Bantam ??? what is it?

[Dar]

I am fairly new to the chicken world. well new being just under a year.

I always thought that a "bantam"______ (whatever insert name here) was just a "mini" version of a standard breed.

kinda like a toy poodle and a standard poodle look the same and in essence is the same dog just a smaller version

yesterday at the auction I heard them referring to some silkies as "standard" and "bantam" so I assumed that the standard were just that a standard size larger then bantam.

am I right or does bantam mean something different?.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

First of all, in the US there are only bantam silkies. In other parts of the world there are large fowl and bantams. Ours are larger than their bantams and smaller than their large fowl. I occasionally hear of someone working on large fowl silkies here, but everything I've ever heard is 2nd or 3rd hand.

Next, some bantams are a small sized countrerpart to a large gowl breed: cochins, RIR, rocks, polish; etc. Others are called true bantams--there is no large fowl counterpart: d'uccles, sebrights, dutch, japanese, etc.

By "standard" they may have meant large fowl or they may have meant recognised variety.

 

[Dar]

ok i did not know if the breed was "made smaller" by breeding with a smaller version of that bread..

kinda like if you were to breed a mini poodle with a teacup you would get something in between

I know very little about the genetics of chickens lol

some of the silkies I seen yesterday were quite big compared to the ones I bought so maybe along the line somewhere they were breed with a larger breed to make them larger but they maintained the silkie feathering.

I must have stood out there like a sore thumb cause an old timer said to me "this is quite the hillbilly thing eh?"