Silver chicks question

[Guest]

I am just getting into the Ameraucana\'s as I do eventually want to breed on a small scale. I want to get into the whites and silvers. Anyways, I currently have 3 silver chicks (2 7wk olds, and 1 2day old). For those of you more experienced have you noticed w/ the silvers that when hatching they seem on the weaker side than say the whites or blues or any of the other colors for that matter? Reason being is my 2 older silvers when they hatched they almost died on me. I literally had to bring them back to life. I guess they were in a really deep sleep and the hen actually booted them out. My other silver (2 day old) hatched out fine. But I had 2 other silvers, 1 that hatched then died later in the day. And one that maybe developed until Day 16 or 17 and died in the shell.

What are you breeders that are more experienced than me find w/ the silver chicks. Do you find any similar situations as to what I had, and they just seem to be on the weaker side?

Thanks
Kim

[Mike Gilbert]

You didn\'t say whether yours are bantam or large fowl, but I\'m guessing large fowl.   To answer your question, the few silvers I  hatched this year (combination of John Blehm\'s male and a female from my line) were some of the most active and healthiest I hatched this year.   I got a total of 16 chicks from one pair mating.   If you are having problems with yours, it may be a symptom of inbreeding depression?
Are the parents closely related?

[John]

I\'ll agree with Mike.  I hatched many silver bantam and LF Ameraucana chicks this year and had great hatches with them all.

[Guest]

I got my eggs from Jean in Washington. Not sure how related the parent are from her birds. Maybe she will see this and respond, or respond to me privately. I want to get more eggs, but am done w/ hatching until next year. I\'d like to go to a different source for eggs (silvers and whites) next year since I\'d like to have unrelated birds when I do finally start breeding them. If you know of anyone that will sell shipping eggs (whites or silvers in LF) that I can get on their list for next year that would be great.

I am very happy w/ the chicks that hatched out of Jean\'s eggs. I did get other eggs from another breeder earlier in the year and the hatch rate was horrible, out of 14 eggs only 2 hatched.  I just thought I would ask the question regarding weak chicks as this is all pretty new to me.

[Jean]

Kim,

My silver birds are from John\'s lines.  I haven\'t had any problems hatching them here at home, in fact I only a three of them as you know and they have been the most fertile eggs I have on the farm.

The hatch rate has been excellent for me and the chicks vigorous.  I even shipped around 8-10 to New York in a batch, which took two days and the chicks had hatched a day early and everyone made it fine.

Maybe it was the shipping?


Jean

[Guest]

Hi Jean-

Thanks for posting. It very well could have been the shipping not sure. I was just making an observation to see if anyone else seemed to see the same things w/ there silvers. I am not in anyway unhappy. I am actually very happy w/ what I have so far. I believe the first batch of eggs you sent me I think you sent 3 maybe 4 silvers and that first batch only 2 hatched and w/ both those chicks they seemed weaker than the others. And this last batch I think there were 4 silvers again and something happened to one of the eggs in the beginning. Then 1 I think developed until like Day 17 maybe 18  and then died as when I opened the egg to see what went wrong it was a fully developed chick w/ the exception of where the chick is attached to the egg I think some of the insides hadn\'t gone into the chick. I ended up having 2 hatch, and the 2nd one that hatched had a really hard time and I did everything to revive it, but it just seemed weak.

So right now I have 2 7wk old Silvers, and 1 almost 1 week old silver. Let\'s hope there\'s at least one male and one female in those three.

Now, as for your whites w/ your new rooster, they popped out of there eggs like it was no big deal.

Kim

[Guest]

*Waves from NY*

All of my silvers are fine, oddly enough, the ones I lost were all blacks! Weird huh? I chalked it up to my inexperiance or just the way things go. (I have rabbits too, and sometimes you loose stock the first couple weeks for no apparent reason) Healthy one day, gone the next.

Dawn