How do you know if your hens are bantam?

Cavendish Chickens

Songster
9 Years
Apr 24, 2010
382
0
119
Summit County, Ohio
Okay, I hatched my rooster... which is a speckled sussex. He is average size for his breed. I have two leghorn hens. One white, one light brown. The white one is smaller than the sussex roo, and the light brown hen is smaller than the white leghorn. Now the girls are only 5 months, will be 6 months Dec. 12. Shouldn't they be a little bigger? We didn't hatch the girls. We bought them from a nearby chicken farm at age 2 or 3 months. They hatched there June 12th.
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Do you have an estimate on weight? Do you have photos?

Bantams really are small birds, you'd notice it quite well. They also have more buggy looking eyes.

Leghorns can vary in size, but in general are smaller than other common chicken breeds.
 
They look like normal standard Leghorns to me, for an age of 5 months/20 weeks.

Are you SURE the brown one is purebred and a pullet? Looks like a mixed rooster to me. The tail, saddle feathers and comb/wattles all suggest rooster. I hope I'm wrong.
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Yup... brown one is a girl. Her comb is now bright red and flopped over, and she's laying. Aren't they pretty chickens?
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You think she looks like a cross breed? She's smaller than her "sister". I thought maybe she might be a bantam because she's so small. Weight... no idea. I don't really handle them much. But they are very sweet girls. The rooster gets handled more because he thinks he's a bad "butt". I will try to get better pictures tomorrow. Too dark out now to get good ones. The guy we got them from seems to keep his chickens together by breed, but not necessarily color. He just added silkies to his crew. Blue and black hens, black roo. I question that. We want to get silkies in the spring, but if you let the colors mix, then wouldn't they be crossed in some form too?
 
So do you think they, or at least the brown one, may be bantam Katy? She is tiny, the smallest of the three chickens. The white hen is smaller than the sussex roo, but bigger than the brown hen.
 
They are not bantams. They are quite normal leghorn pullets. Leghorns are more slightly built and stream lined than most of the other standard breeds.
 

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