Besides,what I really want to breed are the bantam white face black spanish and the bantam white crested black polish 
If you are getting birds that came from any of the big hatcheries, you can't expect them to be consistent in color or very close to what the color standard is supposed to be either. Some hatchery SLWs are very black, others are very white.
We ordered and picked up 6 baby chick's back in March. The 2 RIRs are obvious , the 2 BRs are obvious, and only one of the Silver Lace is obvious. The other SL, not so much. This other one is mainly black with only the underfeathers being white. This one looks more like an Astralorp minus the white feathers underneath. Is it normal to have one SL be obvious with the white 'stripes' and one be mostly black? Thank you!
Find a KFC poster and hang it in the chicken yard/coop.
When trying to sex Barred varieties of chickens, the ones with a big, clear white spot on their heads are almost always the cockerels. That is why I chuckle when I walk passed the bin in Runnings and see white dots in the Barred Rock pullet binSpace in my big chick brooder is starting to free up. I finally had time to post some of my extra cockerels for sale and today had someone come for my extra mille d'Uccle cockerel. He mentioned he was on the lookout for a cochin cockerel. To which I said "any particular color" and then pointed to the two nice extra barred bantam cochin cockerels that have been helping to eat me out of house and home for the past 2 months. So instead of selling just one today, I got to sell 2! And the mille d'uccle pullets must have sensed the extra space and lessened testosterone quickly since they came out of hiding to bawk at me.
Now I'll just have to get by DH who didn't want me to sell either of those cockerels, convinced they would turn out to be pullets. If I've learned anything, it's that a cochin with a prounounced reddish comb and visible reddish wattles before 8 weeks is a cockerel (I made the mistake long ago of thinking they were girls until they grew spurs). Also, I noticed with my second batch of barred cochin chicks that the ones feathering out with wide white stripes are growing combs earlier than the ones with the wide black stripes. (My first batch mostly died in transit and I think now I probably had all 3 cockerels that were survivors so I didn't have the darker overall coloring of the female to compare to). DH will probably still say I should have kept that boy, but ultimately, I'm happy with the $20 I got for him (especially since I don't have to feed him or clean up after him anymore). Afterall, I have 2 more cockerels and 3 pullets that are about 4 weeks old - that ought to be enough to make a few more next spring.
You are correct though, by 8 weeks if you have pronounced comb and wattles on your Cochins, they are going to crow one day. The LF pullets will get some wattles too, but their combs don't get nearly as big at that age.
Crank her protein up. I have tried the nut parts of sunflower seeds (35% protein) and I have used calf manna to do this when I knew birds should have been laying but weren't.Ralphie, one of my EE still hasn't restarted laying since winter. she quit in November, and nothing since...
interesting. So they actually put your flock in quarantine for 6 months? did they leave any printed material with your wife? You are the first person I've heard of who has been checked by the state for AI. Remember a few years back when everyone was getting paranoid about not letting the "authorities" know they kept chickens ?
