Happy Chickens

[ShrekDawg]

Here are my brown leghorn pullets and their bantam sisters, all are now 7 weeks, still confined. The plan all along has been to free range the leghorns after they are grown. As I already mentioned, they supposedly excellent at evading predators. My husband says how can you keep the bantams confined, they are all good friends and very attached to each other, as you see in the pic. The bantams are very good at flying and are quick, but the Sebright's silver color really stands out. And the D'uccles beard when it grows in, may impair vision? These features might make them easy targets. I have a couple more months to decide. If any readers have experience with banties and free ranging, I'd like to hear.
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They are beautiful!

As for the banties, I used to think bold colors would stand out to predators, and maybe they still do, but I actually heard they usually go after prey that looks like their natural food? Or at least for hawks. So like for instance, there's someone on this forum that has white birds and other colors and the white, which I would think would be a bullseye to hawks, have never been attacked but they've tried to go after the barred birds that I guess look more like mice? So yours might be fine. And maybe you can trim the beard around the eyes? All that said, I also think that if they hang out with their friends, their friends will protect them. Although they are both also smaller and maybe easy targets but they make up for it by being a lot faster. I think they'll be okay and if they grew up with their friends they might be upset unless you can maybe get more for them?