Billy Idol & Perry lister

Billy & Perry

"Billy" and "Perry" are the starting of our white silkie flock. we are in the process of incubating a few of their eggs and hope to get billy a few more hens in the near future. We think billy's previous owners gave him his name because of his signature spiky hair-do. I did some digging to find out what his little hens name should be, whatever other hens we get for him will have to be groupies or something else creative. *fingers crossed* we should be selling white and buff silkie hatching eggs and chicks by next years "chick season".

Billy is very proud of his hair, as you can see by the hours he spends 

styling it...

this is "grandma silkie" she is of unknown age, and i have lost track of how long we have had her. she is actually black but looks grey in this picture

Our buff silkie cock, Sir Silkie,  due to being low man on the totem pole for a little to long  has some "issues".  We have had him for a few month now and still haven't heard a crow. But the real problem is with his mating attempts. 3/4 of the time he will have a death grip on the hen but will still be on the ground when he  *ahem*  does his thing. It seems that he has started to get the idea that he needs to get on the hen first, so hopefully he will figure things out soon.

not-so-new chicks

Meet the newest members of our flock! four Ameraucana pullets, three straight run easter egger's , four Australorp pullets and one so-ugle-it's-cute naked neck cockerel.  these guys are ready to be outside all the time but until we get our nursery pens built they are spending their nights inside.

clutch to start hatching the 18th of april!

This is a  Clutch of New Hampshire Buckeye mixes, Russian Orloff mixes, bantam Silkies,bantam Cochin, bantam top hat mixes, and bantam easter egger's. These are mostly replacement birds for my grandma's flock but if something sounds interesting we will probably have enough to sell a few and we can always set another clutch.
We hand turn our eggs instead of using an automatic turner.  Hand turning takes extra dedication and vigilance,getting into the incubator all the time ( and our cats taking turns sleep over the vent holes) makes it harder to keep a correct humidity and temperature, however i have had near 100% hatch rates with hand turned so it can be done and done well. Eventually, we will be able to get a nice automatic turner that doesn't break eggs and turns them correctly. Until then we will either be turning them by hand or hatching with broody hens. Our one partridge silkie is acting like she is going broody, hopefully we can put some eggs under her soon!

If we have a poor hatch rate I'm blaming the cats.