Bantam Chickens
Bantam Chickens Are A Delight
You're not apt to find Bantam chickens on a large chicken farm. For many years the Bantam was considered a kind of attractive oddity, a beautiful smallish chicken exhibiting an almost endless variety of patterns and colors. When one thought of the Bantam it was either as a show bird or a backyard pet. That is still true today, but several of the Bantam breeds are excellent providers of meat and eggs. The Bantams are quite a bit smaller than most chicken breeds, often weighing less than one quarter that of their larger cousins.
Some Bantams are miniature versions of larger breeds. Others, True Bantams, have no matching larger breeds. The name comes from the Bantam region of Java, where a small chicken of the Bantam type originated. Bantams have been in Europe for centuries and in the United States for at least two centuries. Many of the breeds of Bantam chickens are the result of many years of selective breeding and cross-breeding, to the extent that blood lines can be difficult to trace. In rural areas, and even in some suburban neighborhoods, it's not unusual to see some "Bantys" about, as the breed has always been very popular.
The Bantams as a rule are not miniature copycats of larger chickens, who just happen to be more colorful. Their heads and wings are disproportionately large with respect to the rest of their bodies, with generally much larger tail feathers to boot. They are usually kept as free-ranging birds, which simply means they normally are not kept in tight confinement, as is the case with some other poultry breeds. They are for the most part not terribly aggressive and can make good pets.
Several of the English and American breeds are excellent sources of both meat and eggs, although the eggs of this much smaller chicken are themselves on the small side. Some of the Bantam breeds however, such as the Cornish Bantam, are very plump and can serve well as a chicken dinner, on a slightly smaller scale. Bantam chickens are also popular in the show room. An example is the Modern Game Bantam, an English breed which, when trained, can create a rather striking pose in competition. Modern Game bantams have some exceptionally beautiful colors.
In the show room, features that are judged include not only color and conformation, but feather type and quality, head, comb, and beard. The different breeds display these characteristics in many different ways. Breeding programs are often directed towards "perfecting" one or more of these desirable show characteristics. The Japanese Bantam, as an example, is rather strange in appearance with its larger than normal head, very short legs, and long sword-shaped tail feathers that are carried nearly perpendicularly. Frizzle Bantams are a breed noted for their intensely curled feathers, while the Polish Bantams are easily identifiable by their crests. The size and shape of the crests are a matter of importance in show room judging. There are many more varieties, too numerous to mention here, some stunningly beautiful, others stunningly strange.
You can breed Bantam chickens for the show room, a wonderful hobby or pastime, raise them for meat and eggs, or simply enjoy watching them peck and scratch around your back yard. Bantam chickens are without doubt one of the more interesting groups of breeds encountered in the world of chickens.