OTHER SILKY FEATHERED THINGS...

 

        Believe it or not, silky feathering is not confined to the Silkie breed!  According to serveral resources including the article, "Inheritance of Silkiness in Fowl," written by Sarah V. H. Jones in 1921 and published in The Journal of Heredity  12: 117-128 (1921), silky feathering can rather randomly appear in many different breeds of purebred poultry.  This "silkiness" is genetically identical to the "silkiness" of our Silkies.  Whether this "silkiness" occurs as a new mutation or is simply the result of crossbreeding in the distant past is pure guesswork.  Most likely given the rarity of mutation, some crossbreeding occurred somewhere in the "accidentally" silky fowls history.  Some of the breeds where this phenomenon has been noted are Japanese Bantams (also known as Chabos), Cochin Bantams,  Leghorns, Langshans, Sumatras, Rhode Island Reds, and a few others.

 

SILKY JAPANESE BANTAMS

      Silky Chabos are actively bred in the Netherlands but are virtually unknown in the United States.  The photo below of the Silky Wheaten Japanese Bantam Hen is provided courtesy of Jan Ubel's  Chabo Home Page.

 

 

SILKY COCHIN BANTAMS

        Silky Cochin Bantams are much more unusual than Silky Chabos.  The Red Silky Cochins pictured below came out pure Cochin hatchery stock which had showed no trace of silky-feathered offspring for at least four generations.  Seeing these chicks fledge out sure surprised their breeder!  He was using intensive line breeding to create a strain of "super-broody" Cochins to hatch parrot eggs and look what happened:

 

 

      If your are curious about these "accidentally" silky oddities, drop me a line at my email address, silkiechickens@pgtv.net .  If you are ACTUALLY breeding something like this ON PURPOSE, I BEG YOU TO PLEASE CONTACT ME.  I like to collect photos of unusual silky things and the actual silky feathered bird if possible!

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LAST UPDATED OCTOBER 30, 1999 BY INGA LADD.