Recent content by Chicki Tiki Tavi

Do you think this one is a hen?

The one right up front on the left here is the one in question. There's 4 of them that are all similar looking, and the 3 others are very obviously roosters. This one I'm not sure. They are a bantam batch of eggs, but probably fertilized by multiple other rooster breeds.

For now I've put him inside the apple tree fence with my most loving hen (who was seeming a bit overwhelmed with the testosterone surge of the other roosters). They get along well and she seems to be mothering him. I'll put him back in the brooder for a few more nights and see if his feathers...

The coop is about 38 square feet of floor space with a main floor and a loft. I have 3 roosting bars in there with plenty of space between them. The run is 14 feet square. I believe they have plenty of room, as they are bantams and are considerably smaller than most chickens. How do I check...

I was partial to one of them, but he has been becoming very rough with the hens recently. I do intend to hatch some of them, but they're all different mixed breeds. So do I choose the rooster that seems like he would make the prettiest mix with all of my different hens?

Any advice on choosing which rooster to keep for my ladies? I'm having a hard time deciding. Do I keep the most aggressive one? The biggest one? The prettiest one? It's hard to kill your "babies" as a first time chicken mom.

I intend to harvest a few of the roosters, but they have not reached a full size quite yet. Because they are a bantam breed, they've just started putting on considerable size in the last two weeks. Unfortunately I didn't get to choose how many I was raising, as we hatched these eggs in my...

I have a very strange looking mixed breed cockerel. He is part of a batch of eggs that hatched on May 8, 2017. He is about half the size of the other 13 chickens in the flock and seems to be a silkie/frizzle mix. He's very lacking in the feather department and in general just looks "mangy". Up...

Can anybody tell me what this chicken might be? Gender and breed? As you can see, it's much smaller than all of the others, it has feathered legs, what looks like a rose comb, 5 toes, a mix of what looks like silkie and frizzle feathers, and this week it's face turned red. They're about 11 weeks...

I've been visiting backyardchickens.com for advice since the day I brought my babies home 2 months ago. I teach preschool and we hatched eggs at the end of the year as a learning experiment. We got the eggs from the local feed store owner, who has a large flock of bantams and other mixed breeds...