Cochin Craze 3 - Cochins for You - loveable, loyal, funny, fluffy, bright and adaptable

These are our little Cochins photographed the day after they were hatched I always like to get chicks outside but we had terrible weather that day; storms with occasional 'sunny spells'. An easy improvised run is a cardboard box with the bottom folded back. It keeps the chicks near the mother so they can easily get under her if cold and provides an all round shelter against the wind. If the grass is too damp, I just let them out inside the cardboard box as they then get a first dose of very necessary Vitamin D3 from the action of the UVB (short-shadow) sunlight. Later in the afternoon the wind went down and they were able to explore.

The Cochin like all ancient breeds are excellent foragers and quickly become a vital part of any garden, keeping down weeds and pests. And as not all of the Cochin Craze story was 'spin', once they have gained your trust, both males and females can become tame and friendly. If you have a forest garden like ours, where the birds are free to roost in trees at night, then the Cochin, although not great flyers, are great climbers, so they do very well in a wooded environment. They are also, obviously with their abundant plumage, an excellent  breed to have in cold climates

However, they are also quick witted and adaptable so easily find shade in the heat.

 

The Strong Silent Type

Unlike many of the other rare heritage breeds we have here, Cochins are less vocal, and communicate more through body language. In my experience, this can be very physical; jumping up, pecking or pulling at clothes or perching on my knee willing me telepathically to understand want they want. I have a bantam Cochin, 'Panda', who likes to eat her breakfast alone. She remains roosting in the outbuilding where she sleeps until I lift her off and put her near a food bowl by herself. You might think that is strange but as a small hen in a largish flock she knows that to get her share of food she can rely on me.

Many of my Cochins exhibit this body language and so do our fantail pigeons. I can usually interpret to some extent what they mean and find a solution. Poultry trusting the keeper as an arbitrator/provider, need to communicate basic needs:- I want food, someone is; in my nest box, stealing nesting materials, on my place on the roost, etc.,. Of course as we really know so little of the thoughts of birds and animals, at best this is guess work but in general the more we engage with our flock the better our understanding.

Me and my empathy, courtesy of Panda

Although sometimes they can be determined and independent of the flock, if you bring up Cochins together they will, being of similar temperament, tend to remain as a cohesive group. Similarly, with certain individual birds it can take some time to fully gain their trust.




Cochins, like elephants, never forget, particularly when they have been helped in some way. We hatched a trio of Columbian Cochins a couple of years after we arrived to live permanently in France. I was not aware at the time but my first hens, two Ardenners I was given as a gift, had brought scaly leg mite with them from their previous flock. This transferred to my Columbian Cochin cockerel/rooster and because of his extra feathery feet, these parasites took hold even before I was aware of them. When I did finally understand and treated his feet, 'Snowman' who had been rather offhand with us since a juvenile, became inseparable and as he got older was always hanging about the workshop rather than hanging out with the flock.

 

All Pluses and Preventable Minuses

Cochins have little stubby wings and don't fly well but my can they jump. If you are thinking of them for a forest garden then know that they can climb very well and also that they are not afraid to experiment in climbing and jumping techniques to reach safe roosting heights.

The only potential minus for Cochins is their feathery feet. These can get really water logged and muddy in heavy soils like ours but we can work around that by providing rain shelters and walkways.

The other more serious aspect is that you can miss noticing a proliferation of scaly leg mite, which can cause foot damage if left unattended.  Cochins also seems more likely to transferring scaly leg mite to the face. You should check over your Cochins' face, in particular, around the ear covers. This seems to me yet another case for symbiotic and holistic poultry keeping. Give your Cochins a hug, it'll do your heart good and also give you a chance to check feet and face.

Are you ready to order some hatching eggs?

I hope it will also convince you to add some of these fascinating birds to your flock. In the next article in this series I will be looking at Cochins as mothers, fathers and the importance of family bonds.

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from Normandie! Sue
© 2018 Sue Cross

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Chicks in cold weather Part 4 - Finding some extra warmth from a cuddly Cochin broody.

There are some amazing kindnesses that chickens perform, without seemingly any profit to themselves, other than perhaps to fulfil a need and maybe not even then.

Sometimes people comment in surprise that hens will raise anything but their own eggs but that isn't even half the story. Not only will they raise other species from eggs but some hens will even take on and adopt chicks and other baby birds. In my experience though, as with anything to do with poultry, there are no written rules and it is very much up to the individual hen as to what she will and won't do.

Snow Kitten and 3 of her adopted chicks

If you have been following my blog you will know that this year, I have had several hatches of very late chicks, including some frizzles and fine feathered Sebright crosses. In an attempt to keep everyone in the best possible environment I decided to try to get one of my young Cochin hens (Snow Kitten), who had recently gone broody to adopt some of the chicks. These were to include all but one of the blue feathered chicks, who seemed particularly vulnerable to our recent spell of horrid cold and wet weather. 

A very full and sleepy (note the messy beak) happy chick

My light blue/porcelain chicks (two plain and one mottled with grey) seem to have come to me through two very fine and sybaritic ancestors, a Barbu de Watermael called Gabrielle, who was definitely a house hen and Aramis a beautiful Blue Polish, again a lover of creature comforts, who unlike my other robust and fearless Polish shunned cold weather. These three blue chicks, in many senses of the word, were my core group in need of warmth, although as the weather deteriorated, we gathered a few more along the way. I must also tell you that the chick above is two months old but has still been adopted by my Cochin. The object of this exercise was also to allow the other more hardy chicks to free-range as much as possible, whereas the three babies would be able to rejoin their original groups when the weather permitted. That was my hope anyway and to do so without causing stress to Snow Kitten.

Something I had not reckoned on was that my mother hens, who came from my tree roosting group would attempt to return to roost in the bay tree before their chicks were capable of climbing. Therefore Snow Kitten was on demand as a sort of Night Nurse as well as a Day Mother. One thing that absolutely amazed me was that after doing this for just one night she would ever afterwards come down the garden to the bay tree in the evening just to see if she was needed to supply this function! One particularly wet evening one of the older chicks, the sibling of one of the blue chicks in my group of three, actually slipped down to a lower branch, so he had to be scooped up and added to Snow Kitten's charges. As this chick is so large and cuckoo coloured and thus completely different to the rest, I thought my Cochin might protest but after a couple of light pecks, which just got him into place at the front of the nest box and with her chin resting on him, everything settled down.

I did have a plan on one particularly horrible day to put six more chicks with her in the run with the 3 blues and to which I had also added a light coloured buff frizzle but with the exception of the latter, this didn't work, I think it was just too much.

Snow Kitten gets a time-share in 3 of Cuckoodora's 12 chicks

I also followed through with my plan of letting the chicks with Snow Kitten out of the run to rejoin their original mothers and free-range and forage. I later found that Snow Kitten was following one of the mothers around and actually sitting down and covering a couple of her adopted chicks whilst the other mother carried on scratching for food. I would say that the other mother, Cuckoodora, tolerated Snow Kitten rather than saw her as an asset, which she certainly was to me.

In conclusion I could not believe my luck that this has worked out so well and again I stress that every hen is an individual and may react in a different way but if she trusts you, I believe she thus has confidence in what you are asking her to do. Today the three blue chicks and the buff frizzle are out free-ranging with Snow Kitten, who ideally despite their differing ages, regards them all as new babies and in need of covering-on-demand. There is seemingly no limit to the kindness of Cochins and other hen mothers-in-waiting.

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from Normandie! Sue

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©  Sue Cross 2015