Branching Off To Fancy Breeds-Another Chicken Hobby Entry

Not long after we moved a friend of Ians from work asked if I wanted a few Japanese Silver Phoenix chicks. He had ordered twenty five from McMurray Hatchery and had to many cockerals. I did want a pair, not two boys, if he could spare one pullet.

I met up with him at Ians work and brought home what was thought to be a boy and a girl, but he said he wasnt sure and if it turned out to be two boys let him know and he would see to it I had a girl.

Funny thing, now that I have hatched and raised so many of this breed I can tell really early on which is going to be a male and which is going to be a female.

Turned out I had two boys and so I got another from him and it was for sure a girl. The pair was named Tim and Faith...and the other young man was called Willie.

This was the beginning really of what exploded into a full blown hobby. Before I was just buying layer chicks from a feed store. Once I investigated on the internet I found a whole new world. I found that there were many many exotic beautiful extravagant looking breeds and was so excited. I felt like I had found a treasure chest. So many beautiful breeds...I had to have them..well, maybe not all of them...but I wanted a lot of them.

I don't have any pictures of the three of them when I first got them. Thought I did, but cant seem to find where I loaded them onto the computer. This was before I had a digital camera of course, back in the stone age...lol. So all the pictures were scanned in from prints.

Here is the lovely pair at about oh....three months old I think, maybe a few weeks older than that. Willie was destined to be alone for a while...but eventually he was let out to be the big man on campus as he was the only rooster to be let loose at the time.

 

The lastone here is Willie...he was sweet, but just never had his tail feathers fill out like Tim..so I never used him to breed. His coloring was not as uniform for the breed either.

Here he is at about three and half months also. I realize it takes a while for them to really fill out and see what they look like, but he never did fill out properly on his tail. With Japanese Silver Phoenix thier tails must be full and they are a long tail breed. The tail feathers can get several feet long just in the first year, and his just never looked as good as Tims. We loved him anyway, he just didnt get a chance to put his genes in the pool so to speak.