My Growing Silkie Flock

I have been spending much of the winter hatching and raising a flock of nice quality silkies.  This takes a while because not all that hatch are good quality, several are boys etc, etc.  I would like to raise blue, black, splash, partridge and white. 

These are breeder quality, they are about 4 months old and should be laying in spring.  I will pick and choose the best and combine them with the show quality silkies that should be hatching out of the incubator any day.  One way to choose a good quality bird is the stance.  Look at the stance in the first pic.  She is standing with her head back, chest out and tail up.  That is a desirable stance.  Here are a few more of this group.

Another way to judge quality is if you look at their wing from the side it should look like the curve of a smile.    Silkies are hard to sex until they are 4-5 months old.  If you notice some have very round even top hats, those are girls.  The boys are more upright and skinnier like mowhawks.  It looks like I have 6 pullets and 6 cockerels so far. I have several blue, 4 white, 1 black and no splash yet.

 

Here are some 8 week old silkies from the same breeder.  There are 2 pullets and 2 cockerels.  3 are black and 1 blue.  As you can see one of the black cockerels has a silver "scarf" around his neck.  This is a leakage of color and undesirable, he will be sold.  You want nice solid colors.

I have tons of silkies growing out in my garage.  They are the up and coming fledglings. The breeder quality birds are from Mbrobbins on BYC and the show quality birds are from a breeder in Monroe, WA.

I hope to keep and breed the best of the best from all these birds and hope to be selling eggs and their offspring by summer 2011.