Thriving with Silkie Chickens

It all started when my daughter and I decided we wanted silkies, and we wanted to hatch them ourselves. Silkies are some of the cutest, funniest and craziest chickens. They are sweet and docile and make great family pets. They aren’t awesome egg producers, but people don’t have them for the eggs.

I called up a reputable breeder and they shipped me ten creamy silkie eggs. I had never hatched chicken eggs before, so it was a new experience for all of us and a great science lesson for our kids.

For 21 days, we did everything we were told to and, sure enough, we hatched out six beautiful silkies. Two eggs had been cracked and two eggs never hatched, but those six silkies that did were our pride and joy.

In fact, I still have two of them in my backyard to this day! These chickens were super special to me and everyone knew it. It just hits differently when you hatch chicks yourself as opposed to picking them up at a farm supply store or even having chicks mailed. The feelings of accomplishment, pride and excitement are very present when you hatch eggs, and if you’ve done it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I was protective of them.

It was a hot and muggy late summer day. If you have experienced a muggy day in Minnesota, you can almost feel it as you read this. My chicken run had gotten pretty muddy with all the spring and summer rain, and I wanted to change things up a bit. I was in the middle of integrating my silkies into the main flock and had a chicken tractor in the middle of the run. This way, my babies could see my big chickens and vice versa.

They are protected from the pecking order while they get used to one another and dine on snacks and treats together through the fence of the tractor. This is how I’ve always introduced my flocks to one another, and it works great! That day, however, my husband was helping me out by putting a load of sand into part of the run. He opened the run fence, put a few loads in with his skid loader and raked it all out. To this day, we have no idea how on earth Des the silkie got out!

At this point in the game, I thought for sure Des was a beautiful white silkie hen. Eventually, she was a he, but that’s a story for a different day. Des was one of my favorites. He was so sweet and snuggly in those early months, so when I went out that evening to check on them and realized he wasn’t in the tractor with the others, I panicked!

I ran into the house and frantically asked my family if they’d seen Des. I asked my husband if he thought he’d maybe (insert big sigh) ran him over? We all went outside to look for him. No one seemed to know what happened to my beloved Des, except one — our cat Miracle.

Miracle is an indoor-outdoor cat and got her name because it’s a miracle we got our kids a cat! We laugh about this often. My husband and I aren’t really “cat people,” but Miracle is hands down one of our all-time favorite pets and that night, she was going absolutely crazy! She kept coming to our sliding deck door wanting to come inside. She kept meowing and then wanting to go back outside. It was honestly to the point where I was getting annoyed with her. I picked her up to try and calm her down and she scratched me to get out of my arms! Miracle is the most gentle cat I’ve ever known. She would never intentionally hurt anyone. I actually didn’t want her outside because I had seen too many episodes where Sylvester the Cat tried to eat Tweety Bird and I was worried she’d harm Des. We finally figured out that she was trying to tell us something. I didn’t know cats could do that.

We followed Miracle outside to a small grove of trees near the coop. Miracle just circled and circled the grove. We had already looked through this section of trees but couldn’t see anything through the thick grass. Miracle finally just sat down close to the edge.

Sure enough, I looked in closer, and there was Des! Miracle would not leave her post until I safely had Des in my arms. It was one of the most incredible moments we’ve had in the backyard. We were all shocked that Miracle had known where Des was the whole time and would even scratch me to get back out to protect her. Miracle has loved all of my chicks to the point of being strange, really. I guess she must know how special my chickens are to me! We gave Miracle treats and lots of love that night and told Des that he could never ever do that again.

Eventually, when I decided to honor my “no rooster rule,” I rehomed Des to an awesome family where he could protect his new ladies like the brave boy he was. Raising backyard chickens is full of adventure, excitement and heartbreak … and I wouldn’t have it any other way.