Buttercup Campine and Cochin

These are three really adorable breeds of chickens whose striking beauty commands attention. These breeds arrived with my first baby chick order from Murray McMurray hatchery as a child. Buttercups come from Italy and are small active fowl and excellent foragers. Mine loved running up and down the dirt road in front of our home catching grasshoppers. The road was lined with wild sunflowers which the grasshoppers relished. Ocassionally the insects would land on the road and be snapped up by hungry Buttercups. They have such a beautiful comb and bright colored feathers. You dont get many eggs from them however they are fun to watch. They dont go broody and are rather flighty. Layers of small white eggs. Roosters go five pounds and hens around four. Belgium gave us the wonderful Campine chickens. Got my start at a poultry show. Loved the looks of these early maturing fowl. My silver campine hens laid as well as leghorns and their flesh tastes good. Golden campines dont lay as well as the silvers but are beautiful birds. Sold lots of hatching eggs to hatcheries around the country but mostly to ones in Oklahoma Texas and Missouri. Rural electricity is unreliable so I kept my incubators in the storm cellar where temperatures didnt fluctuate much. When receiving hatching eggs through the mail you must let them rest a day so they can reconstitute before putting them into your incubator. Rather wild and flighty when you enter the hen house. Good feed conversion. My hens went around four pounds and the roosters five. If your looking for a pet chicken breed cochins rank number one. They are fluffy little bundles of joy. One of the largest poultry breeds and most beautiful of all in many peoples opinions. They come in many varieties and are well represented at all poultry shows. Intelligent birds they soon recognize their name when called. Mother had a partridge cochin named henny penny who would often fly upon her lap to lay her tinted egg. Cochins would follow us around the yard like dogs and want to spend all their time near people. My mom never had the heart to slaughter old cochin hens. They were allowed to live out their lives as pets after their egg laying years were past. They dont lay very well and you must trim the feathers in the vent area if you want fertile eggs. I always try to use young roosters in my breeding pens because most old cocks throw a majority of cockerels which arent as useful as pullets. If you have a surplus of cochin cockerels they make excellent capons like the brahmans do. Its quite easy to learn the surgical castration procedure. You cannot let cochins get into the mud with their profusion of feathers. Same way the hen house floor must get fresh litter or the manure clings to their feathered feet. Some people use pine shavings as litter to keep out the mites. Often this can bind up their crop. I generally use hay or straw as litter on the hen house floor. Cochins make good brood hens in colder weather because their thick plumage protects the baby chicks. Them and buff orpingtons do a good job raising fall chicks. Cochin cocks weigh ten to twelve pounds. The hens go from eight to ten pounds. Show breeders tend to have the larger specimens. You must worm free ranging chickens every six months to remove parasites. During this period do not eat the eggs. In the hen nests I put lawn clippings to cushion the eggs against breakage. Lawn clippings are also good feed for your fowl if you havent been applying pesticides. Cochins are only big eaters while they are growing. Like all the asiatic class they have slow metabolism. You probably couldnt go wrong with cochins unless you were wanting eggs to eat.