by Inga Ladd
March 18, 1998 began as something of a triumph for me. One bluish silkie chick hatched that morning out of an old Styrofoam incubator my dad gave me. The hatching percentage on the whole batch was pitiful but you must consider the whole story. I'm looking for a blue hen. A blue hen may even be rarer than hen's teeth. . .
I think I saw my first silkies, a white pair, at the fair in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the early 1990s. I must have been home from college visiting my father. I thought they were beautiful. The next spring my father ordered a bunch of chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery. Murray McMurray always gives you a free rare exotic chick. The free chick from his order was a silkie of the most incredible shade of powder-puff, deep sky blue that I had ever seen. He lived. When I came home again to visit that summer, I remember him as an attractive young cockerel with sky blue plumage of a color resembling something out of a cartoon or the stuffed animal section of a toy store. He didn't even look real. Sadly, a fox ate him. I found a few feathers at the opening of a fox's den on the edge of dad's property after he turned up missing a few days later. I should have kept the feathers. We tried ordering some more blue silkie chicks the next couple of years from McMurray. The chicks, when we could get them, were a solid shade of light slate gray, not BLUE like that first chick. My dad and my husband swear that I am imagining how blue that silkie was, but I don't think so. I remember thinking that the color was BLUE, not gray or black or silver or slate some other shade that poultry breeders refer to as blue. It was BLUE and only a shade lighter than the elusive and shy blue birds we sometimes see perched on our farm fences. To make a long story short, I started a quest for these BLUE silkies. I still am looking.
Now, I need to explain about blue hens. In 1993, my husband and I bought our first broodmare. She was a race-bred quarter horse. She came and went and so did a number of other broodmares, race prospects, stallions and foals over the next several years. Breeding racehorses is our business when we can steal enough time away from our day jobs. I soon learned that racehorse breeders refer to the best, champion-producing broodmares as "blue hen" mares because such mares are only one in a million. My obsession with the racehorses spilled into the chickens somehow. I guess I must have a "blue hen" of some sort!
Now, I'llget back to the triumph of March 18, 1998. The triumph was the result of a four year effort to raise any silkie chicks that I'd ordered to breeding age. You have to understand that the bluish chick, the offspring of a blue splash cockerel and a black pullet, was not quite the shade of blue I have been looking for all these years. Back on June 23 1997, twenty seven silkie chicks arrived from a Murray McMurray order. At the last minute, the hatchery called to say that they had no blue chicks. I reluctantly allowed a substitute and received twelve black silkie chick, five white silkie chick and ten "red" silkie chicks. Twenty five survived. In itself, their survival for that long was miraculous given my problems with the area raccoons. In late December of 1997 to celebrate when my pullets began laying and as a Christmas gift to myself, I subscribed to the Poultry Press and joined the American Bantam Association. The ABA yearbook listed several silkie breeders. I called Terry Campbell of Murfreesboro, Tennessee as one of the few breeders who advertised that he bred blue silkies. I explained the color that I was trying to find -- a bright sky blue. He described his blues as medium bluish-black with their bodies being slightly lighter that their crest, hackles and saddles. He thought that the blue I described might be closest to the blue splash silkies he bred. Jubilant, I ordered two young cockerels. Terry Campbell was also nice enough to explain how to interpret the ABA standard for the silkies and to share his experience with breeding silkies of the last several years. He faithfully answered all the questions that I thought of to ask. I took my new found knowledge and took a hard look at the twenty five surviving seven month old silkies from my summer Murray McMurray order. Please understand Murray McMurray Hatchery is a fine company. I have ordered a lot of backyard bantams from them always receiving excellent service and healthy chicks. Unfortunately, Murray McMurray's silkies make much better pets than show birds. Of the twenty five, I gave most of the Murray McMurray silkies away to a neighbor down the road who I knew loved silkies. I kept the best being three white pullets and four black pullets.
The blue splash cockerels I ordered were some of the most gorgeous silkies that I had ever seen. They were not, however, sky blue as compared to the sky on a clear spring morning. After reading as many articles on blue chickens of any breed as I could find, I wonder if that sky blue cockerel could have been a self blue. In any event, my blue splashes were not the pale uniform grey that some folks at flea markets and swap meets refer to as blue either. They were a brilliant salt and pepper combination of black, ivory, light greyish blue and dark bluish-black. I took my two best-looking and best-laying black pullets from the Murray McMurray order the previous summer and put them in the pen with the blue splash cockerels. Two months later nearly to the day, my first "bluish" chick arrived.. This bluish chick was not exactly the "sky blue" shade of my dreams but closer than anything else that I'd seen in a while.
Enthusiastic, I ordered more adult silkies. This time I ordered two black cockerels, one blue cockerel and one very young dark blue pullet. My breeding pens where I crossed the blue splash cockerels with the black pullets produce all bluish chicks as expected. Some of the blues were darker than others The black cockerels mated with white pullets produced black chicks and a few less-than-attractive partridge surprises. The blue cockerel mated with the black pullets produced black or blue chicks. By May 2, 1998, I had hatched about 45 chicks.
My home-bred silkie chicks thrived. I had raised the youngest up to two months old when tragedy struck. Let's just say that raccoons and weasels nearly destroyed my flock during the busy first few months after my first child was born. All the silkies were housed in either wire pens or a wooden hen house with a wire floor. The racoons climbed through a gap in the hen house eve and killed and killed. A weasel (or maybe a mink) weaseled in a through a tiny gap in my wire floor and killed some more. Seven young silkies out of forty-five hatched survived. Eleven of my adult birds lived.
See, I've tried to keep chickens for years. Many birds have come... and gone violently. My husband refers to my chicken hobby as "feeding the raccoons." I've tried a wide range of predator proof pens to no avail. By some miracle, four of my good cockerels lived -- one blue splash, one blue and two blacks. I won't tally the deaths. Once I had the time to really look at my surviving flock again. ( It is amazing how much time motherhood consumes!) I was pleasantly surprised. I banded the lot of them to keep better track of which bird was which. I had managed to raise two nice blue pullets and one very good dark blue cockerel out of the seven surviving chicks from the previous spring's hatch. The other four birds show some defects and I will find new homes for those silkies.
I'm hatching eggs again in my tired old hand-me-down Styrofoam incubator. I'm plotting and planning new ways to thwart the predators. (I am considering concrete this time and smaller wire.) Spring will be here again soon. Maybe I need to order some more adult silkies. Ever seen a self blue silkie? I need to keep working toward that sky blue silkie hen . . .
Return to Surfing With Silkies