Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[kattabelly]

Would a Speckled Sussex do in a pinch? And I often confuse a Light Sussex with a Brahma if I don’t check for leg feathers.

I suppose they’re not as big as a Brahma, but they’re pretty dang big. The word “sturdy” comes to mind. And Tessa, at least, is a sweetheart, if you don’t mind having a hen with a call that sounds like mic’d dry heaves.

I do already have Light Sussex, mind. They're chonky but I think their type (build) is quite different, and they aren't that huge. Wednesday, my Ixworth pullet, is noticeably bigger than the older Sussex girls both visually and when you pick them up. She's my "show and tell chicken" when we have plot visitors and it really is like picking up a very heavily-feathered lump of concrete.

She shouldn't be bearded, so I'm not quite sure what's going on with her neck recently. Maybe she's just turning into a Fatty McDouble-Chin.

I know it's mostly perspective but she even looks wider than the big Sussex cockerel here (she's the enormous backside on the right)

 

[Perris]

There is a dosing factor! Sounds like your bearded chickens are heterozygous then. I really like the look of the small beards personally

thanks for the confirmation on the dosing. Currently yes, only hetero here, but if Hay and Hensol mate and produce offspring, we could have a homozygous in future. I too find the small beard and muffs cute. It was showing on Hay at 8 weeks but doesn't seem to have got any bigger, while the rest of her did

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

I think Rognvald might be edging ahead in the wattle war here
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Big guy has the best moves though. Look at him shaking those face flaps!
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Your sussex boy is stunning

 

[kattabelly]

Your sussex boy is stunning

He knows it too!

This morning I was stupid enough to take some of my breakfast to eat up at the plot and I swear he batted his eyelashes at me (I know chickens don't have proper eyelashes but he managed it anyway), then when I dropped a bit of it on the ground he just stood there looking at me like "No, foolish human servant! I wish to be hand fed"