They scream “Glamour”…if that is possible in the chicken world.  Silkie’s can’t fly, can hardly see, and really have no natural God given chicken sense.  I think that is why I like them.  A chicken, disguised as a cotton pouf.  They are rather delicate birds as they are half the size of an average chicken.  They don’t do well in wet climates and they don’t do well in hot climates and well, they are like me.  Oh yeah, and they are natural momma’s.  If you want to raise your own chicks, these girls are by nature, broody.  Broody is a behavior in a chicken that results in “all I want to do is a hatch babies and nothing else in the world exists”.  Literally, they go into momma mode, will sit on a rock if you let them and if you have fertile eggs…will hatch them.  At some point all of mine have sat on nothing but a warm nest.  Since their bodies stop producing eggs when they go broody, they will literally think that because the nest is warm and their little fluffy butts are warm that they are going to hatch something out of nothing.  They won’t move…for weeks.

Then I come in.  I will give a few eggs to whoever feels the deep desire to be a momma…except in the dead of winter.  I did allow this last winter and the result was a million trips to the coop to unfreeze the water, make sure the baby was warm, and saving a chick’s life.  The little chick that grew to be a walking fluffy JERK…and of course,            a rooster.

More to come on how we raise our pet silkies, what they are like, and of course…what I learned NOT to do.