Chicken Breed Focus - Ancona

[LaLee]

Hi Steven,
I have to put in a plug for Ideal. Extremely
Happy with Ideal chicks and they
charge less for what to me, were
better quality chicks. Than the other
larger and well known hatchery I have
also used.

Id highly recomend Ideal,

Blessings to whatever you chose

 

[bruceha2000]

My ancona Wendy, or atleast I think she is. I picked her not knowing what breed she was. She was acute little yellow chick with 3 black spots on her head and a big black spot on her back. I have her for 6 months now and she is pretty friendly. I love the way she follows me around and "talks" to me everymorning when I am cleaning the run. She can be noisy at times!!

Yep, that is an Ancona. When you don't know your breeds (as I did not) what they look like as chicks and as adults can be startlingly different. With my now 3 Y/Os, other than the green legs on the EEs, I wouldn't have known which of the brown chipmunk chicks were the Partridge Chanteclers and which were the EEs. And I wasn't sure if the yellow chicks with black spots and the mostly yellow chicks were Anconas or Red Blue Cubalayas (one of which turned out to be a red splash). It all came out in the "wash".

She isn't a rooster

She lays small white eggs

Yep laying Ancona hens have BIG combs and wattles. Your girl will lay bigger eggs soon. Egg size with my 2 Anconas are the most uniform of all my hens. 95% of the time they are 60 or 62 grams. In contrast, my Black Australorps can be all over the map. Echo usually lays ~62g to ~70g. She beat her all time record three days ago by 2 grams, she laid a double yolk 102g egg. Zorra's largest was 114g. That is the size of TWO large eggs (low end of the 7g range). Fortunately these are pretty rare. Way too big for a poor chicken to deal with on a regular basis.

I agree, very pretty birds! The wild, flighty, nature probably wouldn't work for me though as I love them as pets

plus suburbia despite our 3 acres (only one with it) so I can't have them but maybe eventually I can.

as for the hatchery, My Pet Chicken and I believe Strombergs too are actually brokers/middle men not actual hatcheries. I know My Pet Chicken mostly gets them from Meyer Hatchery (excellent hatchery, I'm getting my first birds from there the end of this month) but no clue about Stromberg.

You should be able to keep Anconas on 3 acres! My birds self limit to about 2 acres, an area which includes the house (no they are NOT allowed inside!) a large and a small barn and a pond. I know others have birds that range a lot, but mine seem to stick to ~100' from any of the buildings.

 

[steven29128]

Hi Steven,
I have to put in a plug for Ideal. Extremely
Happy with Ideal chicks and they
charge less for what to me, were
better quality chicks. Than the other
larger and well known hatchery I have
also used.

Id highly recomend Ideal,

Blessings to whatever you chose

Thank You LaLee
Steven

 

[ShrekDawg]

Yep, that is an Ancona. When you don't know your breeds (as I did not) what they look like as chicks and as adults can be startlingly different. With my now 3 Y/Os, other than the green legs on the EEs, I wouldn't have known which of the brown chipmunk chicks were the Partridge Chanteclers and which were the EEs. And I wasn't sure if the yellow chicks with black spots and the mostly yellow chicks were Anconas or Red Blue Cubalayas (one of which turned out to be a red splash). It all came out in the "wash".


Yep laying Ancona hens have BIG combs and wattles. Your girl will lay bigger eggs soon. Egg size with my 2 Anconas are the most uniform of all my hens. 95% of the time they are 60 or 62 grams. In contrast, my Black Australorps can be all over the map. Echo usually lays ~62g to ~70g. She beat her all time record three days ago by 2 grams, she laid a double yolk 102g egg. Zorra's largest was 114g.  That is the size of TWO large eggs (low end of the 7g range). Fortunately these are pretty rare. Way too big for a poor chicken to deal with on a regular basis.


You should be able to keep Anconas on 3 acres! My birds self limit to about 2 acres, an area which includes the house (no they are NOT allowed inside!) a large and a small barn and a pond. I know others have birds that range a lot, but mine seem to stick to ~100' from any of the buildings.

that would be awesome if I could! Maybe I will add some next year (already ordered my first chicks to arrive the end of this month). I didn't realize they self regulated themselves though, was worried they'd need a fence along the whole thing aha the problem is the actual yard is less (some of it's woods, although the yard is.still huge) and.on the back side the neighbors are right on top of us, a few feet away. maybe I could put some sort of temporary fence or something on that side? also, I know it says Ancona roams and yours self limit and stuff and this is their thread but if a roamer like that regulates, do you think my breeds would? I'm getting barred rock, black australorp, buff orpington, easter egger, and one unknown breed but probably a similar one

 

[7littlegirls]

Thank you Bruceha2000. I am happy to hear her eggs will get larger, I thought that because she is smaller than my other hens that her eggs would be small lol! My brown leghorn that is pretty much the same size as her also lays a smaller white egg.

 

[CrowHollowFarm]

Most brown legghorns only lay a medium egg.

 

[bruceha2000]

that would be awesome if I could! Maybe I will add some next year (already ordered my first chicks to arrive the end of this month). I didn't realize they self regulated themselves though, was worried they'd need a fence along the whole thing aha the problem is the actual yard is less (some of it's woods, although the yard is.still huge) and.on the back side the neighbors are right on top of us, a few feet away. maybe I could put some sort of temporary fence or something on that side? also, I know it says Ancona roams and yours self limit and stuff and this is their thread but if a roamer like that regulates, do you think my breeds would? I'm getting barred rock, black australorp, buff orpington, easter egger, and one unknown breed but probably a similar one

I can only speak for MY chickens with regard to how far they will roam. My situation is: Closest house is across the road (30' from our house) and ~300' away. No houses can be seen north or south, though there is a perpendicular road ~100' south of the house. No houses can be seen to the west. Thus they have plenty of area to forage without crossing the roads.

It is possible that YOUR chickens might self limit to part of your property AND the neighbor in the back if they are close enough to be part of the "I stick to xx feet from any building" like mine do. I can imagine chickens going quite a distance if they can go house to house like trick or treaters and still be in their "I feel safe 100' from a building" zone. In fact a couple of years ago I saw a small entourage of chickens purposefully walking across the road about 1/2 mile away. I don't know if they were going home or going away from home but in that area there are a few houses on both sides and like ours, about 30' from the road.

Ancona and other breeds are decent flyers though from what I have read and (mostly seen) while any of my breeds can go over a 4' fence, they tend to stop at the top rather than do an up and over. I've read that it can help a lot to have a wire (like electric fence wire) running over the top of a fence since they won't likely land on it. But it would have to be above the posts (maybe on those nail in insulators) or they will just used them for their intermediate stop. You can also get electric poultry netting. Depending on your property layout, it is possible you might discourage them from visiting the neighbors without having to fence the entire acreage. Mine seem to follow their beaks looking for food and the road has none so they don't go across.

Also note that my Anconas are very "pecking order" assertive, especially against the lower birds. My EE has no neck or head feathers until she moults again and the EE that was taken by a fox last year had her back feathers pretty ripped up. They don't seem to bother the BAs too much, especially the big one that brooded my 7 Meyer Hatchery birds this summer. She would attack anything that got within 5' of them and even the Anconas were running the gauntlet to get past her and into the coop at night.

 

[N F C]

Love this phrase, "...they can go house to house like trick or treaters...". Good analogy!

 

[ShrekDawg]

Thanks for the great info!! Our yard is rather huge in the front so I wonder if I could just either build a huge run and keep them confined or just somehow keep them from going back there. It's just behind the garage so wouldn't be that hard to put a fence piece I wouldn't think. I'll get pictures later.

 

[bruceha2000]

I look forward to the pictures

If the "problem area" is only in the back, then I suspect you will be fine free ranging your chickens if you can keep them out of the back yard.

Then, of course, there is the issue of predators. Any loose dogs running the streets? They can be a bigger threat than wild things like foxes.