When do you make the decision to dispatch a chick that isn't doing well?

[aart]

They did have French Marans and Cochins at the same place though so I wonder if they are a bit of a mix?!

It's likely that they are mixed...especially if they told you they were leghorns.
What color were the eggs?
ETA just scrolled up and looked at pic.....not leghorn or marans egg there.

 

[nbuuifx]

Haha, could be anything then!

They had a variety of Bantams - which is what I was after. Some like the Silkie Bantams were kept in their own enclosure. The mixed Bantams were roaming free.

Other than that I only saw Leghorns, French Marans and Cochins.

Unfortunately none of the Bantams even started to develop so I presume they were all infertile.

The bloke just gave me a couple of these that he said were leghorns to fill the spaces in the egg box!

They were coloured as per the picture - fairly regular egg colour nothing special. The only point to comment was that they weren't a regular egg shape. The narrow end wasn't much narrower than the wide end.

 

[nbuuifx]

Just been googling pictures of eggs! They certainly weren't bright white like most of the leghorn eggs look to be. They weren't dark like the French Maran eggs seem to be, but we've had some French Marans before (hatched from eggs from the same farm) and they didn't lay dark eggs - their eggs were just regular beige egg colour. Cochin eggs look to be normal colour.

You can't really see on the pictures of the chicks but they are quite leggy, they stand up much taller than chicks I've previously had, the darker one more so than the other.

 

[aart]

Many shades of 'brown/beige'.
Some marans don't lay dark..so who knows<shrugs>.
Sounds like if you want a specific breed, you need a different supplier.

 

[nbuuifx]

Luckily I'm not really fussed about what they are. Only interested.