A
Anonymous
Guest
I'm wondering if the silky breed gets traumatised very easily. Just recently I had a young silky bantam chick die at around 14 weeks. I originally had 4 chicks with a foster mother, but a stoat or weasel got two of them so I was left with the silky and another which turned out to be a rooster - had to remove him because he was fighting alot. Anyway I introduced the silky chick and her foster mother to the rest of the flock and they used to hang out together because the others wouldn't accept them to start with, but after a couple of weeks the mother got accepted back and started ignoring her chick. About the same time the chick was looking all puffed up and stopped eating and drinking. I put her in a box and tried to give her water with a syringe, I tried everything, some days she would eat and the next day would refuse. A few days later she died. She had a bit of watery diarrhoea but I put that down to not eating. It was just like she got depressed because she was on her own. I had a similar thing happen a few years back with one of the larger white silkys, she was in perfect health until another hen attacked her and pecked the feathers off the top of her head and then she refused to eat or drink and died a week later. I know now I don't want any more of this breed anyway. 
