle white/black cuckoo. Marsha (splash) and Winnie (white) are in with him besides the black one. That would solve it. Thank you! Doing that right now!

 

[Slothinc]

I could band the black hen in with MB (since I can't tell two of them apart) and put her in the chocolate pen, then put one from the chocolate pen in with MB. MB's the frizzle white/black cuckoo. Marsha (splash) and Winnie (white) are in with him besides the black one. That would solve it. Thank you! Doing that right now!

Just be sure that you don’t create chicks with MB that would make it so you can’t see the mottle pattern on those chicks (like if MB produces cuckoo chicks, could the white on the head be confused with the mottled look?) And you may want to band the hen you are keeping in the chocolate pen, just in case you can’t tell her apart from the hen coming over from MBs pen.

Label the eggs you get from each pen. Then if you continue to get mottled from the chocolate pen, you’ll know it’s from the girl that stayed in there. If you get mottled from MBs pen then you’ll know that it was the girl that you moved. Note, you still may get some chocolate looking mottled from the MB pen since it can take time for the sperm from the chocolate rooster to leave the hens body.

Btw the chocolate mottled carrier babies are girls and the black mottled carrier babies are boys.

 

[2ndTink]

No, that lady from Iowa is driving 5.5 hours this weekend for all of them. I had given her what that hatch was before it went into lockdown, so I could have snuck one and said it didn't hatch, but there'll be more.

Well in that case, when are you setting more eggs?