Chicken Breed Focus - Appenzeller Spitzhauben

[PhoredaBurds]

@brrabey adorable chicks BTW. Love the pic with the broody!

 

[Faraday40]

Getting lots of rain today.

On the brighter side : Wet Spitzes are pretty funny looking.

BTW Mine are about 8 wks now.
My guess is that the 1st pic are males & the 2nd pic is my female.

.... but I keep going back & forth on the 2 in the 1st pic. One day they have pink faces & the next day back to looking like pullets.

 

[Alaskan]

Good looking flock, either way.

 

[GldnValleyHens]

I'm getting an Spitz rooster at the end of May, but he will be just a baby. He is to replace our dead Silkie roo Amadeus

( of course we are wanting another silkie rooster they are awesome) I am hoping Napoleon ( his future name) will be a good flock leader, protector and breeder. We have hawks, and they killed our Polish pullet last fall. We need a boss rooster to protect the girls. Are Spitzs good roosters in that sense?

 

[Alaskan]

I have found my Spitz roosters to be very good....


But the only effective hawk protection that I know of is a completely covered run.


Not sure how any roo could protect from a hawk.

 

[GldnValleyHens]

That is true. Most of our chickens are smart now, but the silkies and polish are targets for sure. Haha if he was smart enough to see the hawk and warn the stupider ones, that would be ideal

 

[Faraday40]

Our giant Orpington roos sound an alarm & then make kind of a growling noise when a hawk is spotted. The roos often stand out in the open & flap their wings. They are pretty big (like small turkeys) but I'm sure a red-tailed hawk could likely win if it wanted to fight.. The smaller hawks - like a Coopers Hawk - could easy be killed by one of our roos. (I've see a roo run to attack one, but chased it off.) I think that's one advantage of having 14 lb roos. They are actually big lovable boys, but they "look" very intimidating.

When we've lost birds to hawks it was always young pullets or tiny chick. (They hang around outside of the flock & not close to the roo.)

Here's was our young Bielefelder cock. Sadly he died from the heat. They seem to do best in cold climates. I always wonder how big he would have grown. He was a lot of height but not as wide & muscular as our orps.

 

[Alaskan]

I think I have all raptors known to man up here....

I have lost a couple of full size Muscovy ducks to raptors.

The only times that I haven't lost birds to raptors (that were actively trying to kill my flock) is when the raptor got caught in the overhead netting..and once the raptor (a bald eagle) had to swoop into the one hole in the otherwise covered duck pen...so couldn't do the killing dive.

My younger Muscovy drake attacked the Eagle, while the older drake herded the rest of the flock into the coop.

The younger drake managed to upset the eagle enough so that the eagle flew off... but the drake had his entire chest torn wide open.


Oh, some years back I had the chickens free ranging while I gardened, and I saw an eagle way up in the sky planning a dive. I started running towards the chickens yelling like a banshee, and I was pretty close... the chickens started running to the coop, but the eagle still made his dive. I guess I distracted him enough though, because the full grown chicken he landed on didn't have her back snapped, just deep body cavity puncture wounds and a big flap of chest skin ripped open. The eagle didn't fly off until I was almost close enough to grab him...he wanted to get a bite first.


My point? Everything up here eats chicken.... I can NEVER have them without cover over their heads, unless I am within ten feet of them.

Even the ducks, I need to make sure that their wings stay clipped so that they stay under the cover that I have for them. The second one of those big Muscovy ducks perches on a fence post..it is snapped up. Muscovy are strong, and the males fight pretty impressively..but fast they are not.

The only thing I have been able to fully free range here without loss...is geese. And I didn't let them loose until they were close to full size, and they were in a flock of six. I still locked them up tight at night...but they did great during the day.

 

[GldnValleyHens]

yes, with free ranging birds there is always a risk. We had a hawk pounce on a pullet and carry her off, only to drop her at the last minute, perhaps the chick was too heavy. That was a lucky bird! Lacey, our Golden Laced Polish was brutally murdered by a red tail hawk.

I never want that to happen again. Maybe the more vulnerable birds I will keep locked up unless I can monitor them. We have had hawks flying over my ducklings, but I never give them a chance to pounce

 

[Faraday40]

Because a hawk killed our beloved Spitzie, we are trying again this year.
From the 1st 3 we grew out, I think we have one female. (i was sure the other 2 were male, but no longer confident about it.)

We have another 3 spitz chicks, now about 2 weeks old.

Chick Pink
*Although we gave this one some pink, it's behavior makes me think male..




Chick green








Chick Blue