Reviews by Indyshent

I've kept five quails so far and raised none from chicks. I've heard they're fairly easy to tame, but I didn't have much luck with this. I've housed them in smaller cages, large aquariums and outdoor runs with pheasants. Never saw any aggression from these birds.

They're fascinating to watch and listen to and have a stunning array of vocalizations, including a call that reminded me of laser gun noises from old shows. Their "crow" is very odd but much quieter than a chicken's.

They won't roost but relish dust baths and are super cute when bathing... or doing pretty much anything else.

I would eventually like to get more of them.

I've had a number of Breda, all originally from the same owner. They were all exceptionally lovely, stately birds. Both sexes were very submissive and consistently toward the bottom of the hierarchy. males usually had strong crows, but their constant battles with illness led me to rehome them eventually. Males were very impressive, exceptionally tall and beautiful, and had a calm, quiet air of respectability.

The sole hen I had was never once ill and laid medium cream eggs frequently. She never went broody, didn't eat much, never fought with anyone yet also never seemed to be bullied by anyone because she chose her friends wisely.

I haven't actually met many of the "bantam" Silkies as most of the ones I've had were of the "meat type" which actually does exist, surprisingly enough. Most of my Silkies have been comparable in mass to Leghorns (technically a large fowl at 4 pounds) or even Plymouth Rocks and other dual-purpose breeds. My heaviest rooster right now is probably one of the Silkie guys even though I've got a half-Marans head rooster (probably 7 lbs but he might surprise me if I actually weighed him). All of mine were purchased as "bantams" from various feed stores.

I've never had a Silkie hen go broody. I'm possibly the only person who's never experienced the famed broodiness of Silkies, but I'm sure my current lone pullet will rear her broody head this spring. However, for now, the Silkie pullet is actually my best layer and gives me one tinted (little darker than cream colored) medium sized egg almost every day. She's a darling, quiet bird who gets picked on by my old-timers and more assertive birds, and this has been typical of all Silkies I've met--regardless of size or gender.

Crests can impair vision and cause the bird to not notice threats or to become startled easily. Crests also serve as a hotbed for lice, so check them often. My Silkies have all been fastidious groomers and love dustbaths, so I've yet to have any problems with lice on them, but others aren't so lucky.

Their feathered legs can make treating for mites more difficult, and may cause mud and water to freeze on them and cause frostbite. Try to keep their ground as dry and clean as possible.

Roosters can be surprisingly gentle with chicks in my experience. All of mine have been dolls with chicks. I've yet to meet a mean one, even though I've heard of a couple out there. All of mine have been at worst skittish creatures who are afraid of being picked on, but they've universally responded very well to gentle handling and treats. Children love meeting Silkies, which are about the most interesting and adorable chicken breed one can find.

Silkie crosses with normally feathered birds typically yield birds with very soft feathers and dark skin. Polydactyly is often a dominant trait (depends on what causes it) so expect extra toes to crop up in offspring.

Australorps are basically like Orpingtons (not surprising considering their lineage) except they're readily available in only one color and have more variable temperaments. They often lay better than Orpingtons, but I don't think they lay so much better (if at all in many lines).

I've met a lot of difficult Australorps--both hens and roosters. Domineering hens, ones that are downright bloodthirsty concerning injured birds (even people, because I've had some that followed me and my kids around just to peck at scrapes and scabs on our lower legs), ones that are always broody, ones that are incredibly noisy. I've met nasty tempered Australorp roosters who refused to give ground--regardless of their odds in the fight. They're often very mean to the ladies and likely to start fights with other birds.

They're pretty and not always nasty (not even usually, in all likelihood), but the nasty one's I've met have pretty well put me of the breed. Even when nicer, they tend to be boring, especially if one is only keeping a single breed.

Orpingtons are possibly the most charming poultry breed I've ever kept.

I've never met an aggressive Orpington--not even one that was a little nippy--regardless of sex, age, quality, or apparent health. While hatcheries tend to mangle a breed's characteristics in an attempt to sell more birds (ie: allowing subpar specimens to breed), Orpington disposition has remained consistent regardless of which hatchery or breeder I've acquired the birds from. Particularly in the much lauded buff color, hatcheries will send out astoundingly poor specimens of the breed, and even these Orps typically have the most placid, friendly, non-aggressive temperaments.

My first Orp was a hatchery girl with an asymmetrical face (one eye was farther back on her face than the other, so she looked like two different birds depending on which side I was looking at. Weirder yet, her pupils were fixed such that one was always more dilated than the other) who was a terrible specimen of the breed according to conformation, but she had the sweetest temperament and was a bonafide lap bird every chance she got.

I've since kept Orps in other colors, from other hatcheries and breeders. They're an exceedingly charming lot. Roosters don't tend to be top guy in mixed flocks when they have to compete with other, more assertive breeds. They've often pretty chivalrous guys (especially if they're past that crazy hormonal stage or don't have much competition).

As a breed, they tend to be a very healthy lot, and the only health complaint I've ever had is that their tall single combs and large wattles tend to get frostbite. Mine never get sick, though some of the guys have been lazy bathers, so they end up with unwanted many-legged "friends". As fluff is profuse, some breeders have better fertility in hatching eggs after trimming excessive "butt fluff" for spring breedings.

They're overwhelmingly an easy breed to catch if they need to be rounded up for transport, medicating, what-have-you. They're typically slow and not generally scared of much so they don't run away like other, far wilier breeds. This is a pro and a con because, if you have a Fort Knox coop and run and/or no major predators around, easy breeds like Orps are great, but if you end to let birds fend for themselves over large areas unsupervised in areas with predators like hawks and coyotes, Orps are too dumb and slow to be your best breed for that job.

Another con is that, as a dual-purpose breed, Orps are an "eating bird", but I've never had it in me to process one. Mean, ugly, rape-y guys are the easiest to process, and Orps are overwhelmingly none of these. Big, fluffy, silly, sweet-natured, cheerful, friendly, guys who are good with their ladies are really difficult to process, so be prepared to fall in love with pretty much all of your extra boys and have a hard time saying good-bye to them.

I've always been enamored of Goldens and finally owned a pair, starting April 2016. They're lovely, quiet, little birds that pack a lot if color and beauty into a tiny space. I found their temperaments did best when allowed a very large space with other species of fowl.

I have one large fowl silver laced Polish rooster. The other five didn't make it past a month. While the smallest bird I own at maybe 4 pounds, he's not the bottom of the pecking order in a six rooster hierarchy. His frequent crow is nevertheless adorable, shorter than most, of a higher pitch and a more bantam quality. He likes to fluff up nesting material for the girls. He doesn't eat much but adds a lot of charm and entertainment value to the chicken yard.

Crested breeds relatively prone to getting lice and to predation generally as crests block their view. Polish chickens, while generally viewed as cold intolerant have proven to be more tolerant than I'd expected. They're not an "eating chicken" but also don't eat much, unlike several other more ornamental, pet type breeds. I've heard they're respectable layers of tiny eggs.

I have one slate turkey (lavender/self-blue) and, unfortunately, she's going blind due to a genetic fault which is very common in the Penn State line. As the breed was nearly extinct, most Slates are related to the few birds which were used to try to bring them back from the brink of extinction, and this means that quite a number of deleterious alleles are floating around in their gene pool at high frequencies. Lavender females are more likely to have this progressive blindness. Apparently, their eyes are shaped somewhat differently (little more oblong if mine is an indication, she also seems to have a muscular problem in that her eyes don't appear to focus on anything in front of her). When buying poults of this breed, and especially of this color within the breed, be sure to examine the poults for this strangeness of eye shape.

The jenny I have has fallen more and more behind her "sisters" and isn't even half the size of the bronze jenny I bought at the same time. The lavender jenny is exceptionally small and has extreme difficulty finding her way around the yard, eating and eating. She gets lost easily and has to be manually moved into the coop regularly at night. She's a lovely, sweet little turkey, so it's particularly heartbreaking that I can't do anything more to help her.

I have two black jennies, Drogon and Balerion the Black Dread. At least one is laying, and she started much younger than I had expected. Eggs are super tasty (it's a turkey thing). They're both the largest heritage turkey hens I've ever seen. Wonderful dispositions--neither mean nor doormats, they're more than able to fend for themselves without being bullies to smaller birds. Very curious but not jerks about it. Love treats and people, and they follow me around like dogs wihtout being pushy about attention. They have wonderful survival instincts and range well. Neither has ever been sick. Feathers are lovely and great for crafts or just to look at. Many turkeys hens I've had can get really loud, but these girls make very little noise.

I bought a 1-yr-old Royal Palm tom from a BYC member, but it turned out that he was horrendously ill. He escaped quarantine after a few days of rigorous antibiotic treatment, and finally (weeks later) seems like he might be more or less recovered (we had to find where he was roosting and continue dosing him nightly). We named all of our turkeys this year for dragons, so his name, due to respiratory issues, is Puff the Magic.

Puff's about 3ft tall and at most 10lbs. His lovely plumage is starting to come back in (former owner tore a bunch of it out when the luckless boy tried to escape as he was changing hands). He is a very pretty bird. After raising only broad-breasted birds, he seems almost more like a flamingo than a turkey to me He has such delicate features--especially his long, skinny legs and toes! He's like a pianist trying to mack on body-building drummer babes. We have roosters who are bigger than this tom. Reportedly, Royal Palm's clean like giant old flat-chested hens, so it's a good thing we didn't buy him for his ample muscles.

Hopefully, he'll be able to get his manly duties done with our three pet broad-breasted hens because they're antics trying to make baby turkeys are pretty noisy, pathetic and sadly funny all at the same time. He's largely ignored their attempts to get his attention, but as he feels better, he does seem to be taking more of an interest in them (but now they don't know what to make of him). We're hoping that a crossbreed will have merit as a table bird, lawn ornament and pet while having a slower muscle growth and (typically) better health of the Royal Palm.

His personality does seem to be coming around as rather friendly, but he wasn't handled since he was a chick at his previous home, and likely distrusts us given our insistence at shoving needles into his chest and sinuses. Thankfully, table scraps, bread and pancakes, along with liberally loving on the other birds and speaking in soothing tones around him seem to be helping a great deal, and he now gets within a few inches of my outstretched hands. Within a few weeks, he might even take treats from my hands, which is pretty quick progress considering the circumstances.



***Royal Palms--even ones in poor health--can beat you pretty badly with those wimpy looking feet and wings***

***They can also FLY***

*Just something to keep in mind*
We've found that, while he does sometimes fly over the fence, he won't be gone long (if he can help it) because the other turkeys can't fly, and he can't bare to be alone.

We have one Khaki Campbell--more to the point, my DD has one and has aptly named it "Brownie". Despite ample handling, the bird hates us and has pretty well determined that only unspeakable tortures must await her for consorting with her evil overlords. She's very outspoken about her distrust of us too and sounds the alarm pretty much every time she sees us or much of anything occurs in the yard at all, for that matter. She sounds like a team of Clydesdales stepping on a dog toy. While she occasionally consorts with other ducks, her favorite is a fawn-and-white Indian Runner drake ("Joe" who belongs to my youngest). She's pretty much always hated us, but Joe used to like us before his girlfriend told him to stop hanging with us.

The only purebred Black Swedish I have I received along with two Pekins from a lady who was moving and couldn't keep her ducks anymore. To an extent, this rehoming to an unknown person may be partially to blame for this group's exceedingly tiresome reluctance to share a yard with me. They're okay with other ducks (except the to-be-expected constant raping by the two competing drakes) and supposedly like turkeys because they were raised with one. So far okay with chickens.

But they hate me. This goes to the exponential level with the Black Swedish, who is pretty much always broody. Her first clutch was wildly unsuccessful and every one of the twenty or so eggs she'd horded went bad. At the turn of the year, she went broody again and hasn't stopped. First successful clutch hatched Easter weekend, but someone had been sneaking into her nest and laying eggs when she got up to do her business and so the clutch was staggered. Rather than watching her babies at all, she let several drown in a bowl of water inches from her face. She has been so intent on hatching all the eggs, that she refused to take care of the ones that hatched, so I've been forced to brood them inside. We've has three pseudo clutches hatch but because there has always been at least one under her, she's remained broody and refused to parent the babies.

This past week, three hatched, but now she is vicious and paranoid with me, seemingly determined that I'm always on the verge of stealing her offspring. In some ways this is preferable to having to brood a bunch inside again, but I hate the constant noise. If she's out, she's honking her head off and glaring at me. Oh, and hissing or flying out at me, or biting me and beating me with her wings.

As another note, Pekin drake over Black Swedish duck yields offspring which are pretty much identical to the mother. Some have more white than others, but none has so much that it's utterly outside the realm of Black Swedish. Some have less white on them than their mom even. Girls appear to have less white than boys. They grow quickly and are pretty well eating size now even though they're only two months old. Despite being right there when one of them hatched and handling this duckling very often, it's still terrified of me now. Must be somewhere in the genes, because ducks just aren't friendly creatures and the more ducky company I give them, the more terrified of me they seem to be. Not sure why ducks are so much more fearful and resentful of their human overlords than chickens.

This is my second year raising Brahmas. Last spring, I picked up three sexed pullets, and one was still a roo. Out of the ordinary for Brahma roos, he was kind of a jerk when it came to his ladies once the hormones kicked in. A nice couple who had recently lost all but one of their Brahma flock fell in love with mine while seeing me about a guinea cock late last summer, so I may never know if he aged out of raping every female bird in the yard (including the ducks). While all were big and fluffy, the hens were exceptionally submissive in flock dynamics but still easily handled (more afraid of us than I'd hoped though).

This year, I have two Light Brahmas and three Dark Brahmas, all of whom are incredibly sweet natured, fluffy and quiet. The Light Brahmas are super hard to sex and feather very slowly. They're also bad about sending out mixed signals in that one will have a comb that says it might be a boy, but have perfectly rounded feathers. One might have the stature but no comb. Stuff like that.

The Dark Brahmas are supposedly easier to sex but take for freaking ever to get feathers. Mine are about six weeks old, and I think I might know which genders they are now. They're still not well feathered. I can pick up and cuddle of the five Brahmas, pretty much anytime I want. Some of them will also seek my company out and request cuddles. They are all closer to the bottom than the top of the pecking order, but this may change as they get bigger (they're one to a few weeks growth behind the biggest birds).

***EDIT 6/8/15***

Pretty sure both Light Brahmas are hens. The three Dark Brahmas are 2 Roos and 1 Hen. The bigger LB is now dubbed Shakira because she's a big bootied Columbian gal. Despite being very low on the hierarchy, she helps my SLW break up fights between the turkeys (who all outweigh them by multiples). She is a fearsome bozen and bouncer, but is completely safe with other birds and children (so long as nobody's yelping for help). The smaller of the LB pair is super quiet and strangely small for a Brahma. The little one has a big pale comb; the big one has almost no comb still, but it's flaming red.

The Dark Brahmas are some of the sweetest birds I've ever met. Incredibly sweet natured, huge, fluffy, soft cuddle buddies. They like being held and pet [especially the boys, who are now informally dubbed "Mag the Mighty" and "Wun Wun" (recently finished the fifth book of A Song of Ice and Fire, in case you're wondering)]. Super sweet birds, and super quiet. Days go by without these birds so much as peeping. They're four months old and have never crowed. Never peck anyone or other birds, though they do take note of invaders to the yard (and stare down cats). They are the number one offenders of raiding my house at every opportunity. Any means available, these birds find to enter my house and will cheerfully peruse my floors for anything the kids may have dropped from the table. They are fiends for all things people. Hands down top birds of this year's purchases for overall temperament (and this includes the turkeys, which I love oodles).

*A sexing note on Dark Brahmas*

Once DBs feather out and get those later juvenile feathers (the "big boy" and "big girl" feathers prior to adult plumage), you can sex them by looking at them. DBs are really just silver partridge colored, so all the same sexing tricks should hold. Look for black chests and honest-to-goodness lacing patterns. Boys will get lacing on their heads, necks and saddles, but girls are laced everywhere. At first the chicks were brown and initially feathered brown as well--much like my other partridge colored birds. Some people have told me that funky mottled feathers imply this "lacing", but THAT'S NOT TRUE. You've gotta wait for bigger girl and boy feathers to show up. They can have substantial red and brown feathering even into the latest juvenile plumage. Both of my DB roos have red on their wings, though Wun Wun has a lot more (and is much larger). Some of it may be breeding or the genetics behind the silver partridge coloring, but the fact remains that many people have been told to expect something very different from what hatcheries will deliver. Expect a lot of red and brown and mottling in both genders for the first few months until the black and white big kid feathers start cropping up (they start on the head and make these chicks look super awkward for a long time).

Granted my Wellies are one week old to 9 weeks old, but so far, they're all very personable and easy going. The rooster has been a delight to keep. He's quiet and runs the place well without being in the least mean. He puts down insurrections from our younger roosters without so much as a noise--let alone any real fighting or damage. He's also growing up gorgeous, which can't hurt his chances of being kept around The older hen is also very sweet and neither the top of the food chain nor at the bottom. She is particularly inquisitive, and he is particularly laid back. They don't necessarily like being picked up but can be easily handled (seem more confused by it than anything). Neither of them has pecked or scratched anyone--bird or person--even in 'investigating' the new bird on campus. He is very fond of dustbathing and really likes to let everything just hang out, flops out on his sides and everything.

Received a free "Ameraucana" pair last summer, but I didn't have the heart to tell the nice lady that she'd overpaid. The hen was a White Leghorn (sweetest one I've ever met) and the roo was an Easter Egger who could almost pass for an Ameraucana except he was an incomplete Columbian with olive shanks. With his big yellowish eyes and fluffy face and neck, he looked more like a cross between an eagle and an owl than a chicken. Not a pretty bird, but Fried had a fabulous temperament 99.9% of the time. The other .1% is that he pecked me once the morning after I got him because my hens (especially the RSL, RIR and Leghorn) hated him at first and let him know he wasn't welcome. Only bird that has ever pecked me, but he's still the favorite one.


He regularly entered our house and was wonderful company when he wasn't crowing. Loved to sit on laps and shoulders. For the most part, preferred the company of people to birds.

In my first flock, there were three Rhode Islands from a Rural King and two gifted "RIR" from a Tractor Supply. One of those was an ISA Brown, and the other was a Red Sex Link. My two favorite hens were the Sex Link and a Rhode Island Red.

None of them ever resembled aggressive, and I never had to worry about them pecking my children. Benehime (a RIR hen) followed me all around our yard and loved being picked up and pet. She always sounded like was telling on me (Oh no you didn't!). Ginger (the Sex Link) grew to have beautiful bright orange plumage and was so docile with people that my four-year-old son could easily pick her up, hold her any which way, and she would just seem just as enthralled with him as he was with her.

While all were sexed as pullets, we still got one roo, who was eventually named Everything Is Awesome because he was just that awesome. Good rooster, gentle with the girls and growing even more gentle with them as he aged. Gorgeous, lovely bird and an extreme vicarious learner. I'm not sure if he had any instincts at all--just a big copycat If he saw anyone doing something, he would immediately attempt the same thing (didn't always work well, and he picked up a lot of bad habits from other roosters). He was extremely protective of the girls and didn't hesitate to charge animals that did not belong in the yard. He knew which cats were safe and which weren't and didn't put up with any "funny business" from neighborhood pets and strays. Never pecked or spurred anything, but the animals always knew he was serious enough that they left anyway.

Only problem I had was that they loved to get into my neighbor's yard, and he's pretty anal about his yard. Even with clipped wings, they could always find a way into his yard. Then my lovely roo picked up the obnoxious habit of crowing in the middle of the night (from another rooster), and I had to rehome them.

All of them were hand tame and would eat right from my hands (or my children's). Benehime and Ginger (the RSL) were the easiest to pick up and cuddle, but none of the RIR or mixes put up a fight when my children picked them up.