Recent content by TrustyRusty

A Hennie is a hen-feathered male, a type of game fowl

By the way, I do not raise Peeps®, as they are made of marshmallows and gum up the incubator

Still raising birds: Large and Bantam chickens, pigeons, doves, finches and quail

You are probably right, in that your bird might be a cross between two Silkie varieties. From a "slight" distance, a Partridge Silkie actually looks like it carries the partridge pattern, but it must be a good example. Otherwise, the double-lacing gets all mushed-up. Lacing on a Silkie must...

It is unnatural for chickens to have "flat" roosts, as their feet are designed to wrap around small branches while they sleep. Years ago, someone wrote an article in POULTRY PRESS about using flat roosts for chickens, comparing chicken feet with human fingers! NOT!!! In the wild, chickens...

Looks like your bird is a Faverolle, a French breed, accepted into the APA/ABA standards. There are only FIVE breeds with FIVE toes on each foot, in the APA Standard of Perfection. Look it up... Could also be a Sultan, but I doubt it, as they are quite rare.

By the way, it is my opinion that the term, "Free Range" is another "feel-good, modern expression" to describe a popularized method of raising meat and/or egg animals. Free range or free ranging are "new speak" terms that have rhetorical implications, just like "weather change" and "organic"...

Please forgive my bluntness, but I think you are rude and disrespectful to your neighbor. To allow YOUR chickens "free-range" to eat and poop on your neighbor's lawn is just about as bad as having your dogs do the same. Though I am a chicken lover, I would hate it if my neighbor set HIS...

Just an example of a big chicken: I was at a county fair and weighed the "biggest" bird in the show. We used the certified rabbit scale. The six-month-old rooster, a Cornish-Rock Cross weighed 18 pounds and he was just six months old. There was no doubt that he would have continued to grow...

The APA Standard of Perfection sets the "standard" weights for standard-bred birds and the heaviest standard-bred bird is the Jersey Black Giant, at 13 pounds. That said, there are many standard bred birds that exceed their allotted weights by more than the 20% limit. Then there are...

We have had several such roosters over the years, but one stands out in my dusty memory. He was a Silver Duckwing Araucana. We kept a pair of Burmese Red Junglefowl and the rooster was as vicious as a mad pit bull. Since pure junglefowl usually lay but one clutch a year, the eggs were very...

They could be resting or the temp/humidity is wrong and they are stuck in the shell. If they are standardbred Araucanas, few, if any will hatch, as Araucanas carry lethal genes and rarely, if ever, have a 100% hatch. By definition, lethal genes cause death in the incubation process. By now...

Thank you!

Hi, again; I am new to this site and just getting used to posting photos. For some reason, the wonderful black chicken showed-up twice...sorry. Thank you! I only show my Araucanas. I've kept them for about fifty years.

By the way, many years ago I raised "Easter Egg Chickens". I learned a lot from them and I still call them Easter Egg Chickens, not "Easter Eggers", "Americanas", "Ameraucanas", "EEs" or such. There was no specific type, nor color variety. Some had beards, some had tails, some were large...