The Illustrated Book op Poultry. 
461 
“ Silkies make a good cross for sitting purposes. My friend Mr. O. E. Cresswell last season 
crossed a Silky cock with a White Game hen, from which cross he saved all the pullets — pile- 
coloured small-crested birds — and they have turned out exemplary sitters and mothers, beginning to 
lay in the early year, and after laying ten or twelve eggs sitting well. This is really a valuable 
thing to know, for who is not hard up for sitting hens in January and February ? — I know I always 
am. Silkies themselves are good layers, and begin to lay about seven months old ; the eggs are a 
pretty cream-colour, but of course rather small. 
l< To get Silkies up for exhibition they want to be washed much in the same way as Mr. 
Elijah Smith recommends for White Cochins, only they need great care, for they soon become 
so saturated in the water that their strength seems to fail, and they hang down their heads in 
a convulsive kind of way ; when this happens I have often quite saved them by putting them 
suddenly into very cold water. This may seem a dangerous remedy, but I have saved lives 
often by it. In drying them they must not be put too near a fire, as their ear-lobes will blister easily. 
“ This breed is subject, perhaps more than any other, to scaly legs — that horrid disease known 
as elephantiasis. I have seen birds with great lumps of this right up their legs. It is, I believe, 
an infectious disease, as some birds which were running with a brood of Silkies last year caught 
it, and there had been no trace of it before. The birds were Dorkings, and I believe this breed is 
not at all prone to the disease, which originates from a small insect. A bird once affected will 
sometimes get so bad as hardly to be able to walk without inconvenience, and I have seen a judge 
at a show pick off a piece as big as a walnut. When the bird is thus badly affected the legs must 
be steeped in hot water several times, till the matter becomes soft, when it is easily picked off ; and 
on its again appearing an application of compound sulphur ointment soon cures it. It makes 
great havoc with the leg-feathering when once it appears, and a bird which once has it is seldom fit 
for show again afterwards, as it seems quite to stop the feathers growing. 
“ Silkies are really very easily reared. They require no care ; once hatched, they do well 
with only ordinary care. Their eggs should be kept well moistened the last week of incubation, as 
the inner membrane of the shell is apt to become very dry, and the shell of the egg entirely peels 
off in some cases. Great care should be taken to allow Silkies in no way to have intercourse with 
other breeds, as the violet skin is very difficult to breed out when once got, and consequently spoils 
birds for the table. Recently I saw a pair of true-bred Silkies sent up with a snow-white sauce, and 
the effect was most peculiar ; their flesh is really as tender and nice as any other, when once the 
violet skin is cut through. The illustrations of the Silky feathers (see Fig. 97) are taken from 
very good specimens. Sometimes we see birds only silky in part of their feathers, the rest being 
like an ordinary white feather ; but when this is so a cross may generally be suspected, for of 
course from their very name they should be as Silky as possible. 
“ I hope to see the shows taking up this breed and giving them a class. On their ‘ opening- 
day’ at Oxford last year a class was seen which my most sanguine hopes on first making it 
never expected to realise ; and again this was followed with the same results at the Crystal 
Palace Show. Any one who will give them a trial, simply for their sitting and rearing virtues, will 
never repent it, even when looking at them quite apart from fancy fowls ; and being such small 
eaters, it would pay much better to keep a quantity for sitting purposes instead of the bigger birds 
which have such huge appetites, especially as in the early year we only put a small number of eggs 
under a hen in any case.” 
Silkies are sometimes called Negro fowls, from the black colour of the head and skin ; but 
this term appears to have been applied by Temminck to a breed possessing these points, with black 
plumage, but without the silky character — whether produced by a cross with the Silky fowl or not 
