I had posted in this thread a year or two ago (amazing how some of these threads just keep on going forever, like the Energizer bunny, LOL!), and thought I would pitch in again.
I did not do bantams last spring; I didn't want to mail-order chicks (never know if you are going to open up the box and find a bunch of dead chicks here), and the feed stores only sell assortments of bantams. I guess I'm a control freak, but I only want to raise breeds that are useful to me, and way too many of the bantam breeds are purely ornamental. So I ended up getting a couple of Brown Leghorn cockerels and some sex-links and Easter Eggers for eggs, in addition to the Golden-laced Wyandotte hens I still have from the previous year. I also bought locally a couple of Silkie hens (one is old and probably not laying any more) and a couple of D'Uccles, a Mille Fleur roo and a Porcelain hen. We've had some losses, but are still getting a few eggs (mid-winter, no light in the coop). I was hoping one of the Silkies would go broody, but that hasn't happened yet. Maybe next year.
My plans for this spring are to order (praying they make it here safely) some RIR bantams and large-fowl Buckeye pullets, I want to breed the Buckeyes with RIR Bantam roos (the other way around would be a bit hard on the bantam hens, and the chicks might be too big for bantam egg shells). Then I'll cross the F1's back to the RIR Bantams. My object is to get a pea-combed bantam that lays well and is also a decent meat bird for the two of us.
And I DO plan to keep a few of the bantams in a cage in the house, LOL! I know they will make dust, but we heat (solely) with a wood stove, so in the winter, the house is dusty anyway. In the summer, I keep the windows open pretty much all the time, and the wind blows dust into the house. So I have all of that to deal with; three or four little banties aren't going to make things much worse. And it will entertain my daughter! I'm going to pick up a large bird-cage (actually I think it might have been designed for ferrets or something) tomorrow -- it's a two-story cage with a couple of shelves, and has ramps from floor to shelf to second floor to second shelf. I'll add a roost, and enclose an area for laying eggs, and I think it will work fine. If they get too dusty, I'll wrap it in plastic, at least partially. Until I get the RIR's, I'll bring the two D'Uccles and the Silkies into the house, and see how things go. Eventually we'll have a greenhouse (necessary here, as we are at a high elevation) and move the birds out to the greenhouse, but I think unless we find that one of us is allergic to chicken dust (not likely -- we've raised plenty of batches of chicks in the house for at least the first few days to a couple of weeks, and have never had a problem with that), we'll probably always keep a few in the cage to entertain my daughter. Chickens have many purposes, and one of them, at this house, is keeping DD happy!
Kathleen
Apparently keeping chicks from your best rooster(s) *and* best hens sounds like it has worked for you, at any rate.
