Silkie Standard of Perfection

[ultasol]

Amy, Gary Overton said the primaries not lying flat/twisting out is usually caused byu/seen in birds with shredding that goes more than 1/3 up the primary.

I did end up with one GORGEOUS black cockerel from the chicks from you that just started to get a smidge of gold in his hackle! Argh! I was conditioning him to show too. The rest look good, and I have a couple other young cockerels to choose from. Between the blacks I bred and the chicks from you I have new birds to show this fall.

 

[TinyBirds]

Here are some of the young buffs from Amy. I think my camera is working better again.

 

[destiny_56085]

I've seen that too..... You get little tendrils of feathers dangling down where it looks like the wing isn't completely flat. I've also had 1 little black hen that her feathers curl on the wingtips. Judges haven't commented on it yet, but that little frill sticking up bothers me.

I wish you could make it up here for our fall show. Eric Kutch will be judging! Too bad WA is all teh way across the country....

 

[destiny_56085]

TinyBirds....tooo cute! Just wait til they really start to feather out. I'm surprised those girls don't have them as housepets yet.

 

[ThePolishPrincess]

I have a question. I bought a few cheeps from a breeder somewhat close to me a few months ago. The one I have hope for is a white. I saw the whites he was breeding and thought they were nice, so I ended up with a nice white chick with nice feet (feathering and toe-spacing) some poof, that I thought would 'grow out' with age. The birds were what we thought to be roughly 2 and a half months at the time.

They're supposed to be 4 months now (the breeder had forgotten the exact age of these ones, he had quite a few different age groups) and the babies have certainly poofed up some. I'm pretty sure white is a girl. Sadly, her crest isn't as big as I'd like, not like her mommies' or daddies'. What hope does she hold of it getting any bigger? As in, when does this part of Silkie-maturing 'stop'?

---
On that note, one of the babies was perfect when we bought it. I'm telling you, BEAUTIFUL blue, really dark, with perfect toe-spacing (at least in my opinion), awesome foot-feathering (down to the middle toe), really big, round crest, no comb/wattles and soooo sweet! NOW, baby has a heck of a lot of golden leakage, terrible split wing, has that awkward body shape, and looks like it's a he! Still no comb/wattles. Now I'm just waiting for a crow.

...more baby-sitting money down the drain...

But at least he's a sweetie.

 

[racuda]

Quote:
Here is an example of how one of mine changed. I thought she was a he for a long time. She had a sparse crest and I expected to cull her. As time went on her crest grew, and while she isn't as poofy as my others, she isn't too bad.

Her name is Runner because as a chick she was hard to catch. Here she is at 2 1/2 months old:

And here she is at 14 months:

She is a dirty bird right now. In my part of North Carolina the dirt is the color of Mars.

 

[ThePolishPrincess]

I can see what you mean, though. At first glace baby has that 'look' in the face. Love those feet, though. I'm hoping that this little blue turns out to be a girly. Won't do much good for me, showing wise, but I could use her/him as a 4H project on what to look for/cull for.

Now I wish they had more 'magical transformations' like this. All I ever hear about is "My hen turned into a rooster!" I'd like to see that reversed once in a while.

 

[destiny_56085]

Polish Princess....that is exactly what I was talking about with culling birds with faults. Its hard when you have favorites. Gold leakage in blues is an auto disqualification in the show ring. Wings are a huge fault that will pass on. There are soo many nice cockerels out there.... Will this bird be kept separate from your breeder birds? On your white, crest size can change a bit. They still have their first set of feathers at 4 months. I have 9 month olds that still have a ton of pinfeathers opening up in the crest. On the cockerels, it can take up to 12 months before they are fully mature.

 

[TinyBirds]

Quote:
Thanks!! I'm excited to see them grow up too!

 

[ThePolishPrincess]

Quote:
To be quite honest with you, I'm rethinking the idea of doing any breeding at all. My plan was to originally hatch just a few chicks and sell them. However, our birds have done reasonably well at shows this year (better than I thought they would), both APA approved and not, so I'm thinking I'd rather keep my birds...well...mine, other than take the risk that those I sell will out-show their parents. I've become a bit of a celeb in my 4H group. Almost all of the members have hatchery stock.

Honestly, I'm leaving for college in 2 years and my parents don't want more birds. We wouldn't want to keep adding on birds that I don't want to sell because they're too nice but I don't want to sell my possible future competition. That said, I could keep the blue and not worry about passing these genes on. I would never pass on a flaw like split wing, especially. It looks so ugly anyway. If this blue turns out to be a male, I'll have to see how things go over with our current male, who is a black with much better quality and has already placed in shows. We only have one for-sure girl, so that is the big problem. I don't want fighting, but a friendly boy his worth his weight in gold around here...

Thank you on the crest info. I hope it keeps growing. But she's not as big as I remember others being at her age, so maybe the breeder was confused with age? I'm trying to get pictures. Camara never works, but in this case I'd love to give a visual...