#Cochins are so cute

[a-literate-chicken]

Cochins for All.

Agreed 👏🙂‍���️

[densewentz]

its Fightin Friday bitches, put em up

[makenna-made-this]

They are besties now and recording an album together!!

Okkkkkk so where is Chicken Miku?

Anon the way i dropped everything when i saw this

HATSUNE BEAK-U

(based on the Onagadori chicken breed)

[herpsandbirds]

Hello, not sure if your requests are open but if they are could I request some not-well-known tortoises and 🐢 turtles? I've requested a few things already though so if its a problem that's OK!

I would like to ask one question though- do you also run mammilianmammals (I think that's how the url is spelled?) I know you run typhlonectes (again I think that's how it's spelled) all 3 including this one are wonderful blogs I was wondering if you ran that one as well.

Great job as always and thanks in advance if you do this request!

Youre always welcome to send asks or requests. If the function is enabled, then I'm here for you. No need to apologize.

Yes, my mammals blog is Mammalian Mammals. My cute animals and animal re-blog blog is Fucxing Cuties.

I really love turtles (and tortoises). I have some really nice chelonians for you...

Coahuilan Box Turtle (Terrapene coahuila), family Emydidae, endemic to the vicinity of Cuatro Ciénegas in Coahuila, Mexico

ENDANGERED (~1500 left in the wild)

Unlike other species of North American box turtles, this species is aquatic.

photograph via: Turtle Conservancy

Southern River Terrapin (Batagur affinis), male in breeding colors, family Geoemydidae, Cambodia

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.

photograph by Brett Bartek

Cochin Forest Cane Turtle (Vijayachelys silvatica), family Geoemydidae, from the Western Ghats of India

ENDANGERED.

photograph by Davidvraju

Western “Namaqualand” Tent Tortoise (Psammobates tentorius trimeni), family Testudinidae, Northern Cape, South Africa

ENDANGERED.

photograph by m_burger

Stripe-necked Musk Turtle, Sternotherus minor, family Kinosternidae, in a river in Tennessee, USA.

photograph by Isaac Szabo

Malayan Snail-eating Turtle (Malayemys macrocephala), family Geoemydidae, Bangkok, Thailand

Photograph by Artur Tomaszek

Meso-American Slider (Trachemys venusta), family Emydidae, Honduras

Photograph by Paul Freed

Painted Terrapin (Batagur borneoensis), male, family Geoemydidae, found in SE Asia

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.

photograph by Andrew Brinker 

[stardust-ti]

I've been out of it today and not on here as much.

Time for more posting though! Post for these tags.

Another fanfic shoutout:

Set in the Innkeepers Era. Part of a series actually.

In which Ed and Stede actually have a real customer and have to be quiet while fooling around. So they make a game of it.

It's real cute. Read it guys.

[birdgenetics]

Mottling

There are believed to be multiple mottling alleles, all of them recessive to non-mottling. They cause different chick down patterning and varying amounts of white. I am not going to cover all of the alleles, all you need to know that mottling is mo and nonmottling is Mo+

There is some debate as to whether the less even pattern found in exchequer birds is a different allele or if the neat, v-shaped white mottles could simply be achieved through selective breeding. My thoughts? Probably both. Uneven mottling can be turned into neat mottling through selective breeding, but there are some alleles that are messier than others.

It is believed that mille fluer is buff columbian but with extra modifiers, specifically melanizers like the pattern gene and melanotic to create spangling.

The interruption of pigment production by the mottle also helps create this neat spangle. It takes longer for a bird to produce pheomelanin than it does eumelanin. So the mottle interupts pigment, then the bird produces eumelanin, then pheomelanin. That is why the double laced wheaten pattern that you find in dark Cornish gives black edges around the mottles on Spangled Cornish.

The bird works with what it has. If there is no melanin present in the feather at all, the bird will not produce a black edge around the mottle, as evidenced by this red mottled Ancona photographed by Breeding Chickens with Sander.

The black in the spangles can also be diluted to blue or white using the blue and dominant white genes. This cute "Golden Neck" d'Uccle is genetically mille fluer with the dominant white gene.

Mottled is unique in that a mottled bird changes with every molt. The initial chick down looks pied, as seen by these mottled Cochin chicks from Murray McMurray hatchery.

Pied is gene present in many species that give an animal colored patches on top and white patches on the bottom. (See pied guineas, peafowl or pied ducks.) But mottled is not the same mutation as pied. Pied remains the same pattern throughout an animal's life.

The first chick molt gives the same impression

(photo from One Hundred Dollars a Month.)

However, with respective juvenile molts the white becomes more and more evenly distributed over the bird until you get the first adult plumage: the first time the mottling is evenly distrubuted over the whole bird.

With each respective adult molt the bird gets more and more white but distribution continues to be relatively even. (different bird but you get the point)

Now lets cover some oddities. The Ayam Tulak has what looks almost like pied plumage and based on the pictures, the pattern may remain constant throughout its life. However, there are none here in the US and its inheritance is unknown. I would like to know if it is allelic with mottling or if it is true pied (or something else.)

White crests in Polish (this one being a white-crested chocolate) is also theorized to be allelic with mottling.

If you look at the chick down, it is very similar to mottled chick down.

Also, while most of the white distribution on white crested blacks is on their crests, some do have a few tiny mottles on their bodies. Personally, I have seen a white crested black with some mottles at a show.

White crested black is recessive to nonmottled but codominant with at least one other mottling allele.

White crested Polish when crossed with Tolbunt Polish (Tolbunt is gold laced with mottling) produced white crested black and white crested mottled chicks.

[tetedurfarm]

my man drumstick has been alone for a while after watching all of his hens murdered in front of him, one by dogs the other by...uh. well i don't know she just disappeared. i had been looking for hens i would actually want to keep, ie a white egg layer since i don't have one right now, but alas. he just needed girls. the co-op had three in their bird coops so i took em home.

cochin crosses? orpingtons? who knows. they are cute and chubby though but i don't need/want more brown eggs 😩

[spectral-idiot]

HYPE, COME TO ME!

Explanation after the cut

HELLLO AGAIN!! (Friend of a friend)

Well I am so excited!. As I'm working in so much things rigth now!

But since none of them will come out in less than two weeks, I wanted to form some kind of hype for them while I work and youwait.

So you can see your ghost chef is cooking!

I'll let that in your hands!

(Options info below the cut)

WIP 1: I'll show random scene from a one shot about the ship between Kieran and Flore! (The "Gimmighoul for your thougts?" Protagonist, the non binary take for the MC, created by @/cochineal-leviat) I'll just spoil "Birthday party"

WIP 2: You"ll see a bit from ANOTHER ONE SHOT, THIS ONE IS FROM MY OC ! YIPPIE YUPPIE CHIPI CHIPI :D! And her ship whit Kieran. They are so cute. They cant sleep, thats what i'll say

The third option is introduce the OC from the option two, I love her so much!

[bugs-in-situations]

more thoughts about the uuhhh wet beasts that we're putting on the au blog because it's technically au stuff

we think ants are ocean fish that form big schools like herrings sardines anchovies etc

bees are cute tropical aquarium fish, vi is specifically a piranha because it fits her more

termites are dolphins. we're sure you understand

wasps are ?? we're not sure yet? maybe they're sea birds.?

moths are pinnipeds & sea otters because they're fluffye. there are less butterflies in bug fable so we're relegating them to all be river otters

beetles are sea turtles and since bf lore counts ladybugs as something different they're freshwater turtles

mantis are sharks. we're sure you understand

mosquitoes are jellyfish because of the pre-bug fables Delilah Lore

crickets are crabs we can't really explain this one but imagine for a moment .... crabstotheles. we're sure you understand

venus is a lotus plant now, which makes the setting even more confusing because how is a lotus in the ocean. she's venus, don't ask

spiders are octopi that have figured out how to use all the nets left over from humans disappearing

chompers are anemones that figured out how to bite things

pibus are giant sea isopods, aphids and cochineals are snails and sea slugs, and mothflies are plankton

the beast is an orca (we looked up things that eat adult sea turtles and the only other thing was sharks

deadlanders are those freaky deep ocean beafts of nightmares and omega is a giant squid with giant eyes

and roaches are coelacanths, did you know that coelacanths are the first result for searching "very old fish"

this concludes today's "assigning bug fables characters as other not-bug animals"

[kifu]

More chicken rambling. Because the chickens are doing a hell of a lot more good for my mental health than the rabbits. I'd like to figure out breeding pens now.

First and foremost, I know that I need a pen of buff laced project birds. Which will either be one partridge cochin roo over both buff laced hens, two buff laced roos over two partridge hens, or ... I haven't figured out exactly what I want to do if I get a wyandotte hen and a roo.

I'll be culling out a LOT of partridge chicks at some point this year for toe feathering, which I think they're inheriting from my current partridge roo. Which means he needs to be culled out, too. I have one partridge cockerel that looks to have better feathering than his sire, but there aren't a whole lot of them overall despite the sheer number I've hatched out. That's probably going to be all that I can cull them for this year, however.

I want to put my current partridge hens under my black roo this year, too. I stupidly let them out with the main flock, which includes my bantam roos, so I might hatch out some weird ass things, too, for a minute. But if I can get some black split to partridge chicks with feathering and *soft tail feathers*, I would be ecstatic. So for next year, the partridge plan would actually be to breed THOSE chicks together. A trio or a quad, I dunno. I haven't even paired these chickens up to make these chicks yet.

I also have hatched zero blue things out of my blue laced red wyandotte hen this year, so I want to put her under a partridge roo next year again. Get more blue laced red cochin crosses. I do have a boy out of her with a single comb, so if I could keep a couple blue things with single combs, that would be great. But next year, she's just paired up all alone with a boy - hopefully a boy with better feathering than current roo.

I have a lot of silver laced cochins growing up right now out of my current pair of silver laced. These are even uglier typed than my partridge, so I might just keep a new pair based off of pattern. If I can keep a hen or two with better lacing than my current hen, I think I'll be happy enough. No point in crossing these over to the partridge for a start to gold laced until the partridge are up to snuff.

I just bought a handful of show stock blue cochins this weekend along with the buff laced wyandottes, so I'll put together a, uh, show pen, so to speak. Put my best typed birds together. If it's my current black roo, cool, but if not, that's fine. I have yet to hatch anything out of my barred hens (at least, I think so), so I'd like to put them under a separate black roo than the blues. My current blue hen will most likely be culled. She has stiff tail feathers, and since I just got a handful more blues, I don't need to deal with that.

I have ... splash? cochin chicks for a reason unbeknownst to me. I need to figure out where the fuck they came from, because the oldest of the splash has zero tail feathers so far, and it's growing up cute. Still. It's not genetically possible for me to get a splash out of my pens this year, so I have no idea where it - let alone the other two - came from. Based off of type, I'd say it came from my black roo, but ... he can't make splash. idfk. But like once I figure out what the fuck they are, I might incorporate them in a breeding trio or something with a black if I can. To ... further ... figure out what on earth is going on.

I also put speckled sussex under my black roo this year and have a fuckton of their babies. A lot of them, mottled. Soo I'll keep my chunkiest trio of sussex crosses with mottling and make a pen of those next year, too. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how plump those are turning out so far. I'll be keeping partridge based babies out of that pen, and if I'm only breeding mottleds together, they'll all be mottled, so ... instant jubilee cochin. lol

I bought wheaten marans for a wheaten project, too. Those were supposed to be pullets and still look like pullets, so I need a partridge roo for them, too. Keep a trio or quad from them, breed out the pattern gene, and keep the wheaten colored chicks. Breed over to cochin type. Or ... maybe I'll use a black or blue roo instead, NOT worry about the pattern gene, and breed back down to wheaten anyway. That's probably a better idea.

On top of all that, I'm hoping that I can keep the shittier looking black or blue roos I hatched this year, hope they're out of either my splash mauve hen or chocolate orpington hen (this should hopefully be easy to assess from shank color? if I actually pay attention to that?), put them over a couple black (or blue) hens, and see if I can hatch out chocolate cochins. Because that's something that I've really, really wanted to do.

Speaking of - I got one black cochin chick along with the handful of blues ... and there's a possibility that it's split to lavender. So ... it'd be nice to keep THAT chick separate from everything else, too, mark its offspring, and breed a handful of its offspring back to see if I can hatch out lavender.

So ... that's enough projects, right?

buff laced

blue laced red

black split to partridge

silver laced

wheaten under black/blue

mottled black split for jubilee

black/blue split to chocolate

black possibly split to lav

splash to black

barred under black

any show typed blues if i have extras

And now I know how many pens that I need to put together. Heh. Dear oh my, my wife might kill me.

On top of large fowl cochin projects, I do still have my bantams. This year, I put my lavender under black mottled, and she made so many babies. So I'll keep a quad or quintet of those and keep the lavenders. I also have my pen of mauve things. I really need to watch out for my boys, because I had a mauve roo over black mottled hens ... and I don't know which black split to mottled roos are out of him versus the black split to lavender roos. Might keep a nice looking blue cockerel out of him and try to replace most everything in that mauve pen. I might put the mottled blacks back together for more show type birds. Might put them under my silver birchen because he's a cutie, possibly moreso than the birds actually from the show lines. But I don't want more than like three pens of bantams, because my focus is definitely going to the large fowl.

[the-hype-dragon]

I think Nara Smith knows what she's doing is silly and disgustingly bougie ("my toddler wanted a bedtime story but I didn't have any books around the house so I requested the National Archives' entire library in digitized format. while that was downloading I rendered my own vegan papyrus. after that was done I made this cute ink out of distilled well water and fresh organic cochineal. finally I fired up the printing press and used these cute custom moveable type letters I got on Etsy (DM me for link). Meanwhile I let my toddler make his own custom book covers (so precious) and pick the thread I would use to bind them. *ten years later* Anyway I think these came out really cute and my kids loved them.") and I think a lot of her followers realize this but there are a lot of people who seem not to? I don't get the people who think her or Hannah Neeleman are living the Authentic SAHM experience(tm)

[eggcount]

Brace Yourself for Cuteness

June 13, 2024

Yes, we have chicks!  Daisy went broody and we haven't had chicks since the pandemic and we already traveled a lot this spring - so we said - "why not, let's go for it."  And off we went to the Tractor Supply store to pick some out. Five of them, $2.99 each. We brought them them home in a little box and kept them warm until dark. And then slipped them under the sleeping Daisy.

They were installed last night and so far she's taken to it like a duck to water!  They are still locked in the brooder, I'll let them out tomorrow, but the brooder roof comes off so we peek in - CUTE!  Little heads poking out everywhere from underneath her.  Daisy is not pleased that we are peeking, but doesn't growl at us - just puffs up REALLY big.  I think that she thinks the growling might scare the chicks?

Daisy puffed up when I opened the door to take a peek!

Some other fun things - the brooder (which is a converted dog house), is set up with two rooms - one smaller one as a nest box and a larger one for eating and playing.  Faithful readers will remember that we built the brooder during the pandemic when Melly (of blessed memory) went broody.  It was in April and it was cold out and Melly used the brooder as intended.  Daisy, however, as faithful readers know, is a Brahma hen, which is to say she is huge. 

From the Livestock Conservancy

In 1843, the Chinese signed a treaty that opened all their ports to trade. Once the ports were open, many previously never seen landrace chicken breeds became available – some from the northern part of the country and some from surrounding port cities. Included were extremely large chickens with feathered shanks and toes from the areas near Shanghai. The ships took all types of cargo, including these unique chickens for meat and eggs on their return trips. The surviving birds were often given exotic names and sold for profit at their ports of call. . . .

Early Brahma chickens were first shipped to America and then to England. This breed, together with the Cochin, fueled what became known as “Hen Fever” – a national obsession for poultry that hit both America and England around 1850.

Super digression, but really interesting, visit the website for more Brahma Chicken facts!  Anyhoo - to get back to the brooder, chicks and Daisy.  I think she's too big for the nest box room.  Last night - during the transfer - we took her from the coop, where she was brooding on the floor by the people door - and put her in the nest box part of the brooder.  The idea is that she goes to sleep wishing for chicks and wakes up with chicks!  It worked, except that she roused herself just enough to move to the bigger room.  I moved her back and she moved back. We left it at that.  This morning she had the chicks herded into the nest box area, where she stood guard (well sat) in the entrance to the other side. 

My idea now is to take out the divider and give them one big room.  But that involves using my drill, which makes a lot of noise and might scare the babies so I'll save that for another day.

And here are some more pictures, because really - that's all anyone wants anyway! 

Top: Guarding the entrance to the big room; bottom: chick escapes - well, the food is in the big room, so maybe she is letting them through so they can eat. The water is in the nest box room.

This may be the worst picture of me ever, but it shows the brooder, so there is that. The brooder roof is held on by pegs at the corners. I have wing nuts for the pegs, but I'm not sure why I though that was necessary. I would think it would be impossible for an animal to lift it off - it's hard enough with hands!

gtg, more chicken cuteness tomorrow! If you're in the area, come by and bliss out! But brace yourself. It's cuteness overload.

xoxoxox Sarah, who can never have too many chickens.

ps.  How do the other girls like this?  They are excluded from the brooder area - which is the little brooder and a run.  So, we don't know yet. 

[pangur-and-grim]

okay tomorrow I need to give Tallgeese and Anzu baths, because their excessively fluffy butts catch their droppings and it’s.....bad. if I don’t post photos of chicken bubblebaths by 2pm est please cancel me

[featherfable]

the little ones aren’t so little anymore!

we got some bantam chicks back in May in hopes of moving Patchouli in with some friends more her size, and they are just about old enough to integrate!

[cathchicken]

Happy Valentine’s Day!!! I don’t have a partner or anyone to really share this day together with, but I also don’t mind, because if there’s one thing I love the most… it’s me chickens!! So here are some cute baby photos for you to enjoy :3 💕

Order from top left to bottom right: Periwinkle (splash silkie roo), Raven (black silkie/polish mix), Pants (Brahma/Cochin mix), and Toasty (silkie/polish/olive egger roo mix)

[homeofhousechickens]

My babies. No idea what breeds they are, but they're 100% cute.

The one of the left is a mystery so many different breed combos could produce that color,comb, and hilarious crest. She looks like a discount buff Lakenvelder and im here for it.

The one on the right looks to be a black cochin :)