Silkies For Sale
Selective Silkie Breeding
I am often asked why silkies that are hatched out from breeders look so different from silkies that come from large hatcheries. The short answer is that serious silkie breeders take care to improve their silkies by breeding to fix good traits and eliminating bad ones as they set up their breeding pens.
In nature, jungle fowl used natural selection when choosing their mates. Males that were strong and vigorous had a large following of female hens. These strong genes were passed along to their descendants. Weaker males were not selected as worthy mates by the females.
After domestication occurred, the farmer used artificial selection to improve his flock. Single mating is taking one outstanding female and one outstanding male and breeding them. Their offspring should be perfect. Right? Not always. There is no such thing as a perfect bird. Other methods are needed.
First, the breeder needs a plan. They need to have specific goals. Is there something that needs to be improved? Those would be things like, type, feather color, skin color or feather quality. Maybe your breeding goal is to get rid of something such as extra claws or toenails.
Most breeders start with a good set of birds that are excellent examples to begin with. They can breed with those birds for many years provided they keep the best and sell or cull the rest. The best must also be the most vigorous and healthy. By constantly improving your flock by keeping the best and the most vigorous and only breeding with those, you can continue to breed for many years without going outside of your own flock.
Line breeding is one way to keep up the health of your flock but still keep it closed to other birds. Introducing new birds and breeding with them can bring recessive gene traits to the fore front and you can be bringing in unwanted traits that will be difficult to later breed out.
Line breeding involves pairing fathers with daughters and sons with mothers. Take it a step further and breed Grandfathers with granddaughters and grandmothers with grandsons. You do not want to breed brother to sister if you can help it as that is a very close shared gene pool. Excessive inbreeding can cause infertility, severe deformities, and lethal genes but it can also produce some spectacular birds.
Every seven years or so, you can then out cross to bring in some fresh blood lines. It is best to go back to your original breeder to get these out cross birds. They will have the same line or strain as you do and you will encounter less surprises in your offspring.
Line breeding and Spiral breeding are two methods for continuing to breed healthy birds without resorting to too much out crossing of new blood. With silkies it is important to keep your colors separated, especially if you are breeding with thoughts of showing in a poultry show later.
Most people do backyard breeding for fun and get all kinds of interesting combinations, but if you are serious about wanting to improve the breed, then work hard at striving to meet the Standard of Perfection. These standards can be found online for every breed of chicken and are very worthwhile reading. Good luck in your breeding endeavors.
For tips and tricks for raising outstanding silkies check out our Chicken Learning Center at VJPPoultry.com . VJP Poultry is an NPIP and state inspected hatchery located 30 miles north of St. Paul. We hatch out silkies all year long so we always have stock available. Like us on Facebook to get weekly updates on what we currently have for sale.
Victoria J. Peterson
Silkies For Sale – 5/6/17
Should You Help Your Silkie Chick to Hatch?
Hatching out chicks using an incubator is not quite the same thing as the natural way under a hen. An incubator tries to mimic what a mother hen would do but it is never quite the same in every way. A mother hen instinctively knows what her little chick needs in order to hatch successfully.
There have been many times when I have looked at a chick struggling to escape it’s shell and wonder whether or not it needs my help. We all have heard that you should not lift the lid of the hatcher and let the humidity escape. I admit that I lift the lid quite a bit taking chicks out and rolling the eggs right side up when they are knocked around. I always spray water on the sides of the hatcher afterwards to bump the humidity back up. Sometimes I see a chick that has started to zip but has then stopped and I wonder if I should do something to help it.
The main reason people think it is okay to help hatch is because they believe that once a chick pips, it is ready to hatch. This is not true. The need another 12-24 hours to be able to survive outside the egg. Sometimes people think that the bird will suffocate inside the egg, but that is not the case either.
The hatching process starts when the air cell changes shapes as the unborn chick, using the egg tooth, punctures the inner shell membrane and enters the air cell. The egg tooth is used to begin unzipping the egg shell in a circular manner at the large end of the egg.
This starting of the hatch occurs partially from the increased carbon dioxide level in the egg. This causes the embryo to begin twitching it’s muscles, allowing the inner shell membrane to be punctured by the egg tooth. The chick then begins breathing the air in the air cell. As the carbon dioxide level begins to rise again, the muscles at the back of the neck begin twitching again. The abdominal muscles also begin twitching which helps draw the yolk sac into the chick’s body. The leg muscle twitching helps strengthen the chick’s legs.
Normally, the chick will hatch 24-48 hours after puncturing the inner membrane. If you try to help by making a pin sized hole in the egg shell over the air cell, the carbon dioxide level will drop, which slows the hatch down. Making a pin hole or opening up the air cell should only be done if the peeping noise level of the hatching chicks is decreasing. Most people start out helping far too soon and end up with a chick that has a yolk sac hanging from its belly.
When a chick begins to hatch, the yolk sac is still out of the body. Over the next 12-24 hours, the chick pecks his way out and moves around inside the shell. The blood that is in the vein system against the shell wall pulls slowly into its body. The yolk sac will also slowly pull in to the chick’s body. If you help a chick and the membrane bleeds, you know his yolk sac is still out and you should not take him out of his shell. Once the membrane no longer bleeds as you remove the shell, you can be sure that the yolk is absorbed and you can help the chick out.
Of course, it is best not to interfere in the hatch and help in most cases. Silkies are a little bit different from other breeds of chicks in that they often have skull vaults. These vaults can be so large that they can get in the way of the silkie trying to turn in a circle to zip around the egg.
Sometimes I will see that a silkie has pecked a large hold where it first pipped and cannot turn to complete the zip. I wait until it is clear that the chick is stuck and then I will start chipping the egg shell away. If I hit blood, I stop and wait. Then I try again later in the day.
Another time I will help out is if the silkie has zipped all the way around but isn’t able to push out of the egg. This can be due to a humidity level drop. The membrane dries and it become tougher to break through. I will break the dried membranes and help it to escape.
When I first started helping, I lost many chicks because I started the process too soon. You must have patience. They are safer inside the egg than outside the egg. Good Luck in all of your silkie hatches.
For tips and tricks for raising outstanding silkies check out our Chicken Learning Center at VJPPoultry.com . VJP Poultry is an NPIP and state inspected hatchery located 30 miles north of St. Paul. We hatch out silkies all year long so we always have stock available. Like us on Facebook to get weekly updates on what we currently have for sale.
Victoria J. Peterson
VJP Poultry 