GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

Sacha[_1_] · 12-01-2007, 02:01 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On 12/1/07 13:09, in article
, "Mike Lyle"
wrote:

Sacha wrote:
[...]

Now - back to these bantams, are they always vicious little brutes or were
you and Ray just unlucky? I kept hens for a short while in a Jersey garden
and found that in a dozen of them, they always seemed to pick on one which
would get 'trodden' almost daily by the others (we had no cockerel) and who
was pecked and harried and left almost bald by the 'sisters'. It was a
really rather horrible business.[...]

I don't know; but there are so many miniature breeds that I imagine
their character varies a lot. I'm guessing that the aggressive ones are
more closely related to the original East Indies bantams, or to the old
gamecocks, than to the tamer breeds.

Ah, that would make sense. We saw loads of chickens all over the place in
Kauaii and were told their coops had been destroyed in hurricane and they'd
escaped and were breeding wild. Apparently, they'd been kept for illegal
cock fighting.
Some of the breeds of chickens are very handsome to look at, though. They
have some at Buckland Abbey, near Tavistock, which are black and white, with
their feathers laid down in the most perfectly regular pattern, so as to
look almost as if they been painted on!

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/