The Ups and the Downs...

All the babies are doing fine, fat and sassy under mumma chook. So no one worry that the 'down' is about them!

The down is instead about one of the Faverolle pullets who came up with what is very likely to be Mareks and had to be culled the other night. The irony that these birds WERE vaccinated against it doesn't escape me... :-/ I don't vaccinate my birds and had decided to breed simply for a healthy, strong flock so nothing I've bred or from fellow hobbiests has been vaccinated. Except for these guys, which I bought and later found out had been vaxed. Everyone else should be fine and their healthy immune systems should bounce it off and the littlies will still have cover from their maternal antibodies.

So where is the good news in this? Well for those who've listened to my ravings before I've got the idea in my head to try to create lavender silkies. To give an idea of what they'd look like, this is an American breeder who has created lavender silkies over there.

Since we can't import (well, not without a spare 40-50K laying around...) anyone wanting it has to go out and make it by "borrowing" a lavender gene off a breed where it does exist. It's a simple recessive so getting the colour should be (relatively) easy with the majority of time after that spent getting type back. It's probably a 4-5 year project... with a year or two being spent building up a loosely line-bred base-stock of each breed to work with. I was recomended to get Lavender Pekins like these guys. Unfortunately the guy I'd originally planned to get mine from next year had suffered a fox attack. However it turns out that someone else has some and he had some spare eggs up for offer! :-D One person got in ahead of me but if they keep laying we may be able to get some of them.