runt chick

[Mellowmalt]

Currently breeding out my pair of cuckoo bantams.

This one is one of my reject males. I am going to keep him to see what he turns into but he's a male, not as strong as his siblings and he has a really strange face marking. One side is grey but the other side is white.

Unfortunately I lost my main breeding cockerel last year and I suspect my backup male hasn't got pure genetics.. These chicks should be grey, no yellow as this one started off as. Now his face is white.
What can I do. I don't know how common this is but I haven't seen it before

 

[Callender Girl]

As a "collector" of rejects critters, I think he's still adorable even if he doesn't look like he's expected to look.

 

[HollyBerrie]

Protect him from getting bullied, and while raising him as normally as possible. I raised a runt before, and once full grown she fit in just fine. She was the 2nd to bottom of the pecking order, full of spunk (she didn't know she was a runt), and she outlived all of the others in that flock.

 

[Mellowmalt]

can't keep them all unfortunately. Another one was born this morning with just a white patch on the front of its neck but this is at least well placed and looks really interesting.

Well thanks for the interest.

He isn't small and doesn't get bullied even if he might look a bit small. It's just his face, he is the least "cute" out of the lot unfortunately.

He kind of has a look like oy who just bonked me on the head with a hammer but at the same time (maybe the other side of his face) has an evil I will kill you stare.

 

[Mellowmalt]

hello everyone, so back in january I showed little runty. Today he is grown up and my aim the past 2 years has been to breed chickens in the aim of finding the quietest male. So surprisingly there are quite big differences. They can either be louder or quieter. crow a lot or crow little, crow at 5 in the morning, 7 in the morning or 8 in the morning. There is a lot of different personalities. One that I lost unfortunately only crowed when my neighbour was about - still miss him a little. Anyway it's that time when the "boys" are starting to get a bit rowdy and noisy. So runty is still about and it turns out he is a great cockerel, very protective and very quiet. So far very little crowing. I am thinking he might become a keeper after all. In full disclosure they might all just mature at different times and eventually after roughly 2 years they usually start to get louder as they mature more so the aim is to use the quietest for breeding and once they get far too noisy they get replaced with new offspring.

So this is runty, roughly 4 months old now (the white one, the black one is the female):

 

[Callender Girl]

Glad to hear that little Runty is doing so well. I always root for the underdog -- the ones who don't quite fit the mold.

I enjoyed reading about your goal of breeding quiet roosters; that would be a benefit to folks who live close to others, I'm sure.

My Iowa Blue boy, aptly named Sir Henry the Loud, can be heard announcing his existence when I am more than a quarter of a mile down the road, past the neighbors' house. I find it charming and reassuring. I'm not sure they feel the same.