White Leghorn, the forgotten breed

[kgdubois]

I have a mixed flock of barnyard birds. My roo is EE, Buff Orpington and something else (I can't remember, a friend of mine gave him to us). I have one that will have new babies in about 7-8 days, actually...all from my hens. She's happily setting in the big dog crate that serves as my "chicken hospital" and nursery in the coop. There are seven eggs: two white (could be leghorn or minorca), two cream which are from my Dark Cornish hens, one light brown, which could be from one of several breeds I've got, and two blue from my EE hens. I hope they hatch! I'll keep everyone posted

 

[The Yakima Kid]

I had them when I was in high school My experiences with them weren't wonderful. They were noisy, flighty, cannibalistic, aggressive, and obnoxious. They were human avoidant. When I read an old academic poultry science genetics book that discussed "laying roosters" and the myth that their eggs contained basalisks (cockatrices) and how one researcher actually hatched some cock eggs... well, I laughed out loud when I read his description of what came out of the incubator - something along the line of "Unfortunately, there were only Leghorns, not cockatrices." Yep, unfortunate since a cockatrice would probably be more pleasant to handle from my experience.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

Leghorn hens have floppy combs, AKA lopped combs; the cocks have the upright combs. New Hampshire hens also have a "lopped comb."

 

[kgdubois]

Has anybody had triple yoke eggs ,from their Leghorns.?

i've had several double yokers from my leghorns, but only one triple!

 

[bahamabanty]

Does a leghorn hen with scruffy tail feathers get nice tail feathers eventually ? In other words, do the tail feathers change?

 

[cubakid]

No. If they are broken you have to wait till they molt.

 

[cubakid]

Leghorn hens have floppy combs, AKA lopped combs; the cocks have the upright combs. New Hampshire hens also have a "lopped comb."

No. New Hampshires should NOT have a lopped comb.

 

[Freeholder]

The White Leghorns I've had were really nice birds. I had avoided them due to the supposed reputation for being flighty and nervous, but once mine were grown, they were always the first to come running to meet me, and would flock around my feet waiting to see what I had for them. As chicks they were a bit flighty and nervous, but when you think about it, if they were being raised in the wild, they'd have to be like that in order to have any hope at all of surviving. I plan to get some more Leghorns, but I'm looking for some good-quality Rose-comb Browns -- we have too many predators around here to keep white birds, and our winters are too cold for the large single-combed ones.

My grandmother told me once that her mother had a White Leghorn hen that was broody. Great-grandma went to town and brought home FIFTY day-old chicks, and gave them to the broody, who then attempted to cover all fifty! (I'm assuming that Great-grandma must have had some other source of heat for the chicks, but since they didn't have electricity to their area at that time, I don't know -- maybe the chicks just rotated under the hen when they got cold!)

Kathleen

 

[enola]

There is a certain amount of ground cardboard/paper in a majority of chicken feeds (pellets & crumbles)

Where did you hear that there is ground cardboard in chicken feed???

 

[BGMatt]

Where did you hear that there is ground cardboard in chicken feed???

Would imagine he's referring to cellulose which is a popular filler/junk ingredient in commercial feeds, and is a huge component in cardboard. It doesn't digest particularly well, and doesn't compress, so it serves feed companies well in making the animal eat more of their food.