We Have Seven Breeds of Chicks
in the New
Flock...
by Sharon Gaughan, Education Program
Director
Before I ordered our new flock of chicks, I
spent a lot of time pouring over chicken books and poultry catalogs. Our last
flock of heritage breed chickens at the Learning Farm (which we had just prior to our current Bovans
Brown flock) was made up of four heritage breeds: Rhode Island Reds, Buff
Orpingtons, Barred Plymouth Rocks, and Black Australorps. We chose these four relatively
common heritage breeds in large part because they are calm, dual-purpose breeds
that also do well as pastured poultry.
I didn’t see a reason to eliminate any of
these four breeds, but I wanted to try a few new breeds, as well. So, finally,
I made the decision to order some of each of those same four breeds – but then to also
add two new breeds: New Hampshire Reds and Columbian Wyandottes (I really
wanted Silver Laced Wyandottes, but unfortunately they weren’t available for
the shipment date I was requesting).
I thought that six breeds would make for a
visually interesting mix, without having so many different breeds that it would
be confusing for our various educational purposes.
Unfortunately, very little goes as planned
when it comes to livestock! Due to an oversight on the part of the hatchery
that I ordered from, we received some of each of those six breeds – plus a seventh breed. It turns out that
there weren’t enough Columbian Wyandottes to complete our order. If that were
to happen, the hatchery was supposed
to substitute with one of the other five breeds within my order, but instead
they substituted the missing Columbian Wyandottes with a seventh breed: Light
Brahmas.
Columbian Wyandottes and Light Brahmas do look
very similar, but with two very important exceptions: 1.) Light Brahmas are much bigger chickens, and 2.) Light
Brahmas have feathered legs and toes!
I hate
feathered legs and toes on chickens!
For one thing, I just think they look rather
silly (sorry, Brahmas!) – but, more importantly, I don’t like them because the
feathers on their legs and toes get very dirty when the birds are outside in
the dirt and the mud. I remember this from seeing Brahmas that were part of a
much earlier flock of Learning Farm chickens.
The hatchery readily admitted their mistake in not following
my order request, and did refund our money for the Light Brahma chicks that
they sent – but we still now have seven breeds instead of six, one breed of which is
larger than all the rest and will have dirty white feathers on their legs and
toes.
On the up side, several of the campers in
our chicken camp last week said that they really liked the Brahma’s feathered legs and toes!
Future Blog Post: An overview of each of the
seven breeds which make up our new chicken flock
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