How many times have you come across pictures of fancy pink silkie chickens and actually googled “Pink silkie chicken for sale”/ Haha.
What if I told you that you can create this, through specific breeding? The result won’t be very bright pink colored bird but something pinkish.
Ready? Let’s begin.
Table of Contents
How to get Fancy Pink Silkie Chickens
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Specific and Selective Breeding
Using this method, there are two ways to produce pink silkies:
Method One
Cross a male F1 (the one that shows the most red) with a female F2 (the one that shows the most red).
You will have to produce plenty birds (say 50) before you will get a pink silkie bird.
Now, around 75% of the chicks you will get from this crossing will be black normal feathered, the rest will be silkie black, lavender silkies, lavender normal feathered, red (smutty) normal feathered, red (smutty)silkie, lavender (smutty) red normal feathered, lavender (smutty)red silkie .
Smutty means some black in the feathers. Some of the lavs and blacks will leak red (non black).
Method Two
This second method involves back crossing a red rooster to the F1 females.
Half of the chicks will be black normal feathered and black silkie feathered.
The other half of the chicks will have normal or silkie feathers and the red color but you will not be able to identify which of the females from the cross that carry the lavender gene.
So, we suggest crossing the F1 black rooster with all of the silkie red females.
This cross will produce some lavender red ( pink silkies) and lavender red (pink) normal feathered birds, the other birds will be black or lavender.
Easy, yeah? Let’s see the other creative ways to get pinkish birds.
ALSO SEE: Corid Dosage for Chickens to FIGHT Coccidiosis!
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Food Coloring And/Or Kool-Aid
Fill your sink with about 1/4 full of warm water and use plenty of food coloring ( I recommend using half or more of small bottles).
The color here (pink) will get down to the bottom layer of your bird feathers. So, once you have soaked your bird for a few minutes, sprinkle contents of 1 pack of kool aid directly on the bed and gently rub/massage it in.
Next, get an 8-10 oz glass of water and carefully dump a packet of kool aid in it.
Wait until it dissolves then pour it over the bird you wanty to dye.
Use third pack of kool aid and sprinkle kool aid on to damp gloved hands and apply to duller spots on bird to even out the color. After the first time you should have the emasurements and technique down.”
Are you “Dyeing” to try it out? Haha.
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Baby Grit
Put in a large amount of baby grit in there broody and if they use it as their dust bath, the white chicks will have the brightest pink color you will ever see.
Sadly, this effect doesn’t last for too long, haha.
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Color Feeding
You “create” the color through their diet not breeding. If you don’t maintain their diet they’ll fade to a white or off white.
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PhotoShop
It is very easy to change color in photoshop.
Are Silkie Chickens Naturally Pink?
No! Silkies coem naturally in the following colors:
- white,
- black,
- blue,
- buff,
- partridge, and splash.
