Bantam silkies
Silkies are cute and fluffy, with a fluffy crest to a fully rounded pom pom on their heads. They can be bearded or non-bearded.
They make great pets and are comical to watch. They don’t eat much and are easy to keep, much hardier than their fluffy appearance may suggest.
DNA sexing
Silkies are also notoriously hard to sex until they are several months old. Some colours can be worse than others (my blue cockerel didn’t crow until he was 8 months old!). Therefore I have chosen to have my silkie chicks sexed using DNA from their feathers – this is 99.9% accurate (so the laboratory says!).
Inevitably there is a cost involved with having then sexed by a laboratory, which is why my silkie girls may appear to be more expensive for their age than from other breeders.
Colours
Blue – bearded, small standard size, this quartet is from very good stock. They throw blue and splash chicks, never black.
Bantam gold – a quartet of small bantams. One bearded hen, two non bearded. One hen is particularly pale, from citron. This group can throw pale gold, gold partridge and any shade in between.
Bantam chocolate – mixed chocolate patterns. This group is bred for size, I keep back the smallest ones each year. They are pet quality and sometimes have either amber eyes or very rarely a little straight comb (which I am successfully breeding out):
Cockerels – chocolate paint (bearded), dun silver partridge, chocolate (bearded).
Hens include chocolate (some bearded, some non-bearded, one with a base of gold), chocolate paint (bearded), dun, some silver and some gold based.
Chicks can be a variety of colours from dark chocolate bearded to chocolate with silver patterns, gold patterns, gold, dun, white based with chocolate or dun markings and chocolate paint.
Chocolate cuckoo (bantam)
Two very small and very well-marked chocolate cuckoo hens with a double barred chocolate cuckoo cockerel.
(photos to be updated)
