Monday, November 21, 2011

FANCY CHICKENS: correction!

In honor of Thanksgiving I thought I would post about one of our main attractions ... 


This past weekend we were in my hometown for my little bro's engagement party and we had a chance to visit with all the new additions. As I have posted before, my parents have just recently increased their  chicken family to 2 different breeds. It is fascinating to see the reds intermingle with the blacks and for Bob (the rooster) to govern over all of them. He is actually a kind, mild rooster and will take his share of bread and feed it to the hens rather than eating it himself! After all, it is the season for giving and sharing.


Well, our neighbor raises chickens as well so we hopped the fence to see what he had in store. Apparently, his chicken family consists of 5 different varieties of chickens! And some are super fancy! I was bewildered by this one breed and kept wanting to "pet" their fluffy head pieces. They are polish chickens and here is a brief description about them:


Polish are a very special and unique breed of chicken with their huge bouffant crest of feathers and v-shaped comb. They are tame but their behavior can be a bit wacky since their crest limits their vision. When in a flock with more aggressive breeds, Polish will tend to be on the low end of the pecking order. Egg laying is varied in this breed - some lay well and some very poorly. In short, Polish are sweet, beautiful exhibition birds and can be good layers in the backyard flock, but they're not reliable.

These are actually back views of their heads if you can believe it! How crazy is that? Here are some front views I snagged from the interwebs:


No wonder they can't see very well! If my eyebrows were that huge I wouldn't be able to see either. I only had time to take a few other pictures. Maybe next time I am home I can take some better ones and capture all the breeds.
I loved these black and white striped ones, dominque

This breed (silver laced cochin) of chickens are huge! And you can't tell in this shot, but their feathers actually cover their legs like chaps and swish when they walk. They look like this:
photo from the web

It was all so amusing! Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving week! 

***Our neighbor actually has 12 varieties of chickens! I don't know how I missed the other 7 but here is a complete list for those interested:
White Crested Black Polish
Silver Laced Cochins
Silver Laced Wyondotts
Hamburgs
Barred Plymouth Rocks
White Plymouth Rocks
Buff Plymouth Rocks
White Leghorns
Blue Andalusia
Australorps
Rhode Island Reds
Dominique

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