Poultry Question - 'SILKIE CHIC' - Is she a Silkie or a Silbar?

Is this Silkie hen actually a Silbar?

This is an extra blog post I've thrown together after spotting a reference to Silbars on Twitter.

In 2009, I bought half a dozen hatching eggs from eBay, from a seller who was advertising said eggs as Silbars. Sadly, the box was delayed and badly damaged in transit.

I'm assuming that the delay in the eggs reaching us coupled with the treatment they had endured during transit pretty much ruled out any of them hatching. You can imagine my surprise when one actually did hatch!

This is a photo of the adult bird, as provided by the seller in their auction listing. The hen on the left, mother of my 'Silkie-Chic' (This is her name, not a misspelling of chick), was described as, "Silbar". However, despite researching at the time, I could find very little mention of this strain and certainly no signs of any local breeders.

To be honest, I forgot all about this until noticing the Silbar name crop up on Twitter. So here I am, back on the trail of discovery, trying to ascertain if my hen is just a plain Silkie or if she is, indeed, what's known as a Silbar.

Being a lone-hatched chick, she was reared as a family pet and probably spent the best part of her first year wandering in and out my kitchen! We eventually found her another lone chick, a white Silkie hen that we named Dumbledorf. But I digress.

On 03 March, 2009, the chick on the right hatched from the one surviving 'Silbar' egg.

I probably now have a complete day-to-day photo album of our miracle chick, as she progressed to adulthood.

Honestly, it was almost as bad as having a new baby in the house, except this baby grew very quickly.

She was soon able to go out into the garden to be introduced to the other hens, but took a very long time before she could become part of the 'gang'. (She now rules the roost!)

It took us several weeks to find her a companion (Dumbledorf), so she tended to hang about the kitchen door for most of the day, then come into the porch and sleep in her old brooding box at night!

Silkie-Chic did survive and she is still with us, here in Frugaldom, living happily alongside Dumbledorf and my other trio of blue cuckoo and lavender Silkies.

In 2010, Silkie-Chic went broody, while in the company of a white Silkie cockerel, so we incubated her eggs and gave her a couple of others to sit on instead. (The lavender chick is an Araucana.) Her eggs produced a mix of blue and partridge chicks, plus a couple identical to her, but I still didn't work out what colour my hen really is.

She's a great mum and I'd have loved to have bred from her again this year, but the recent housemove put paid to that.

All her last year's chicks were sold and I don't know how many turned out to be cockerels or how many were hens, although I do know the two black-headed partridge coloured chicks were both cockerels. Perhaps I should make a point of finding out if the ones that hatched looking identical to Silkie-Chic turned out to be hens?

To anyone with any knowledge of Silkies, Silbars or colour genetics in poultry, what there be any benefit to breeding this hen to my bearded, blue cuckoo Silkie cockerel?

Your comments would be very much appreciated, thank you.

A Day Out at Wigtown Agricultural Show

Even Frugalites Have Day Trips

Yesterday, 3rd August, was Wigtown Show. It's an annual event that has been running for the past 200 years and one that we try not to miss. Son was home to hold the fort, so we had a frugal day out. £15 for 2 adults and car parking isn't that much, in the grand scheme of things, is it?

This year was the bicentenary and, to mark the occasion, HRH Princess Anne attended. It's the agricultural community's biggest event of the year, so it is always very well attended. We are normally treated to a shower of rain but this year the sun shone throughout the day and a great tme was had by all.

HRH took the time to wander around the showground, chatting to many of the locals and stallholders. Things about here are usually of an informal nature and yesterday's event was no different. It's seldom you find many false airs and graces around these parts, most refreshing, albeit a little disconcerting for some of the visitors.

This year's poultry show was every bit as well supported as last year's, if not more so. There were hundreds of hens, ducks, geese and turkeys, several I hadn't even heard of, let alone seen. However, for sheer 'aaaaw' appeal, this little bantam with her chicks stole the show for me.

Judging the 'Champion of Champions must be a huge burden on the shoulders of whoever has that unenviable task because I really don't know how anyone can compare a horse to a cow to a goat to a sheep to a donkey to a goose!

I had picked out my favourite, a Black Galloway bull with the rather undeserving name of Nancy Boy. He was rather docile, I have to admit, but I'm sure his name won't endear him to his future suitors.

Now that I come to think of it, do cows even bother to exchange names? Perhaps Nancy Boy won't have to deal with that sort of problem afterall. LOL

The feature act of the day was a performance by 'Jive Pony'. The team had travelled many miles to appear and the crowd seemed to appreciate their performance, particularly the audience participation part. The young guy concerned was escorted into the ring, dressed in a pink tu-tu and then legged up onto the Highland pony for his first ever riding experience. He did really well, considering the ribbing he endured from his friends.

We were also lucky enough to see one of the world's smallest owls. I'm guessing it was some sort of pygmy owl, but I didn't want to pay £3.50 for a photograph, so you'll need to do a search to see what it looks like. Maybe I'm just mean, but £3.50 is about half a bag of hen feed, so not an amount I was prepared to pay for a photo on the Frugaldom blog.

 After the show we visited friends and shared a late afternoon cappuccino and chat on their patio. While there, I was able to take some cuttings (thanks, J) of an assortment of geraniums and some grapefruit mint. I'm thinking that an assortment of mint would be an ideal addition to the front 'garden' where each type could be planted in its own pot. This grapefruit one smells lovely.

It was then time to collect our new bantams. There are six in total, four Light Sussex X hens, one blue Pekin hen and a lavender Pekin cockerel. At the moment, they're beng quarantined in a 2m coop and run. In a couple of weeks, we'll let the X bred bantams out with the others but will need to keep the Pekins in the run so Billy Gruff, my blue cuckoo Silkie cockerel, doesn't attack his smaller counterpart.

 

That brings us back to what's happening in Frugaldom. Last night I was sure I heard a small squeak coming from the incubator. Today is day 17 for the quail eggs, so I shouldn't really have been surprised to come through this morning to find the first chick hatched and bumbling about in the incubator. Since then, a second has arrived and several of the other eggs are rocking and rolling, with the tell tale cracking sound of tiny beaks on shell.

Any chick from this lot is a bonus, as the eggs were all collected from my hens the week after they were seperated from the males. With no way of knowing how many, if any, would be fertile, I stuck 32 eggs in the incubator and crossed my fingers. 3 were removed shortly after that, but 29 remained. I wonder what percentage are fertile? I think we've reached 10% now, as I can see a beak pocking out of an almost open egg.

 

I'll update with photos as soon as I possibly can. For now, the incubator is remaining firmly shut. You can follow the updates by reading the section amed 'In the Incubator' on the free forums, which is where I normally upload the photos.

Frugaldom now has a new project to add to the list of many - we need to build an aviary to house some Diamond Doves that we are rehoming from the same person who gave us the bantams. He's leaving the area in a few weeks time, so we'll need to get organised soon to ensure we can house these new birds. There are a few others comig too, mainly zebra finches and bengalese, but we already have those species, so they'll mix OK after their quarantine period. The Diamond Doves, however, I'd like to see outside in their own space. More on this at a later date.

In the time it has taken me to edit and upload this post, quail chicks 3, 4, 5 and 6 have arrived! We've already passed the 20% mark. :)