[funkyfish]

I have a few unrelated silkies. 2x gold boys and 1x coucou girl (these 3 are bearded) and one non bearded black girl.


My question is, is it ok to breed these together? Is it ok to mix bearded to non bearded? Prob a really stooopid question!

[chrismahon]

I don't like cross breeding without reason Funkyfish. People have dedicated their lives to creating unique colours and one cross breed undoes that.


You may find one colour dominant so all are the same colour until the next generation, when the original colours surface. You may find that you get a mix and none are right.


Cross breed if you like for whatever reason but please don't sell the birds on.

[shygirl]

Cross breed if you like for whatever reason but please don't sell the birds on.

oh i dont know...we sold pedigree chickens of a variety of breeds and was very careful to start with good quality stock and were proud of our birds. but many of the people we sold the youngstock to didnt care what breed they were and just wanted one of each colour. 

colour in animals is really interesting if you start to look into the details of it. more complicated than initially meets the eye.

[HesterF]

Health wise it should do no harm. But like Chris says, you'll end up with some hodge-podge of breed/colour so you can't claim them to be pure something if you want to sell them. If they were brilliant layers, somebody might take them for eggs but I guess they're not? And they're not going to be good meat birds. So your only market for the chicks is somebody who just wants some pet chickens around and doesn't care what breed they are, nor how much they lay. So you won't get much money (if any) for them and you may be pushed to shift them. Clearly if you're prepared to keep them yourselves, go for it! You may end up with some beautiful chickens but just make sure you've thought it through so you don't end up with a lot of chickens that you can't house and can't be sold.

If you want to hatch something, why don't you buy a few hatching eggs in of a purebreed? I've got a dodgy cockerel having lost my two pure breed cockerels so I've bought in hatching eggs this season in the hope of getting some decent breeding stock for next season.

H

[funkyfish]

Hi thanks for the replies, its more or less what I thought.


I may hatch a few to  have as broodies but thats all I'll do I think. I's more of a prob with the boys as not good for eating or selling on.