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A lot of people wonder if you can eat silkie chicken eggs. Are these fluffy chickens just pets, or are they any use as egg layers or meat birds? We have a breeding flock of, currently, 12 silkie hens and roosters, and yes, silkie chicken eggs are edible. People, us included, eat silkie chicken eggs daily. It may surprise you to know that you can also eat silkie chicken meat. Find out more about silkie chickens in our post.
Silkie Chicken Eggs
Silkie chickens are smaller than regular commercial egg-laying breeds of chicken, and a lot fluffier. They are an old breed, not one raised to be prolific egg layers. Silkie eggs are much smaller than most breeds of hen eggs and silkie hens don’t lay as often or as regularly as the usual egg layers.
Silkie chicken eggs are small and a very light brown, not quite pure white but very close. Our silkie hens are white, but we have a few black silkie hens at point of lay. I’m expecting their eggs to be the same colour, I’m keen to find out!
Silkie chickens are very easy to keep, they’re quieter than our other chickens and even our silkie rooster crows quietly. They’re sweet natured and not nearly as crazy as some other breeds. Then tend to keep to themselves a bit more than our noisy egg layer birds.
That’s not to say that silkie chickens won’t destroy your garden! Most of our vegetable and fruit garden beds are chicken-proofed, but the little silkies have found a way to reach our green tomatoes, pulling them off the plant. So yes, silkie chickens can and do eat tomatoes and they seem to like the green ones best. Yes, we can and do grow tomatoes in the tropics, along with many herbs and other tropical food plants. Silkies seem to not like the taste or smell of many herbs, for instance, Thai basil, tulsi, thyme, and oregano. They definitely do not eat my lemongrass or finger lime plants.
We keep our silkie chickens with other chickens and have seen no evidence of bullying or any problems at all. We also have geese, guinea fowl and ducks, again the silkies get along with everyone, although a male duck, a drake, could be a problem. Our silkie rooster makes sure our silkie eggs are fertile and we’ve successfully hatched many silkie chicks.
As silkie hens seem to love sitting on eggs, you may find that your silkie hens go broody often. This makes them perfect for hatching eggs from other birds. One of my silkie hens is currently sitting on dozens of guinea fowl eggs, we’re hoping for a good hatch. Silkies make great mothers, guinea fowl are terrible mums!
So the question was can you eat silkie eggs? Yes, you can use them in exactly the same way as you use regular hens’ eggs. You can fry them, scramble them, boil them, use them in baking or in any egg dish. We have so many eggs from our homestead that we sometimes have to cook a batch of eggs to feed to our cats, dogs, and chickens. The shells can be baked in the oven, ground in a blender and added to your soil or mixed into chicken feed for calcium.
You can keep silkie chickens in the tropics, we do. Be certain they have access to somewhere dry in the wet season. Having silkie chickens is a great pleasure, they are lovely to look at, sweet natured, quiet, small and useful. Like all chickens they give us meat and eggs, as well as fertilising the soil and eating pest insects.
