Silkie chicken: size, eggs and care guide

The Silkie is a bantam-size breed laying about 100 to 120 cream to tinted eggs a year, with hens around 2 to 3 lb and roosters around 3 lb. Black skin, black bones, blue earlobes, and five toes instead of the usual four. It is the most anatomically unusual chicken in common backyard keeping, and the meat is prized in Chinese cuisine specifically for the dark flesh.

How big is a Silkie?

A mature Silkie hen weighs about 2 to 3 lb and a rooster about 3 lb, with a typical standing height of 8 to 14 inches. That puts it in the bantam class, which is what drives its feed requirement of roughly 0.08 lb per bird per day before waste, free-ranging or seasonal adjustments.

Silkie egg production

Eggs are not this breed's main strength. A Silkie lays around 100 to 120 small cream to tinted eggs a year, about 1.9 to 2.3 a week, so it is usually kept for other qualities and the eggs treated as a bonus. Output drops further during the moult and the darkest weeks of winter. To turn that into a monthly total and a dollar value at your local egg price, run it through the egg production calculator.

Temperament and noise

The friendliest chicken most keepers will ever own. Silkies tolerate being carried, are excellent with young children, and are usually bottom of the pecking order in any mixed flock, which means they often need their own space or gentle companions. Noise level is rated quiet, which matters if you keep chickens close to neighbours.

Origin and history

Described by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century as a furry chicken, and kept in China long before that. It reached Europe by the 1800s, where early sellers occasionally passed it off as a cross between a chicken and a rabbit, which the plumage makes almost forgivable.

Cold and heat tolerance

Cold tolerance is fair and heat tolerance fair. The small walnut comb offers reasonable frostbite resistance, though this breed has other cold-weather weaknesses.

Does the Silkie go broody?

Extremely. A broody hen stops laying and sits, which is a nuisance if you want eggs and a gift if you want chicks hatched naturally without an incubator.

Care specifics for this breed

The feathers lack the barbicels that zip a normal feather into a waterproof sheet, so a Silkie soaks through in rain and chills fast. Covered run access is close to essential, and a wet Silkie needs drying rather than a heat lamp. The crest also blocks upward vision, making them easy targets for aerial predators.

Feed cost for a flock of Silkie

Feeding a Silkie is cheap. At bantam size it eats roughly 0.08 lb of feed a day, a fraction of what a standard hen gets through, so six of them run about $6.78 a month at $22 per 50 lb bag. Free-ranging trims that further and winter pushes it up by around a tenth. The feed cost calculator gives the exact figure for your flock size and local feed price, including bags needed and how long each lasts.

Is the Silkie right for you?

It suits families with small children, keepers who want a broody hen to hatch other eggs, and small spaces. It is a weaker choice for anyone keeping chickens primarily for eggs, or free-range setups with hawk pressure. If you are still deciding, compare it against the other options in our guide to the best egg-laying breeds for beginners, or work out how many birds you need with the flock size calculator.