Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: darloboy on June 18, 2020, 20:48
-
hi everyone, i recently bought some bantams 4 to be precise the guy who i got them from was unsure of their breeding. two are 12 months old and the other two are 5 months old and they all look roughly the same. i am wondering if anybody on the poultry pages might be able to help identify the breed.
i am unable at present to add a photo so here goes with a brief description.
their colouring is very similar to a blackrock, that blue/black plumage they have ginger/ rust coloured speckling on their necks, this is more prominent on the older birds
their legs and feet are black with some slight feathering on the feet again although only slight the older birds appear to have the feathering.
many thanks
-
Welcome to the forums and congrats on your new hens. :)
I'm going to move your post over to the Hen House, where people who know about chickens lurk :D
-
Hi and welcome.
It is possible your birds are a mix, so may be difficult to identify. The black legs and feathering on them could point to some silkie genes in the mix, the colours of the feathers on the body to blackrock.
Silkies are known for being exceptionally good broodies, so a lot of breeders have them around. Your birds may have been an experiment to get that particular colouring into a silkie :unsure:
-
cheers new shoot, it is possible the birds are mixed bred but it seems sort of odd that the two birds that are six months old look exactly like the older birds
-
Without a picture, it is not easy to offer any more help I’m afraid.
It could be an ongoing breeding project or just someone making money over the lock down selling what they have as spares.
It seems a bit odd to me the person selling them to you didn’t have any information at all :unsure:
-
hi, i am going try to get some pictures of the birds sorted out, i know what you mean about the lack of information though. if the birds had all been the same age they might have been from a one off clutch, however the lad i bought them off did say his main line of business is hatching hundreds of eggs for customers so, who knows?
thanks for your help i will load some photos in the next couple of days...cheers
-
a couple of pictures
-
lovely looking chickens.
-
They are pretty but I think a mix, or possibly 2 different ones. It looks like 2 have tails that are held out vertically and longer feathers. Are they the 2 with the slight leg feathering? The other 2 look like they have shorter more upright tails.
It could be that someone has a black rock rooster that is breeding with different hens, or has had black rock roosters and hens, but then put a different kind of hen in the mix. You can get results that are quite different to what you expect. I have a silkie/frizzle cross rooster and he has a similar body shape to your longer tailed birds and black legs with some feathering. He has the bouff haircut of a silkie, but long straight feathers that do not resemble those of either breed. Most people guess silkie due to the bouff and and leg colour, but then come up with all sorts of ideas after that :)
-
many thanks for your responses. i must admit my initial feeling looking at them was they looked very much like little blackrocks but at the time i thought they were a specific breed of bantam.
however they are nice looking birds and the two older birds are laying creamy white coloured eggs practically everyday! beauty is in the eye of the beholder so they say and i am pretty sure they don't know they are the "lurchers" of the chicken world.
many thanks