Polish Thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[LavrisChica]

Flighty due to limited vision. Can catch a breeze and clear a 6 foot fence. Can and do walk into walls and door frames. Beware if you bend down to pick them up and are directly above them, as they can leap straight up in the air. Other than that I have only had one nasty rooster in 10 years. They seem hardy (and I live in Maine) Seasonal egg layers of about March to August or September. Mine have been long lived. The blue hens that I posted on this thread in the beginning are still alive and are 9 and 11 years old now. I have a personal page on this site "somewhere" for helping with gender of young birds. I will try to locate it for you.

Here it is https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/wc-black-and-blue-polish-breed-information-pictures

Thank you very much!!! Great to know, and I will mosey on over to the other page and take a peek there, too! :-D
Any tips on helping calm their flightiness?
Also just put up a 4' field fence all around the property to keep the coyotes out. I do hope the blues never desire to venture "over"...sigh.

 

[Sylvester017]

New to the Polish breed. Have a straight run of 5. So quirky and too stinkin' cute!!
What can I expect temperment-wise?
And any tips on sexing them as young'uns??

I classify gentle non-combative non-aggressive breeds as having any one or all of the following: crests, beards, muffs, tufts, tassles, vulture hocks, feather-legged, silkie feathered, 5-toed, pea/walnut/rose combed, or no combs (like Breda). Silkies have the most of these characteristics. Others that fit some of these characteristics are Ameraucana, Araucana, Barthuhner, Brahma, Cochin, Crevecoeur, Dorking, Easter Egger, Faverolles, Houdan, Lincolnshire Buff, Pavlovskaja, Polish, Russian Orloff, Sultan, and possibly other bantam breeds and/or the Slavic/Eastern European crested birds of which I'm not very familiar? Some say rose-combed Dominiques or rose-combed Hamburgs, or Sussex and Jersey Giants are mellow but I hesitate putting them with known timid breeds.

We've found in our experience that the heritage, heavy, dual-purpose, straight-combed breeds turn out the most assertive to downright meanest of our hens and decided to re-home them all in lieu of having a gentle non-combative breeds flock. From 13 chickens we are down to 2 Silkies, 1 Blue Wheaten Ameraucana, and 1 Blue Breda. Not having any straight combs to deal with in colder months is nice too. I don't think you can find a more vision-impaired, fluffier chicken, than Silkies - yet our two Silkies free range with the flock and do fine without needing special attention. Our 2 Silkies will nibble a little around each other's eyes for vision improvement and don't bother picking any other feathers off each other. Darnedest thing. Now their crests will get gunky from time to time and a soft warm washcloth will clean the crests back to fluffy again. Not sure how soft Polish feathers are but I hear they are very soft too. We've never trimmed crest/face feathers or clipped wings on any of our breeds and they free-range fine. We have a lot of shelters spaced around the yard for snoozing/hiding and we don't let them out during gully-washer muddy rain which doesn't happen too often. Our SoCal climate is mild.

 

[Sylvester017]

I just took a 12 week old Polish into my flock from a friend who had to get rid of the cute little fella because she couldnt handle 3 roosters in her flock. I have 3 Barred Rock hens who are now a year and 2 months old. They are not addapting well to him joining the flock. They chase him around the run all day and he spends most of the day perched on the garbage can used for their food. Should I let them continue to chase him and eventually he'll get big enough to sass them back, or should I seperate him from the BR's and get him a Polish girlfriend?

Cockerels are notorious for getting picked on. It's not til they reach maturity that they take the reins. Do separate cockerels especially from mature hens who are merciless in their picking. I had a same age pullet that liked to pick on a cockerel. The poor things are best kept separated until they reach maturity. BRs, RIRs, Leghorns, Wyans, Orps, Marans, NHRs, etc, are assertive breeds and putting them with gentle young Polish is not adviseable IMO.

 

[LavrisChica]

Excellent!!! Tyvm!



p.s. the fence will be electrified to keep our escape artist (shepherd) from venturing out of bounds. lol
Eventually looking into a donkey or llama for the coyote issue.

 

[smarsh00]

. Hen or roo. 3 wk old polish. Any guesses?

 

[kyexotics]

We thought having 5 bators would be cool, we have over 100 polish babies! Here's 60-80 just moved outside to a new coop I built for them all...I took this at night to see how they were sleeping, not taking advantage of the perches like we thought LOL They did figure out how to put themselves away after the first night, very smart birds!



New coop as it was being built last week...



Once these are sold it'll be split for our Pultans and Silver Laced Polish who we are currently bonding with as we watch them transform...

 

[Lynnschickens]

Gender help! The bigger ones are 12 weeks old and the little one is 7 1/2.

 

[Deej211]

Gender help! The bigger ones are 12 weeks old and the little one is 7 1/2.

white crested standing up looks like a boy. White crested bending looks like a girl. Black one looks like a girl

 

[CrazyChickLady7]

They have alot of black on their crests. Mine only have a little on the front

 

[mrchicks]

white crested standing up looks like a boy. White crested bending looks like a girl. Black one looks like a girl

I agree.

Edit to add that streamers in the crest=cockerel.