It dephends, im not sure what breed of bantam, I should of said Silkiex?Bantam - my mistake on that.
However you do get large Silkie, often breed with the standard battery hens. However they are very rare, but are very valuable in the chicken industry as they are very broody.
It dephends, im not sure what breed of bantam, I should of said Silkiex?Bantam - my mistake on that.
However you do get large Silkie, often breed with the standard battery hens. However they are very rare, but are very valuable in the chicken industry as they are very broody.
I may be wrong on the 'no large Silkies' bit, but my point about the bantam stands - it wouldn't be a Silkie/Bantam cross but just a bantam Silkie.
It's like long-haired and short-haired Jack Russells - different forms of the same breed. A short-haired Jack Russell isn't a crossbreed just because it's short-haired.
EDIT: Re: size of Silkies, chickenbreeds.info says:
In Europe and Australia, there are both standard and bantam Silkies. In the United States and Canada, the only Silkies are bantams.
So I guess I heard about Silkies from someone North American!
In the UK, Silkies were always traditionally regarded as large fowl, although not much bigger than the larger breeds of bantam. In recent years, smaller Silkies have come over from the continent, which are bearded, unlike the originals. Crossed with another breed, the Silkie feathering is replaced by ordinary feathers, and, as suggested above, the cross makes an excellent foster parent for anything from quail to cranes, depending on size.
Marco Polo is supposed to have found some Silkies in the Orient, describing them as a 'woollie hen'.
The domestic Barbary Dove also occurs in 'silkie' form.
I may be wrong, but what I've been taught while working on a farm is that you can get Silkie Pure - often full sized. However most of the Silkie stock in the UK is breed with a Bantam in its ancestor, so it may not be a straight cross, possibly just a past crossing and then breeding from there.
EDIT:
I've done some more research, these will be "pure" Silkies, so not bred with a bantam. Mainly because it still holds its original white colouring. So I was wrong, and have learnt something through it.
But I can say with confidence, its one male, one female.
