Does anyone know what breed this is?

[skypatrol]

Hello to all;

I am totally new to chicken "farming", although I have family who have chickens, and grew up around a lot f people who have chickens. We only have one, young chicken at this time. We do plan to get 2 more. It is an interesting story how our first chicken came to us. She was too big for a red shouldered hawk to carry, and too big to squeeze through our chain-link fence to get out of the yard. I was going to give her to a bird sanctuary, but after a friend with 2 back-yard chickens told us how easy and rewarding it is to have a couple chickens in the back yard, and directing us to take a look in on "backyardchickens.com", we decided to keep her. She was kind-of winning our hearts by the minute anyway so the longer we kept her, the more likely it was that we would not give her away. She is a real sweetie-pie. Anyway; I have looked at picture after picture of different chicken breeds, and I can not decide what kind she is. Does anyone know what breed she might be by looking at this picture? Thanks much.

 

[Goose and Fig]

She looks like some breed of game hen. Very pretty colors! Welcome to BYC!

 

[damselfish]

I don't know much about game hens, but she does seem to have some of the "look" that I've seen in pics here...tail held high, relatively slim body. She's a pretty girl.

You might try for a full-on side shot of her for more answers...or just don't worry about it and enjoy her! She could be a mix too, making ID harder.

Definitely get her a few friends to hang out with and soon you will be just as bad as the rest of us, bragging about your chickens and your eggs!

 

[skypatrol]

Thanks for the responses HappyMtn and Damselfish. I got some vegetarian "organic" chicken feed at the local feed store this afternoon. I showed the guy at the feed store the pics of Henny and he thinks that she is some kind of bantam, which really means only the size (as I understand it), so that does not give me much....

I did get 2 Ameraucana, month old chicks which are just about the same size as her, only just ever so slightly smaller. They look like they are this type

https://www.backyardchickens.com/breeds/ameraucana/chicken/259

I had heard that you can't always introduce new chickens together, but I figured I had a couple things in my favor; one that she is a really sweet little girl, and two, they are all relatively young. The guy at the feed store said it could go either way but that the youth of all was a positive factor, so...I was not sure if they were going to get along. When I put the 2 youngsters in with Henny, she did a little "you dun landed on Mr. Gilford's property" pecking on them, but not too much. The 2 new Ameraucanas were smart enough to submit buy keeping their heads down and standing still while she just looked at them until she was sure they knew just who was who. Really not too much fuss at all. They were all scratching and pecking the ground in the same general area with one another before long and it has been about 5 hours since they have been together and they seem to be getting along swimmingly. I have them in separate sleeping quarters for the night though. I think they are going to be fine.

I may never know what Henny is, so if I don't figure it out, I will create a new breed name and call her an "Apopka-Doodle".

or perhaps "Hawkbane".

 

[wohneli]

Let them sleep together as waking up together in the morning helps them to bond.
Good luck and welcome to the addiction.

 

[skypatrol]

ok, so they have been sleeping together now. they are already family. it is so cute. Henny hasn't pecked either one of the youngins' all day. Honestly though, I wanted to buy all 40 of the month old chicks at the feed store....they just seemed like they really wanted just to go home

 

[skypatrol]

We have a total of four now. The fourth one was bleeding from a pin feather in a cage with off scruffy looking bantams and they all kept pecking at her. We just felt like we had to "save" her. It took longer for the other three to accept her, but they are family now. They make a lot of noise when they loose track of each other. It is so cute.

Since I posted this picture I have read a lot about chickens. It is clear to me that my first one, the picture at the beginning of this thread, is a mix with the feral, mostly "game" hens in the neighborhood. The black tips on her neck feathers are what you would see on a chicken with "Colombian" markings. She may have some heritage with a bird with these markings or this may be an emergent tendency of it's own...she is a little smaller than a typical layer or meat bird, but that is how most of the feral chickens in Florida end up after several generations of being semi-wild. They start returning to their Asian jungle roots....slimming down, getting a little sportier. Most wild animals in Florida are smaller and thinner than their Northern cousins anyway, so this seems typical.

 

[skypatrol]

Ok, after looking in on the Delaware thread, I am thinking she is mostly a Delaware... How odd would that be for her to look like one and not have any lineage?

 

[Happy Chooks]

She doesn't look anything like a Delaware. She looks like a Game bantam. Maybe a silver duckwing?

 

[ve]

I agre with NEW2CHOOKS that is not Delawere's Barred Silver Columbian patern.She is Silver Crele.