Red Bird, My Friend

the silkies

the silkies

So here's your next poultry breed lesson. Bantams are very small chickens. There are quite a few breeds of bantams, many of which are just miniature versions of larger chicken breeds.  Silkies are strange little Japanese chickens with fluff instead of feathers.

I ordered five bantam Silkies along with the rest of my birds that year. I had to raise them separately because the bigger chicks would trample them. They were so tiny when I got them that the man at the feed store just gave them to me because he thought they were going to die due to the cold snap.

I nursed them all back to health except for the one who met a fairly gruesome fate.

My husband was on chick watch that night. Unlike me, he didn't paranoidly count them every hour to make sure they were all visible and alive. When I got home from work, I went to count them.

"One, two, three, four..." I counted. "One black one, two brown ones, and only one white one." I turned to my husband, "Joey, I can't find the other white one. There were two white silkies."

He ambled in and looked in the cage. "Huh. Maybe Matthew opened the cage?"

"Well, we've got to find it. It's going to get cold and die." I was beginning to get frantic. Baby chicks have to stay warm until they get their feathers. I had a heat lamp and a blanket over their tiny hamster cage to keep them warm. We looked under the blanket, all around the kitchen where their cages were. We even checked the cage with the bigger birds. Nothing. Matthew had been put to bed, so he didn't have it.

I checked the Silkie cage again. I moved the water dish. And there it was... stuck in a corner. "Oh my god! Here it is!" I exclaimed, snatching the little white fluff ball up. It was gasping, and I had some glimmer of hope. "It was drowning in the water dish."

My husband hovered,  panicked and guilt-stricken. I heard his voice crack as he said, "You can save it, right?"

I rubbed the little body feverishly, trying to get it to breathe. It's so tiny I couldn't think of what else to do. Get it dry, and get it breathing. Nothing worked. I shook my head.

Joey looked at me, in perfect seriousness. "Give it mouth to mouth."

"It's dead, Joey."

"You can give it mouth to mouth!" he exclaimed.

So, I very gently opened its tiny beak and forced a little air into it. I rub it again. Nothing.

"Do it again!" he was nearly crying now.

So I did, once more. I rubbed its body some more. "I wonder if I'm not giving it enough?" I said out loud. I try one more time, harder. I felt its little body fill up with air and was hopeful. I rubbed it some more and try one more time. When its body filled up again, I wondered if I was doing more harm than good. 

Eventually, I had to turn to my horrified husband and tell him, "It's dead honey. It happens. I lost one like this last year. It's not your fault."

I think he still feels guilty, but it's the truth. Baby chicks die easily. He learned the lesson again when one started acting listless and died the next day. It's tragic, but it happens.

So the other four Silkies, plus another brown one, or a Buff, that I got from the feed store a few days after the tragedy got their own coop built for them when they were old enough. They got the heat lamp longer than the other girls and were generally pampered. Silkies are like fluffy stuffed animals with beaks. I adored them.

By the time I needed to separate the Cornish Crosses, the Silkies were pretty hardy. Under close supervision, I introduced them into the larger flock. To my surprise, they adapted just fine. The cute fluffy bunny chickens were of no interest to my mean bully hens.

Just goes to show that nature knows best. Big, dumb, and docile is an issue when it comes to survival of the fittest. Tiny, fluffy and, broody is odd, but can be overlooked.