Miscellaneous Meeps - Hatching my Dreams

[TwoCrows]

Here's the feathers from my other splash SFH that has all the brown. The brown has variegated specs and then she has some blue on some feathers too. She's so pretty!

View attachment 3995114View attachment 3995115

Wow, those are stunning!!

 

[Debbie292d]

They're beautiful, Tink. I like the coloring on that first pullet.

That's my favorite too! So regal almost!

 

[2ndTink]

I moved a cockerel in with my old hens (they're molting if you can't tell ) he was so quiet and the lowest in the pecking order in with all the boys. It was like a switch got flipped as soon as he went in with the ladies. He was flapping his wings, crowing, and dancing. By the second day he seemed to feel quite comfortable that the girls and the coop are his and he was happily growling his discontentment at anything he doesn't agree with.

 

[Slothinc]

He is handsome!! I love his beard! That’s really cool that he has the opportunity to come out of his shell now that he’s in with the ladies

 

[Citruschick]

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.

Quite the undertaking! Looking forward to peeps!

 

[2ndTink]

He is handsome!! I love his beard! That’s really cool that he has the opportunity to come out of his shell now that he’s in with the ladies

He is one proud dude! Well see if the old ladies lay any eggs this spring, I'll hatch a few mix breeds. These old girls have been good layers so a few chicks with their genetics would be fun

 

[2ndTink]

Quite the undertaking! Looking forward to peeps!

Thanks! It's been a heck of a year! We're only a few months away from our next set of hatching.

 

[TwoCrows]

I moved a cockerel in with my old hens (they're molting if you can't tell ) he was so quiet and the lowest in the pecking order in with all the boys. It was like a switch got flipped as soon as he went in with the ladies. He was flapping his wings, crowing, and dancing. By the second day he seemed to feel quite comfortable that the girls and the coop are his and he was happily growling his discontentment at anything he doesn't agree with.

View attachment 4005447

Oh he's a beauty! I love hearing stories like this where boys get to live the life they truly want instead of being squelched due to other males. He looks like a very happy boy!

 

[2ndTink]

Oh he's a beauty! I love hearing stories like this where boys get to live the life they truly want instead of being squelched due to other males. He looks like a very happy boy!

He is over the top happy my bachelor "flock" is down to 3 boys, so not much of a flock anymore. Everyone has been moved to various coops with ladies, or mainly for reasons of poor behavior, they've earned their dinner invite. I think if I had just one more coop... lol, it would be better for the boys. I really want 2 coops with SFH roosters, the one Ermine coop, and then a Brahma coop. And of course I still have my 2 silkie coops and grow out pen. Right now I just have 1 SFH coop and I'm going to have to split my big coop and run back in half.

Or I need @Debbie292d to take over my current silkie bloodlines and I can change my current silkie coops into a SFH and a Brahma coop

 

[TwoCrows]

. I think if I had just one more coop... lol,

More coops, more coops!!