Today I'm going to write all about the Silkie/Silky chicken breed. Silky chickens are really cute and fluffy and there is a wide variety of them all around the world.
The first known written account of a Silkie chicken is from when Marco Polo wrote about a 'fluffy' chicken when he travelled in Asia in the 13th Century. They are thought to have originated in Ancient China but there is not 100% proof that they did.
Characteristics of a Silkie Chicken:
Fluffy plumage, that feels like silk (hence the name)
Black skin and bones
Blue earlobes
Five toes (most chickens have 4)
Calm and friendly nature
Hatch 3 eggs a week.
In some countries they are considered a Bantam breed of chicken. According to the Wikipedia page on Silkie Chickens, since the start of the 21st Century Silkies have become very popular. They are kept as both ornamental and pet chickens.
Silkie chickens come in a wide variety of colours such as:
Blue
Black
Grey
Buff
Silver
Partridge
White
Silkie Chickens can also be died into an array of different colours.
This week I will talk to you about the different types of chicken breeds. I will discuss them in order of which are my favourites and so on. I will give you a brief history and geography for each breed.
My favourite breed of chicken is the Buff Sussex chicken. I love this breed of chicken as it is so beautiful. There are two Buff Sussex chickens on the farm in my school. Much like the Bantam Buff Sussex chicken that I wrote about in my last post they originated in AD43 in the county that is now identified as Sussex in south east England.
A photo of a Bantam Buff Sussex I took myself!
My next favourite breed of chicken is the Rhode Island Red. Rhode Island Red chickens are very popular in Ireland. They were originally bred in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the years 1831-1899. the date is unknown. They were originally bred for meat production but they are now also used as show hens.
Another favourite of mine is definitely the Serama Rooster. The Serama chicken was created by crossing bantam breeds of chickens in Malaysia. It has only come about in the last 50 years. It is also very rare. They are beautiful as rooster, their feathers are an excellent colour.
I also really like the Araucana chicken that originated in Chile. It lays blue eggs and has little tufts of feathers around their beak or the ears. This make it look like they have a moustache which is very funny. I also really like the blue eggs as it is very uncommon in chickens to lay blue eggs.
Today I'm going to talk about my experience with chickens. In October of 2016 I purchased 6 chicken eggs from Kilkenny, Kilkenny is a county in the south east of Ireland. I got 3 Cream Legbar eggs and 3 Bantam Buff Sussex eggs.
According to the Wikipedia page on Cream Legbars; Cream Legbar chickens were originally created in Great Britain by Michael Pease and Reginald Crundall Punnett in Cambridge University. They wanted to create a breed of chicken that could be easily auto-sexed just a few days after their birth. They crossed two different breeds of chickens; the Leghorn and the Barred Plymouth Rock.
As discussed on the Wikipedia page of Sussex Chickens, Bantam Buff Sussex chickens also originate from Britain. They are believed to be bred in the area that became Sussex (a county in south east England). They came about in AD 43. They are very popular chickens and are also extremely beautiful.
Out of the six eggs I got in Kilkenny only 3 hatched. One had splayed legs at birth, however after watching a short and helpful video on YouTube I quickly learnt how to fix that (the video is down below). Sadly this little chick passed away 5 days after her birth, after many attempts to keep her alive such as keeping her on a hot water bottle to keep her warm, fixing her legs so she could walk and feeding her sugar water every few hours as she would not eat, it was unsuccessful. The other two chicks were male and they were Cream Legbar, unlike their sister who was a Bantam Buff Sussex. Sadly when they were about two months old one of the male chickens murdered the other.
I learnt a lot from these chickens and I also learnt about the harsh reality of nature. It was an excellent experience and I would highly recommend incubating chicken eggs if you are interested.
This will be a cute blog all about CHICKENS!!!
I will post weekly about chickens because I love them.
This is the number one place to learn everything there is to learn about chickens.
Happy reading, I love my fans xx .
