White Silkie chickens

The pure white is the most common coloured Silkie chicken available. The ideal standard for the white bird is pure white fluffy feathers with no stiff quills and no brassiness or yellow tint in the plumage.

My first Silkies were white. The Cockerel and 3 hens were some of my first bantams. Originally all Silkies were white and the other colours and patterns have followed over the years through out-crossing and line breeding.

Like the other colours it comes in standard or bearded. The Bearded Silkie has a beard and muffs.

Below: A short video clip of a white Silkie hen.

Like all Silkies they have a black face, bones and skin. Their flesh is a very dark grey-blue.

The white in Silkies is recessive and easily lost and corrupted with incorrect breeding selection. This is one reason they are so slow growing, the recessive white c allele in homocygosis significantly reduces body growth rate and body size in a magnitude of 4-10%.

Below: A white Silkie chick.

The legs are feathered and underneath the  beak should be grey or grey-blue. Feet are also grey, and a real Silkie has five toes.

Earlobes should be a beautiful shade of bright turquoise blue and the wattles and comb should be black or a dark, mulberry shade - if it's red, it's not a pure-bred Silkie.

The 'walnut' or 'cushion'  comb is a feature.

For one, under all of that fluffy white plumage this breed has blue skin. With exposed blue earlobes and five toes - as opposed to the four toes on other breeds of chickens.

Below: A White silkie grower or teenager.

The colour should be uniform across all feathers in the plumage of the chicken. White Silkie chicks have yellow fluff when they hatch.

White feathers are that way because there is no melanin to colour them. White Silkies are not albino, these would have pink eyes.

Below: A show quality white Silkie cockerel on display.

A word of caution - these birds cannot see 100%, though their eyes are fully functional due to the feathers in front of their eyes.

What colour eggs do white Silkies lay?

White Silkie chickens lay eggs that are something between pure white to cream or even Ivory coloured. These are the same as other colours. 

Silkie eggs are sometimes referred to as tinted and the colour of the bird has no bearing on the colour of the egg it produces.

Because Silkies are such irregular layers they do produce nice eggs with good coloured yolks, firm whites and solid shells.