Single hen

[prudance]

This week I took the kids to our local farm park and was quite excited to see they had added a few different breeds of chickens. Last year they only had a flock of something similar to a ginger nut. I was shocked though at the size of them though. I'm sorry - I can't remember what they were - but they were HUGE!! I can't imagine attempting to pick one up - I'd need bigger arms! They were about four times the size of my chickens.

 

Is that the kind of size you expect of a chicken that's classified as large? Are the gingernut and pepperpot small chickens?

 

Aside from that - it was nice to look at the chickens for the first time with not completely ignorant eyes. Just fairly ignorant! And the kids didn't freak out for the first time ever when a chicken escaped!

[Redwing]

The Omlet hens are officially 'large fowl' but would probably be described as medium within that group

 

Janty has a massive range of hen sizes in her flock, if you click on the link in the below link (??) you can see some nice pics - some of Janty's hens are huge!

 

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[Gallina]

I don't think Omlet hens are large fowl: they are medium, surely? Hybrids are specially bred not to be large, but to lay a huge number of eggs in relation to their size and the amount they eat.

 

Each of my pure breeds is three or four times the size of an Omlet hen. They eat accordingly, but lay only a fraction of the number of eggs. I would guess my hens are about 9lb each, whereas my Omlet hens are under 3lb, but I have never tried to weigh them.