Frizzles & Sizzles

 My paint Sizzle rooster and a bantam white cochin hen. My rooster is the offspring of a Paint Silkie rooster and bantam white cochin hen. I like the way he looks and he is the head honcho of my bantam flock of sizzles.

 He knows he's handsome and struts his stuff proudly.

 This is one of my Paint Silkie hens. She's only a few months old here. Her sire was a Paint Silkie and her mama was a white Silkie I bought from Murray MacMurray hatchery, so I don't know more about her ( mama ) than that she is a white Silkie. I am still reading up and learning about 'paint' genetics but the breeding of the rooster and several white Silkie hens has produced quite a few paints for me and I am happy with them thus far. ( Going to keep the black hen from this crossing to see what she hatched out after being bred to her paint half-brother.)

 Here is one of my white bantam frizzled cochins. She is a good mama and hatched a passel of little paint sizzles. I am having so much fun with these cute chickens !  (MY Sizzles are chickens I get from hatching eggs produced by the breeding of my Silkies with Bantam Frizzled Cochins.)

 Mama frizzle with her chicks.

 Look at this crazy Sizzle. She has a few spots and wacky feathers. Love her !

I am learning a lot raising these chickens . I am set on producing Sizzles with spots ( paint) and Silkie skin coloring, blue / black. I have a few that already fit this description. My next project in the poultry pens will be to evaluate all my Silkies and Sizzles and narrow my flock down to what I want to keep and breed. Always something to do in the poultry pens !

Cochins, Spotted Silkie-Cochins, and Doves

 Bantam White Cochins. These two roosters are both purebred cochins , one is frizzled.  They both came in an order I received last June of Frizzled Bantam Cochins, White. Although one of the roosters does not have frizzled feathers, he is capable of siring frizzled chicks.

 I use kitty litter buckets as nest boxes for my bantams. The roosters seem to love them. I have observed the little hens waiting patiently for the roosters to get out of the nest boxes so they ( hens ) could get in and get busy.

 A sweet fluffy frizzled hen. I love these little fluffy balls of feathers !

 I obtained a pair of Paint Silkie Roosters last year. I placed them in a pen with my one Silkie hen and a few frizzled bantam white cochins. I did not get any successfully hatched chicks from the Silkie , but plenty of Silkie-Cochin crosses. Quite a few had spots, which I LOVE ! Spots like these are not common in chickens,

 I know these little chickens are not able to be shown because they are not purebred, and don't fit the standard for Sizzles (is there a standard for them ? ) but have decided I am going to aim for a particular standard of my own for these little chickens. I want small white chickens with very curly feathers, good sized black spots randomly placed all over the chicken, with blue under-color . I like the dark blue around the eyes and beak instead of the bright red.

 My preference here is the body shape & coloring of the chicken on the right, but the spotting of the chicken on the left. This is so much fun. My chickens make me smile, a lot !

 And then there are my doves. My sweet, easy-to-keep doves that coo and coo throughout all weather conditions. They faithfully tend their young and are so graceful , almost angelic appearing as they fly around their pen from perch to perch.

 My doves are prolific breeders and the numbers are requiring me to have to offer a few for sale again. I hate choosing doves to sell. Each one I choose is so perfect ! But I need to reduce the number of doves for the doves' sake. When there are too many of them they begin to compete for nesting spaces and perch space and get so busy chasing each other around they all suffer for the chaos.

A dove setting on eggs, more baby doves to come !



This is a glimpse of a few of my chickens and my doves this month. Every keeper of livestock & poultry needs to spend some time simply observing their animals. This gives the keeper an idea of the state of the flocks & herds, an idea of changes to be made. Sometimes simply taking time to observe them also allows the keeper to see things that alert him/her to health problems. Health problems caught early are often easily treatable and prevent serious infection or contagion. Feeding and caring for your animals should be a given, but knowing your animals and how they should behave is right up there with the most important things you should do. Besides, it's fun , after all, we're keeping animals we love and enjoy, right ?



Mr. Fancy Pants

 This is Mr. Fancy Pants. He is a Sizzle. That means one of his parents was a Silkie chicken, and the other a Bantam Frizzled White Cochin. He is a sight to behold! As I said in an earlier post, he might be frilly, but he is all rooster.

 This is one of his gals and he watches over her protectively as she scratches and pecks for bugs and worms. He gets very excited if another rooster approaches her.

 Isn't she pretty? I often think these chickens are the poodles of the chicken world.

 Mr. Fancy Pants also has some Silkie girlfriends.

 Here he is with 2 of them.

 The chickens are clucking busybodies too. They love to line up near the sheep water trough to see what's goin' on over ( or under) the fence. The sheep like to gawk at the chickens too.

Boy, when you're feeling down, or need some entertainment, nothing beats watching the antics of a happy flock of chickens, or sheep. Mr. Fancy Pants and his gals make watching my chickens even more fun !

Cochins

                     The Chinese Shanghai fowl came to England and America in 1845.  The name of this Asiatic breed was later changed to Cochin.  The earliest were more or less buff in color.  Its striking appearance, due to great size and profuse soft feathering, distinguished it from all other breeds at the early period. Cochins created a sensation in England, resulting in a great boom for the "Cochin   China," as it was called in the days of "Cochin craze."
 In England Cochins  are called Pekins ,  Cochins come in bantam and standard both make excellent pets  there also good for meat and eggs and come in many colors including Buff, Blue, White , Black,   Splash, Lemon Blue, and many more . there are also frizzled Cochins. Cochins are also the second most popular bantam breed after the Old English game. Info above is from the   American Standard of Perfection.

                                      This is my Grandmas flock of Cochin bantams which include Black, Barred, and Red Cochins.                                    

                This is a photo of her frizzled white Cochins.

Tribbles!

My tribbles.

See? This is what they look like from above. Little fluffy balls. They chirrup and seem to purr as they scratch the pen floor litter, and as they perch with their mama hen in the evening. What's not to like about tribbles? ( O.K. They are Bantam White Cochins, frizzled) To see more about them click here.*

Bathing Your Chicken For Show

Do you have chickens that need to be bathed for show, or simply because they are white and you want them to be as fluffy & pretty as they can be? Click onto this link to see how we bathe our chickens, especially the white ones. Bathing Chickens *