Mutts...?

[Baumshell28]

I see a lot of “what breed is this?” posts. This is my first year keeping chickens. I don’t have a rooster and do not plan on breeding. But seeing so many of these posts and so many “adopted” chicks coming from another chicken keeper and not knowing breed, or breeding, backstories has made me curious: can chickens eventually just be “mutts”? Like overbred/crossbred dogs & cats? A random rooster mates with a different breed hen, then that crossbred offspring breeds with another mash-up and so on? After a few generations you just end up with “Heinz 57” chickens?

 

[nuthatched]

Yes. It happens a lot in farms. But your average chicken owner orders the breeds they want, and keeps them (usually) until they die, so they don't get to mix and mingle often.

 

[ILoveDaffy]

Yes

 

[ackie]

Mine are mutts.

 

[Jabebee13]

Half breds are cute though. To mix one kind with another. Say an all white rooster with a red hen. Then when grown mix with a black hen. That third would be all three colors. Could it be considered a mutt?

 

[humblehillsfarm]

Chickens can 100% be mutts. This is my flock daddy, handsome rooster Klaus. I hatched his eggs from a friend’s flock which is a mix of mutts and a couple of older pure breeds that she couldn’t actually identify. Aside from being a mutt, he has been the ideal rooster. He has never shown aggression toward me, and really caters to his girls. They were laying fertile eggs when he was 13 weeks old and I immediately put some under a broody, so he had his own mutt babies when he was 17 weeks old.

 

[LadiesAndJane]

Basically, mutt chickens are known as "barnyard mixes".

 

[nuthatched]

Chickens can 100% be mutts. This is my flock daddy, handsome rooster Klaus. I hatched his eggs from a friend’s flock which is a mix of mutts and a couple of older pure breeds that she couldn’t actually identify. Aside from being a mutt, he has been the ideal rooster. He has never shown aggression toward me, and really caters to his girls. They were laying fertile eggs when he was 13 weeks old and I immediately put some under a broody, so he had his own mutt babies when he was 17 weeks old.

Wow! He's so handsome!
He has a weird mix of rose a pea combs, how cool. Are his ear bobs greenish or is that just me?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Yeah, ofc you can just have rando mutt chickens and barnyard mixes. And like dogs, they will default to more wildtype colors over time. Most mutt chickens are gonna be various shades of brown with dappled black and grey.

My sister lives in Hawaii and she says there's huge roaming flocks of feral mutt chickens there.

 

[LadiesAndJane]

Yeah, ofc you can just have rando mutt chickens and barnyard mixes. And like dogs, they will default to more wildtype colors over time. Most mutt chickens are gonna be various shades of brown with dappled black and grey.

My sister lives in Hawaii and she says there's huge roaming flocks of feral mutt chickens there.

Yes there are! Especially on Kauai. Mostly descended from game fowl and random other chickens (escaped, abandoned, etc), males have a lot of green and red and gorgeous tails, females are mostly shades of brown and partridge.