Poultry Keepers Podcast

Bantams-Part 1

• Rip Stalvey, Mandelyn Royal, and John Gunterman • Season 2 • Episode 80

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In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, hosts Mandelyn, John, and Rip delve into the miniature but giant world of Bantam chickens. They discuss the origins, types, and physical characteristics of Bantams, emphasizing that they are mostly smaller versions of large fowl. 

 The discussion covers advantages of raising Bantams in urban settings, their loudness, and their ability to fly and brood effectively. They also explore egg production, dual-purpose possibilities, temperament, and nutrition, debunking the myth that Bantams require different feed than large fowl. Plus, there are anecdotes about Bantams' predator awareness and interactions. 

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Alex:

Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In today's episode Mandelyn, John, and Rip will explore the fascinating world of the smallest class of chickens, the Bantams. Now, here's Mandelyn Royal to get us started.

Mandelyn Royal:

Hello poultry keepers. On this episode of our podcast, we're going to be discussing the giant world of the smallest chickens. We're going to talk about bantams and the different types and different size ranges they come in with and how to feed them, how to care for them, and how they compare to their large fowl counterparts. It's going to be packed with a bunch of topics, so we're going to try to get through that the best way we know how.

Rip Stalvey:

Talking about chickens. I think probably the best place to start is, what is a bantam? Bantams are basically, for the most part, miniature versions of their large fowl counterpart.

John Gunterman:

How did they originate? Did somebody keep selecting smaller and smaller birds of their variety? Or were they crossed specifically with the Old English Game Bird and a largefowl counterpart to be created?

Rip Stalvey:

There are some natural bantams. Seabrights are, because there's no largefowl counterpart. Nankings are another one. No largefowl counterpart. But there was a lot of mixed breed bantams to begin with. So basically how most of the breeds were created was crossing the bantam size bird with the appropriate breed or variety they were trying to create. As a rule of thumb, bantams weigh about one fifth of what a large fowl will, and that's a pretty good estimate. So if you look at the type description, it's the same, it's just the overall size is what's different. As a rule of thumb, bantams weigh about one fifth of what a large fowl will, and that's a pretty So that gives them an advantage right off the bat of if you live in an urban area, they don't require as much space, they don't require as much feed they're much easier to manage, they're not as loud and noisy,

John Gunterman:

there'll be less manure to mitigate, oh yeah, and everything,

Rip Stalvey:

absolutely.

Mandelyn Royal:

When those little cockerels do start crowing though, it is extra squeaky.

Rip Stalvey:

I just started saying it does get shrill. That's for sure.

John Gunterman:

I was actually talking to my audiologist about this. Because I have an Apple watch, started an alarm one day, cause I was working out in the coop and one of the roosters crowed, and it said that I was in a high decibel environment and I should have hearing protection on it. I'm like, Oh my God. Wow, my watch told me that. That's weird. And I asked my audiologist about it. They said, Oh yeah, they, a rooster crows at 112 decibels and the human threshold for pain is below that. And the human threshold for damage is below that. So don't do that. Wear your hearing protection when you're in the coop.

Mandelyn Royal:

I've never done that. I'll wear a face mask, but I never thought about earplugs.

John Gunterman:

Have you had a rooster crow two feet away from your head?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, when they sit on my lap, it's one of those extra friendly ones.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, but it hurts. It's loud. It hurts.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. And

John Gunterman:

then it, so if you're in an urban environment and there's a prohibition against roosters, the bantams, they're not a way around because they're just as loud as their bigger counterparts.

Rip Stalvey:

I think they crow more frequently sometimes. Definitely.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, they seem to be a little extra proud of it. Because when I first got started in the poultry, I had bantams. for years before I got a large fowl chicken of any kind and I had the old English games, some black rose comb Japanese sea brides and those boys would curl more. It just didn't have the depth to carry as far, whereas a large fowl male, you can hear him a mile away sometimes, especially if it's damp outside or foggy, that sound will carry further, but those high pitched squeaky ones, the immediate neighbors are definitely going to hear them.

John Gunterman:

But they're outstanding at being a natural alarm system.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, they're extra diligent.

John Gunterman:

And they will initiate, basically it's a bantam chorus where they'll spread out and become your outer ring of protection for predators and help protect the inner flock. It's a pretty interesting phenomenon that I was reading a research paper on.

Mandelyn Royal:

And they forage pretty good, as if they have more in common with their jungle fowl ancestors. Yeah, they're

John Gunterman:

all around

Rip Stalvey:

great.

John Gunterman:

That's why we're talking about them.

Rip Stalvey:

And another thing they do better than largefowl is fly.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh yeah, they'll get ten foot up in the air just to roost, and they can do that from the ground.

John Gunterman:

Absolutely. Increased predator protection, because they're tree roosting, they can get away from the ground based predators like skunk and mink and ermine. Those are my threats here.

Rip Stalvey:

And I will say to me, bantam females make a bit better broody than largefowl. They're more protective of the chicks. Of course they can't brood as many chicks as the largefowl can, but they can raise some dynamite chicks that way. I know several people that have maintained a flock of silkies just to use the silkies as broody hens because those things see an egg and they want to go sit on it. I've never seen I had

Mandelyn Royal:

a couple who, they weren't silkies, they were just regular bantams, but if they somewhat just saw three eggs sitting in one spot, they were like, oh my goodness, someone needs to sit on those.

John Gunterman:

Yep, exactly right

Mandelyn Royal:

now.

John Gunterman:

It brought up a good idea, Rip, of using a bantam hen to raise, A group of chicks, because we know hen raised chicks are just the most bestest thing ever. Now if we give some chicks to a bantam hen who's got this natural ability that's just still amazing, I think those chicks could pick up a whole bunch of learned behaviors really fast.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh yeah, no doubt about that. Accelerate their education, so to speak. I know a lot of people that raise other breeds of bantams or even other breeds of large fowl That would use bantams as setting hens and that's the only way they'll raise chickens is they use a bantam female to hatch and raise those chicks. Surrogate mother type thing because they do such a really good job.

John Gunterman:

Great. Another case for the bantams.

Mandelyn Royal:

Their small size does make them real easy to handle, but I would. Caution on paying attention to the temperament of the cockerels because they're, if they have that mind to come at you, they're still going to do it with all the force they can muster up. And you might just have to knock them back with a little fly swatter because they're so little, but sometimes their attitude can be a little bit more than what their body size is.

Rip Stalvey:

And other

Mandelyn Royal:

times they're perfect pets.

Rip Stalvey:

They're and some breeds. For example, in largefowl that are very common sedate, when you get them in bantam size breeds, they can be really aggressive. Matt Lamont and Michael Sayre have a line of white coaching bantams, white coaching largefowl, very calm, very laid back. So what? That's their attitude towards life. They literally nicknamed that line of white coaching bantams white devils because they'll jump on you just looking at your crossways. They don't recommend those for kids. But yet there's some breeds of bantams that I people will ask me on a regular basis. What, my kid wants to raise chickens, what breed should I get? And there's some of them that are just as sweet natured as they can be. Modern games. They look a little bit gangly and odd with that long neck and those long legs and they stand pretty much upright. But, I've tried to think back, I don't think I have ever encountered An ill tempered modern game in all the shows that I've judged.

Mandelyn Royal:

I don't think I ever encountered a mean old English game bantam and that was the bulk of my flock with beady reds and a couple other colors.

And those

Mandelyn Royal:

boys would feed me as if I was a hen and they'd do their little dance around my ankle and they'd say here I found this for you.

Rip Stalvey:

I had some black old English one time and they were. vicious. I'll just leave it at that. The males were a little bit more aggressive than the average.

So how did we

John Gunterman:

get to all these bantams and all these varieties? I get a little bewildered because to me they're more confusing than chicken varieties because they're usually colors and abbreviations and stuff how did they originate initially?

Rip Stalvey:

Like I said, some of them were naturally bantam breeds.

John Gunterman:

Huh.

Rip Stalvey:

And then the others were created just from crossing large fowl breeds. On to bantams, and then selecting for size over several generations.

John Gunterman:

And all the varieties that we have, we've thrown a whole bunch of terms around. Can we describe what those are, briefly? A BB red?

Rip Stalvey:

That's just a black breasted red is what that means. BB red is black breasted red.

John Gunterman:

And it's just the plumage color? That's the plumage

Rip Stalvey:

color, that's all tastes like

John Gunterman:

chicken? It

Rip Stalvey:

all tastes like chicken. Great.

John Gunterman:

All right. And that's Just to set the framework here.

Rip Stalvey:

The geneticists will refer to that a lot of times as wild type, because that's the wild coloration of red jungle fowl, and BB reds are sometimes confused by new people as red jungle fowl, because they look so very similar. All right.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, that's true. Now, when it comes to egg production, it seemed pretty typical for my flock to do an egg every other day, but it was bigger than a quail egg.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Mandelyn Royal:

Probably double the size of a quail egg, loosely.

Rip Stalvey:

If I remember correctly, Mandelyn, and I might not, so don't hold me to it too much, but it takes three bantam eggs to equal a large sized chicken egg.

Mandelyn Royal:

That sounds about right. When I was doing breakfast when I was like 12 years old, I was using at least six bantam eggs to do an omelette.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah that makes sense. And then there's some bantams saramas, for example, and kiri kiris. Both of those lay very small eggs. I mean, Sarama,

Mandelyn Royal:

they're the smallest bantam, like the smallest of the smallest.

Rip Stalvey:

I've seen some of their eggs were just barely bigger than a quail egg.

Mandelyn Royal:

And I think their breed standard is less than a pound.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Where some bantams can go up closer to two pounds.

Rip Stalvey:

And honestly, some bantam breeds today, they've gotten them too large. I pick up a, Rhode Island Red male bantam that weighs three pounds plus, that's not right. I've seen Cornish bantams where you'd have to, you couldn't bring them straight out of the show coop. You had to tilt them at a 45 degree angle and bring them out that way to get them out. Oh yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

that does sound big for a bantam.

Rip Stalvey:

It is, and that's why it's important. To weigh the birds. People are not weighing the birds, and I'm not just picking on bantam people, but I see large fowl people are as guilty of that as anybody, but it's important to weigh your birds. Keep everything in the standard weight.

John Gunterman:

Here's a breed that was designed to be small. Don't grow them too big through selection or breeding. Currently, there's

Mandelyn Royal:

work being done to bring bantam marans into existence, and right now, Beb Davis is working on a couple. Color patterns and working on that egg color to get the miniature version of a dark brown layer. That's pretty exciting stuff I've been watching their progress Bantam Marans

Rip Stalvey:

I was going to say something, I just lost my train of thought, imagine that Sorry, I had a thought pop

Mandelyn Royal:

in about those little Marans I'm excited about

Rip Stalvey:

No, that's fine. One thing I was going to say is their size You can put more of them in the same size area than you ever could a large fowl.

John Gunterman:

Space requirements, they're delightful.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, it's practically, what, 3 to 1?

Rip Stalvey:

About that, yeah. Maybe 4 to 1.

Mandelyn Royal:

The nest box can be smaller, too. Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, if you give bantams A nest box that's too big, you're invariably going to go in there and you're going to find two or three or four females in the same nest box.

Mandelyn Royal:

And four separate nests.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, one in each

John Gunterman:

corner.

Rip Stalvey:

That's just a recipe for broken or cracked hatching eggs.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yes, it is.

Rip Stalvey:

And they, I like to have a nest box that's just big enough for them to turn around in, but not by much. They seem to do better. With those kind of nest boxes.

John Gunterman:

So for space requirements, they're actually setting part of it for us. We need smaller nest boxes to prevent this from happening. But overall, you just need a smaller footprint to raise a lot more birds, actually, if you choose that route.

Rip Stalvey:

When it comes to equipment, they can use equipment designed for large bowels, feeders and waterers. Just put some dividers in your nest

John Gunterman:

boxes and you're good to go. So

Mandelyn Royal:

here's a question. Can bantams be dual purpose?

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. You can get

John Gunterman:

quite good meat off a bantam.

Rip Stalvey:

Back when I was raising Rhode Island red bantams, honestly, those females were better layers than my largefowl Rhode Island reds.

Oh.

Rip Stalvey:

And I've got a friend here in Florida that has crossed Rhode Island red bantams and New Hampshire bantams, and those things are amazing. at putting eggs out on the table. There was someone

Mandelyn Royal:

a couple years ago who was posting carcass pictures of Bantam New Hampshire

and

Mandelyn Royal:

that was a pretty respectable looking carcass. I was like, oh yeah they do look edible. Look at that.

Rip Stalvey:

I think that was Tim Juergens. He had those and he had no,

John Gunterman:

that was his Chanticleers.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, he had Chanticleers. And he had reds at one time.

John Gunterman:

Okay. I've seen his bantam Chanticleers and they're nice, meaty little.

Rip Stalvey:

But the dual purpose breeds in large fowl are going to be the same way in bantams. You've got your reds, your rocks, your wind dots, all of those make a good dual purpose breed in bantams.

John Gunterman:

And with the space and feed requirements being lower if you want to have a breeding pool in the same footprint. Bantams are certainly a great way to go.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh, absolutely. And honestly, another advantage of bantams we haven't touched on, we've talked about their size, but their size also makes it much easier for a youth member to handle and to work with. Yeah,

that's true.

Rip Stalvey:

Much easier for kids to handle. And temperament.

John Gunterman:

Yeah, people, I'm always breeding for temperament because I'm always thinking about that. But bantams, if you know where they come from and have chosen from a line that's noted for its temperament again, ideal situation for youth and for H and FFA.

Rip Stalvey:

But, bantams can be Every bit is practical to raise and to keep as large fowl breeds. You said

John Gunterman:

egg production. I'm always talking about, sustainability and all that. So what kind of numbers can we expect for eggs?

Mandelyn Royal:

I would say four a week is fair.

Okay.

Rip Stalvey:

It was not uncommon for me. to hit 260 plus eggs a year from my bantam raids

John Gunterman:

and they're about half the size

Rip Stalvey:

no they're much less than that

John Gunterman:

much less a quarter

Rip Stalvey:

i'm trying to

John Gunterman:

remember off the top of my head what the 25 those bb eggs that i got John,

Mandelyn Royal:

when was the last time you went to a poultry show where you got to see all the different breeds and all the different classes lined up with each other?

Never. Because

Mandelyn Royal:

that's when you could really see the striking difference between the large fowl and the bantam.

John Gunterman:

No, I've never been to a show, there's goals in life.

Mandelyn Royal:

Just go to one, and it makes a lot of impact on, oh, wow.

John Gunterman:

We were close this year. CycleCon almost lined up with the National Poultry Show. In Ohio, we were off by three weeks. So I'm going to try and shift that on the steering committee

Rip Stalvey:

to

John Gunterman:

line up better,

Rip Stalvey:

but I'll save that for later.

John Gunterman:

Anything special that we should consider when housing bantams for, coop design or predator protection?

Mandelyn Royal:

Inflated for sure.

Rip Stalvey:

It's, they basically have the same requirements for coops and pens. as largefowl.

John Gunterman:

Okay,

Rip Stalvey:

Maybe some aviary

John Gunterman:

netting over the top because absolutely and they act stupid like they don't know how to get back in after they get out.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh boy, that's the worst. That's

John Gunterman:

all chickens.

Rip Stalvey:

But yeah, not only are bantams good at flying out, that also makes them an easy target for hawks and birds of prey.

Mandelyn Royal:

And their takeout size too, and I had the misfortune of seeing that when I was a kid. And it was, late spring, I had a fleet of broodies sitting on eggs, and I had this one little rose combed bantam hen who was already out with her four chicks. And a hawk was circling. So all the chickens sounded off the alarm. Everybody took cover except her. She fluffed up, covered her babies right out in the middle of the yard and stared at the sky. At that hawk,

Bring it on, dude.

Mandelyn Royal:

I'm ready.

So that hawk swooped down, plucked her up off the ground and carried her off over the treetops. And I had to spend three hours trying to catch her chicks.

Rip Stalvey:

Mandelyn, that brought to mind a funny story. I was working out in the yard one day and I had a little black old English hen. Running out there was about three or four little chicks, probably a week or two old. And there was a hawk sitting up in one of the trees there and he swooped down and just swooped. He wasn't going for the birds, but he swooped down over the top of that hen. I tell you, that old gal got airborne. The hawk lit in the tree, the hen hit the hawk, knocked him off the tree, and then proceeded to get down there and stomp a mud hole in him. It was so funny to watch.

Mandelyn Royal:

If it would have been a little kestrel or something, she probably would have beat it up and sent it packing. But it was a big red tail, so she didn't really stand a chance being out in the open like she was.

Rip Stalvey:

But that doesn't deter

John Gunterman:

them. Good predator awareness is something to be

Mandelyn Royal:

proud of. She saw them coming and stood there like a sacrifice.

Rip Stalvey:

I don't think that bantams really realize they're a small chicken.

Mandelyn Royal:

No, they're chihuahuas in that aspect. Oh yeah,

Rip Stalvey:

they're bring it on, I'll whip you, just try me.

Mandelyn Royal:

I'm a real chicken. Especially if you've ever seen a bantam cockerel or rooster chasing after large fowl hens.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Mandelyn Royal:

They don't know. For all they know, they're six foot two.

Rip Stalvey:

For one, one thing we haven't touched on is nutrition. And I really want to bring this up because there is a misconception.

John Gunterman:

Oh, there's a few.

Rip Stalvey:

There's a couple. That bantams require a different food, different type of feed, different ration, than do large fowl. Look folks, bantams have the same physiology, the same physical structure, and the same nutrient requirements as large fowl chickens. They're not going to eat as much feed, but as long as you're feeding a nutritionally balanced high quality feed, that's all your bantams need. And somebody asked me. What caused that? What started that? And I've thought about that. As a matter of fact, that might have been you, Mandelyn, I'm not sure. But, if you, I didn't hear much about that kind of thing up until about the mid to late 70s.

Alex:

This brings us to the close of another episode. We invite you to join us next Tuesday when we'll bring you part 2 of Bantams, right here on the Poultry Keepers Podcast, where we talk poultry from feathers, to function.

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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