Bantams are the Rodney Dangerfield of the chicken world. They get no respect. People see them as fancy little creatures, not as an animal that has a place on the farm. Trust me, I know from firsthand experience. I used to see them the same way.
From the first moment that we began discussing adding chickens to the landscape at 1840 Farm, my daughter had bantams in her sights. She began making her case that a few bantams should come to call our farm home. She loved their beautiful plumage, their intriguing names, and their interesting histories.She made a convincing argument, but I was selecting birds based on their egg laying ability. Of course I saw beauty in each breed that I studied, but my main concern was their ability to produce eggs for our family table. Therefore, our first order did not include any bantam chicks.
My daughter is incredibly persistent. She continued to talk about bringing bantams to our farm. She kept reading and investigating the breeds and telling me what she learned. Last spring her persistence paid off.When the time came for us to expand our flock, she finally got her wish. Now that we would have enough standard sized heritage breed hens to produce eggs for our family table, we could make a little space for a few bantams. It didn’t take long for her to spring into action.
After carefully perusing the options from our supplier My Pet Chicken, she made her selections. It was no surprise when she requested Silkies, a breed that had long captivated her attention. Weeks later, the chicks arrived and we began raising our first bantams.
That was a year ago. Over the last twelve months, the standard sized and bantam chickens, have matured from fluffy day old chicks to full grown, egg laying hens. Each of them has found their place in the order here at 1840 Farm. As most animals do, they have also taught me a few lessons along the way.The biggest lesson? Bantams are more than just a pretty face and fancy feathers. They’re every bit as hardy as our standard hens and required no special care during our harsh winter. They happily spend their days in our garden coop and provide us with beautiful small to medium sized eggs.
My daughter reminds me often that she was right. Her beloved bantams are beautiful and have lovely personalities to match. Bantams were a great addition to our small family farm. Just don’t tell my daughter that I said so. I’m afraid that she would be hard at work on her proposal to add horses to our backyard.
Do you keep bantams in your flock? I’d love to hear about your bantam experience. In the coming months, I’ll be sharing more posts about the bantams at 1840 Farm. Stay tuned!
Congratulations to Cyndi who was randomly selected as the winner of The 1840 Farm Heirloom Tomato Seed Collection. I can’t wait to hear how much she enjoys planting a few of our favorite heirloom varieties in her garden.
You’re always welcome at 1840 Farm.
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15 Comments
I visits the local Rural King this February I got a mix of the egg layers,5 from this bin ,5 from that one ECT,ECT. That got me up to 20 peeping chicks . I then picked out 2 certain Bantams then let the clerk pick the other 3 . After she had 5 in the box she pointed out the ones with feathered feet…I told her to put one back and add one feather feet.She could not bring herself to pick one to put back… So it made bantam number 6 ,then I said add another feather feet. That had me up to 27.In the first 2 days I lost 2 Bantu.s and one larger chick .The larger chicks looked to be about a week ahead of the bantams,so the big ones pushed the little into the water dish. After separating the 5 little I added a rock from the hillside that I hammered down to fit into the water dish it worked great.As the chicks are growing I opted to get a flock of Guineas, 10 keets that were easier than the chicks to raise ,the keets are skittish and cluster in the corner.The keets also are more vocal and suffer separation anxiety…The good part about that is if one runs up the back of the ones in the corner and ends up jumping out ,it will squawk,squawk,squawk…and stay right there where it can see the others.The brood boxes I used are from a heating cooling business from household generators they have a wooden 2×2 in each corner which I placed an upper perch made of a branch of a cherry tree then tied strings to to to have a lower swing perch.the smooth bark of the cherry tree allows the waste to not stick as bad.The box for the bantams got an added feature it got a 12 inch by 40 inch window.As my boy said it’s like watching Animal Planet live…
I have been thinking about adding a few Bantams, as well! I currently have a huge flock of 3, 2 Silver-Laced Wyandottes and one drama-queen Americauna. I have always loved the Banties (as we’ve always known them), and will likely switch over to them when the egg-laying prowess from my current trio starts to wane.
Regarding the horse: You could get your daughter a Miniature Horse! Can’t ride them if you weigh more than 40 or 50 pounds, but get a harness-trained one and DRIVE them! It’s a blast! Since she likes small chickens, maybe she would like small horses, too! (I have NINE!) 😉
Keep up the great job and you will surely attract more black kelly bag. Love your post, very simple & informative.
When I had chickens we started out with an assortment of regular chickens and bantams. After a while we ended up with our favorite chickens of all those we tried-Millie Fleur’s. They are very sweet tame good mommas and lay great eggs. Over time coyotes and other chicken killers wiped us out and I’ve not had chickens in 3 or 4 years. Reading about them makes me want them again just don’t know when I will be ready. Keep up the good work! LM
We have several banties in addition to our large babies. Not only are most of our banty hens setting eggs but the little roosters that are with them are very protective of the fact that their girls are going to be mommies. Last year we had a little americana hen set 16 egss from a little silkie bantam rooster. She had 13 chicks hatch and then catastrophe struck. We found her dead one morning with all the little chicks in the pen we were horrified that they would die too. Cottonball the rooster didn’t let us down, he raised those little chicks all on his own, taught them to scratch and at night it was a sight, him all hunkered down with little heads peaking out from under his wings. We would never be without banties in our flock.
I have always had bantams in my flock. My grand mother had them when i was a child. Se told me they were her best sitters &I would have to say she was right. I use them to hatch all my eggs big and small.There are some that lay very well.
The bantams are working out, maybe you should consider the horses too. Every “horse mom” knows that teenage girls with horse-fever are less interested in boys!
I hatched six Bantams in my Life Science class and they are about 9 weeks old. We just moved them out to a nice coop, but I can’t seem to train them to go up and into it at night. I found myself crawling around in the sand and poop of the run section tonight trying to put them into the coop part….any suggestions?
I was given the eggs free for science class by a local feed store from their home….I don’t really know what kind of Bantams they are.
Oh, and I am hoping that they are all female:-) They sure are cute.
This article is perfect timing. We got Bantams this year and are getting ready to start moving them into the coop. Have you found anything special that was needed putting standard breeds with Bantams? Also The black and white chicken in the photo with your post, what breed is that? Thanks!
I have all bantams and one Araucana! The bantams are sweet and full of personality.
Anonymous – Mostly you are correct. For example, I have Blue Cochin bantams, which is like a mini-Cochin. However, some breeds, such as Silkies and D’Uccles are considered “True Bantams” because they don’t come in a Large Fowl size! 🙂
My main flock are Buff Orpingtons. I do not use an incubator, only broody hens to hatch my eggs. But then a friend gave me some quail. Faced with the need to get an incubator for hatching out the quail I looked into using a bantam breed instead. I bought 2 Silkies, a hen that had already gone broody for her previous owner and a little pullet. I now use them to hatch out and brood my quail babies. They are so small they don’t break or scramble the tiny quail eggs like my big Orps would. I can’t hatch as many as if I had an incubator but I hatch enough for me and I firmly believe mother hatched and raised chicks, quail or otherwise get off to a far better start!
It would be nice to describe the differences between bantams and regular hens. I was always taught that the only difference was size–i.e., a given breed could be bred in both a standard size and a bantam size. Is this accurate or not?
We have one bantam that came in with a group of mixed chicks a couple of yers ago. She’s the happiest, friendliest girl in the flock. She’s also the most talkative. I can hear her chattering in the morning before breakfast, and she’s still clucking at dinnertime. When I clean the coop, she likes to perch near my ear, on a bale of straw or nearby roost and tell me all the news. Thanks for this nice article–and a thumb’s up to your persistent daughter. (Maybe you should think about a horse….?)
Love all the info! THANKS!
I do not have any but would love to. Living in the city we are very limited on how many chickens we can have. Good for your daughter. Smart girl.