bantam modern game questions

[NYREDS]

Is white earlibes on modern game bantams unacceptable ?

In a show it is a disqualification, to my thinking that's unacceptable.

 

[fishsticks]

What about on the hens? I have two roisters. one with white earlobes and one without . The same with my hens. it does not stand out as much on the hen. should i not let the white earlobe hen mate with my breed standard roo? I'm looking to produce quality birds.

 

[NYREDS]

What about on the hens? I have two roisters. one with white earlobes and one without . The same with my hens. it does not stand out as much on the hen. should i not let the white earlobe hen mate with my breed standard roo? I'm looking to produce quality birds.

It's a breed disqualification, not a gender disqualification. The first step in you path toward quality should be eliminating the white lobe birds.

 

[natedog44]

Can someone plz explain to me about modern genetics...I raise the blue, black, and splash modern game bantams..I have the coloration genetics figured but the lacing and everything else confuses me..can someone plezz explain

 

[BantamLover55]

It's a breed disqualification, not a gender disqualification. The first step in you path toward quality should be eliminating the white lobe birds.

You can also dub off the white in the earlobe as long as the lobe is not entirely white.

Also, your black, blue, and splash varieties of MGB (Modern Game Bantam) should not have lacing at all! Do your blacks have lacing on the front?

 

[helios]

Yes they do. If you pay attention to them, they will become very fond of you, eating from your hand and landing on your shoulder and such. Lovely little breed.

Yes, you can keep them outdoors in winter, but they need a coop that can be closed up and a heat lamp on at all times. We had ours in a 6x6 A-frame coop, with a red heat bulb inside the coop, and a white heat bulb in the run. They did just fine with that, and it did get very cold here in Ohio that winter. I believe it went down into the 20s.

Sharon

I know this thread is a little old, but I wanted to chime in on winter heating and Modern Games, since this is a top result when I google "backyard chickens modern game winter heat". Ditto, Sharon...two winters ago, we had -18 temps (without windchill) in Northern Illinois for nearly a week.

I got my first Modern Games (bantams) last spring from Ideal (Texas)...not show quality, but very striking and they are so friendly and curious. I was hooked! We had a Great Horned Owl take about half of the flock before I could get them to stop roosting in the trees at dusk, and had other predator losses, so I was left with about 1/3 in the fall. I actually cried when my last MG roo, Big Sexy, was killed, and I'm generally pretty pragmatic about predator losses--you have to be when you want to free range and have coyotes, raccoons, opossums, and mink around. I cried again when an opossum got three more in the fall, including 2 of the 3 remaining MG hens.

RIP, Big Sexy (not dubbed, so he would have needed supplemental heat, too!)


I have a cozy, lightly insulated coop...probably underventilated in the winter to conserve heat, but I've had rosecombs and large fowl over the winter in the past. I have had luck putting hot tap water in a sealed 5-gallon bucket as a heat sink on the coldest nights in the past, but we will generally get a week or more of temps around zero F in late January/February, and it's rough on my back hauling it out 2-3 times a day. I also added a small sunroom to the back of the coop in the fall--that has helped immensely during cold, clear days, but I was still going out to find all of the ladies snuggling on the roosts in the coop in the daytime. Several of the coldest nights (20's...which I didn't worry about even with the Silver Sebrights without supplemental heat last winter), I would find my splash MG hen shivering on the roost. She had taken to roosting between the legs of a LF Light Brahma hen if she got lucky at night, but I would even see her in the sunroom during the day shivering.

We had to leave town for an overnight trip this past weekend and the temps were projected to range between -5 and 5F for those few days. I needed to make sure they had water access, and I was tired of seeing her shiver and just sulk during cold snaps. Despite my fear of coop fires, I secured a (brooder) heat lamp in the sunroom near the hanging waterer, but about 30" from the floor, and it helped immensely...My MG hen would bask under the lamp and was much more active during the day. Before our trip, I added a second heat lamp (this one red) in the coop a few feet away from the roosts and put both on a ThermoCube (on at 35, off at 45) positioned at roost level in the coop. Before the trip, it took a little adjusting (the LF hens roosted in the sunroom the first night, as the coop was reaching 50 degrees). I have even seen the blue Cochin bantam hen basking under the heat lamp at night. I was considering bringing the little MG hen inside because she seemed so miserable, but now they all are happy scratching in the sunroom on cold days and cozy in the coop on subzero nights...Since the sunroom lamp is clear, I even see a few of them scratching in the sunroom late at night (the coop has a pop-door to the sunroom, which has a wire floor over dirt and under straw bedding).

I know that several MG keepers in cold areas say that they've had no problems down to [insert absurdly cold temperature] degrees for years, but I think it absolutely depends on your stock's bloodline. My hatchery MG's came from Texas, where their lines most definitely have not been tested to withstand subzero temps. I never thought I would heat the coop until I saw that poor little girl shivering on 30 degree days. Above freezing, and she's out scratching in the dirt with the big girls. One caveat (well, a few...secure your lamps, be thoughtful about placement, or get a safer heat source, i.e. a radiant panel heater, use a thermostat to prevent heating the coop to above 50 degrees, and have a backup thermometer to make sure your ThermoCube/thermostat doesn't fail and keep the heat on all the time...I have a wireless monitor in the house with the sensor in the coop)--we have pretty frequent power outages in winter storms, but I have a super-handy BF, and we power the essentials in the house with a generator in outages. I'm sure my hens are getting conditioned to the "balmy" conditions already, and you can bet that their lamps will be connected to that generator when the power fails. If you don't have an alternate power source for outages, you should have an alternate place to keep your flock warm when the power goes out (attached garage, basement, the spare bathroom with a window open

). I guess I'll be heating the coop on a thermostat for future winters, because I have a mess of Modern Games ordered for the spring!! I call them my "Sexy Chickens" because of their supermodel good looks!

 

[BaileyMChicks]

I have a question. i recently got 5 modern game bantams, and I live in the middle-northern part of Wisconsin. I heat my coop in the winter, but it can sometimes get down to -25 degrees F without windchill(not in the coop though...The coop stays warmer. Sometimes it gets below 28 degrees F, but not too often, especially if I have the heat lamp going)....Do you think they will be ok? I will hopefully have a new coop up by next winter that I will be able to heat better. I just hope they will be ok...To heat the coop I just use a red heatlamp. I only use the heatlamp when it gets really cold outside, but I do have a little Japanese bantam cross rooster that was fine this winter, but then again the coldest it got to was maybe 10 degrees below zero. I did have a few roosters get light frostbite on the combs and wattles, but I fixed most of it( caught it early and kept their combs and wattles smothered in bag balm before they could get any worse, and it fixed my little Jap. banty cross roos comb. He didn't lose any of it except the very tips of his comb) before it could get too bad. The biggest case of frostbite I had was my wyandotte x RIR rooster. He kept getting his wattles really wet in the waterer and they would freeze at night, and then thaw out, and then re-freeze, and that went on for a while even with the bag balm. I don't know why he was the only rooster with that problem...his dad and brother were fine and they had bigger wattles than him and single combs instead of a rose comb...

Anyways the point of this was to ask if they would be ok. Because I really don't want to rehome them because of the weather.

 

[ilovebalkbalks]

As far as I know, they love people. I have one and she's the most people-loving chicken I've ever seen. Silkies are supposed to be really people friendly, but this little MGB likes people WAY more than the two silkies I have.

 

[LyonsZoo]

I am thinking about getting a few modern game bantams. I have 2 ee's, 2 silkies, and 1 lavendar orpington. Can the modern game be in the same run and coop as these guys?