Favorite or Pet Peeve Old Wives Tales related to chicken breeds, genetics or showing

[Sonoran Silkies]

This is intended to be fun, and hopefully dispel some old time myths about chickens. Okay, so here is a start of inaccurate, but common sayings:

• Only the rooster gives colour to the chicks.
• White crossed with black makes blue.
• If it has a pea comb, it is an Easter Egger.
• If it has green legs, it is an Easter Egger.
• Silkies are a cross between a chicken and a rabbit.
• Chickens will only breed with other chickens of the same breed.
• A bantam rooster cannot breed a largefowl hen.

next...

 

[draye]

Okay---
Don't know if this is true or not.

Picking up and holding a hen by her legs to carry her can make her stop laying.

 

[Narragansett]

My pet peeve is the incorrect use of terminology, (and the related use of acronyms in place of typing out the entire word, for breeds and varieties which are not universally abbreviated.) A few examples:

New Hampshire "Red"
"Blue" Slate
Black "Spanish"
Polish "Crested" or "Tophat"
Lavender, or commonly "lavendar" instead of Self Blue
"Turken"
Cornish X instead of commercial broiler
The endless confusion and bastardization of Araucana and Ameraucana
Thinking that one cannot raise waterfowl without a pond.
Turkeys cannot be raised with chickens, or that they will drown in the rain.
Haphazard breeding and, especially, crossbreeding


The one that grates on my nerves like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard: the infantile use of "roo" instead of rooster or cock.

 

[speckledhen]

Now, let's try to do this without being insulting to our members.

 

[OldChurchEggery1]

A common myth: the egg shape indicates the resulting chick's gender. Pointy eggs make cockerels and round eggs make pullets.

I couldn't believe that some parents at a presentation I gave at my mother's school thought that chicken eggs were fertilized by the rooster sitting on them!

Another myth, but about turkeys: Turkeys will drown if they look up while it's raining.

And last, but not least: The Cadbury bunny lays eggs. Buck buck buck!

 

[Oregon Blues]

Ducks can't eat medicated feed.

Not strictly an old wife's tale, be cause it was true 1/2 a century ago. The information is a bit out of date, but still gets passed around like Gospel.

 

[draye]

Quote:

And last, but not least: The Cadbury bunny lays eggs. Buck buck buck







Now look at you, you've gone and ruined my next Easter.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: And last, but not least: The Cadbury bunny lays eggs. Buck buck buck Now look at you, you've gone and ruined my next Easter.

Well, bunnies do sort of lay eggs...itty bitty tiny sperical ones.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Ducks can't eat medicated feed.

Not strictly an old wife's tale, be cause it was true 1/2 a century ago. The information is a bit out of date, but still gets passed around like Gospel.

The thing is...it depends on the medicine...

Here is another Old Wives Tale (or in the tradition of BYC, let's make that into an acronym: OWT):

• medicated feed contains antibiotics

and along with that...

• medicated feed cannot be fed to chicks that will be raised organically

 

[Chris09]

Two very good examples of Wives tales;

Corn will make your chickens Hot/keep them warm,
You shouldn't feed Rice because, "It will swell inside them and kill them",

Chris