Poultry Breeds, Keeping Chickens, Ancona Bantams

Posted on 29 April 2010

It is quite along thin bird but still quite small 9as it is a Bantam) and grows to no more than around 1-1.5kg max, most are smaller. The Ancona is a very lively bird and they love to spend much of their day rooting around in soil and undergrowth.

If you plan to keep these birds is essential they have some interesting areas to root around in. Avoid letting them loose in a nicely

manicured garden or they will turn it over for worms within weeks!. Like many lighter birds, the Ancona Bantams are very capable flyers so they really need to have a roof or netting over their run. Like many chickens, if they do escape – don’t panic! they will usually come home when it gets dark.

Although these Bantams are small, they do need a lot of space. They are quite good egg layers.

The Ancona Bantam is a breed of chicken that finds its origins in Italy in the 1800s. It was bred in from a mixture of breeds including the Leghorn in Italy. It is not named the Ancona because it was bred in that province of Italy – that is the name of the port that the chickens were shipped out from to the United States more than a century ago.

A beautiful speckled black and white coat of feathers distinguishes this round and attractive chicken. Sometimes they are called Black Leghorns because of their black feathering and their resemblance to the Leghorn. They are also sometimes called “mottled leghorns.”

The Ancona has a strong mixed ancestry and have been found to be very sturdy, healthy animals, sustaining a strong bloodline that seems to give them that “Heinz 57” type protection from disease. They are very avid breeders and multiply in large numbers, hence the large numbers of them found in barnyards and chicken coops all over the world.

The Ancona is a hardy, tough bird that is a predictable and prolific layer of large white eggs. They are very hardy and a cock will weigh in at around 6lbs while a hen weighs approximately 4½lbs. A cockerel will weigh about 4 pounds and a pullet 4 pounds. They have an average lifespan of around 8 years

The breed is available in two different varieties including the single combed variety and the rarer rose combed variety. With the single combed variety the large comb flops backwards like a bit of a cocky cap on the bird’s crown. Both varieties have white earlobes and bay colored eyes.

The Ancona has beautiful iridescent feathered tips to its feathers that end in green black tipped with white. Like other Mediterranean breeds of chickens the feathers tend to have the appearance of being tightly woven or laced together. They tend to have thick waxy looking featherless legs and long four pronged toes.

This Italian chicken is a very pretty bird but not that prone to being a good mother or very broody. Even though they will produce 260 eggs a year they will not tend to sit on them for long on the nest. The chicks produced from these eggs are vigorous and mature quickly which can make them lucrative if you want to make money selling eggs and poultry.

The Ancona may be a smallish bird but it is one of those chickens that can fly. They are not happy kept in confined spaces and make a better free-range animal. One of their main strengths as a farm animal is that they were always able to produce a large number of white eggs in even very cold wintry conditions. So they are not really ever eaten but more used for egg production because they possess this valuable trait.

They are also perky, alert and smart little birds that make good pets. If they are handled from a very young age they can become very tame and trusting. This trust bond needs to be formed when the chicken is just a chick or the bonding will not take place.

One peculiarity about the coloring of the Ancon is that they look whiter as they grow older. With every molting the white spots on their plumage become bigger. The result is that the older the bird is the whiter it will be in appearance, as it appears to grow “white” with age.

This type of Bantam chicken is more popular in Europe than the U.S. but it was more popular with chicken fanciers about 100 years ago.

Share and Enjoy:

No responses yet. You could be the first!