Japanese Bantam Thread!

[Bantu]

I read somewhere that they are supposed to have yellow or dusky yellow legs... These are wrong aren't they.... The rest of him seems to be shaping up like a Japanese bantam.( except for long legs ) I'm not going to show or anything...

 

[twigcrafter]

Here are my babies.

 

[Marthab1953]

I read somewhere that they are supposed to have yellow or dusky yellow legs... These are wrong aren't they.... The rest of him seems to be shaping up like a Japanese bantam.( except for long legs ) I'm not going to show or anything...

I believe that is right, you would need to ask Annika2a as she shows them.

Here are my babies.

Those are little cuties!

 

[Annika2a]

Yes the leg color is yellow and the legs have to be VERY short basiclly just toes

 

[Bantu]

My boys are crowing at 6 weeks... What a delightful sound!
Well after looking at my Japanese is obvious mine are no way close to the SOP. Makes me sad. I'll find a breeder with hatching eggs. I'll post some photos of my birds. At this point I think I have cute lawn ornaments.

 

[Annika2a]

we will have hatching eggs as soon as our girls are no longer broody lol

 

[BluesLadies]

I was gifted a btw and a btb by a friend a few years ago as they weren't sop. I bred the btw to a small Leghorn hen before neighbors dog got him. They produced a hen that's the right size but the body is too long. She is one of my best layers and happens to be the favorite of my btb. I bought an incubator and test ran some of their eggs. So far they all have short legs, short bodied with down angled wings and all are buff except one whose black with buff neck and hackles. At 3/4 Japanese how could I explain the offspring as I'm looking to give away 3/5 I hatched. I have one 3/4 Japanese hen from an egg I snuck under a broody last year and she's nine months old, weighs two lbs and averages 4 eggs a week.

 

[Bantu]

Here's Shoji. He's so cute.

The next photo please look at the black cockerel "Negi". He was sold as a black but he's getting gray feathers. Is he mottled or a poorly colored gray? Though so far few grays on hackles.

 

[Bantu]

I have fallen in love with the Japanese and Serama breeds! As I have said I don't show but I want to help keep the breed true. So many people are selling mixed as pure breeds. So any help with how to improve what I have is greatly appreciated.

is the buff a cockerel?

 

[Devw]

Yes, the buff is definitely a cockerel. What's really nice about the Japanese is that it's very easy to tell the gender of the chicks a few days after hatching. You're grays are darling! Though one of them looks like it's going to be what I call a naked gray, where they're bred from grays but come out with little to no lacing at all (they're still good for breeding though.)

It's a little tough to provide guidance for breeding when they're so young. The bird you think will be a winner the one day, the next it will be the worse specimen you have. They change a lot in their first three to four months.

Right now, I would look at length of leg and their body posture. How do their wings droop? How is their 'v' shape? Usually that doesn't change to drastically once it's established. Also, in the grays you want to look for crispness of lacing on the cape (both hens and cocks), as well as the saddle feathers on the cocks (they should be an almost identical match to the cape). If you have a bird that's referred to as "leggy", which means that you can see their legs when they're standing (their legs should be short enough to be covered by the wings when looking at their profile), probably not the best bird to keep around, unless you're looking to avoid the lethal gene altogether when breeding.

Also keep in mind to look at their tails, and how their feathers fan out. It's not uncommon to see pinched tails, or tails that don't fan out completely.

Your birds don't look crossed, but again it can be a little hard to tell. Hope they work out for you!