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Longshadow Farms

Chickens

Our chickens are primarily the project of our eldest son. He dearly loves his Standard Silver Laced Cochins and wants to breed them to conform to the Standard of Perfection published by the American Poultry Association. The bantam Cochins are primarily for incubating eggs and/or brooding chicks. In all of the chickens we raise there are a few things that we consistently do, regardless of the purpose. We do not breed any birds with obvious physical weaknesses or hereditary undesirable traits. Even if we do not use a breed for show purposes, we still endeavor to bring it into conformity with the Standard of Perfection. We choose our breeders with the Standard in mind. That said, some of our Cochins are closer to the Standard than others! For our philosophy on show quality versus pet quality please see the link. While we have tried to do our best to accurately portray our birds in the pictures, they don't tell the whole story. If you have any questions about type, color, temperament or anything else about any of our birds, please e-mail us. We are NPIP participants and have our flock tested annually for pullorum/typhoid.

Cochins

We have one variety of Standard Cochins (Silver Laced) and one variety of Bantams (Blue). Cochins are generally very gentle, friendly, stately birds. Please visit the Cochins International web site for more information about Cochins. The Cochin Board is a message board devoted to Cochins.

Standard Silver Laced Cochins

Our Silver Laced Cochins are the favorites of our eldest son and he is determined to work with them to produce an excellent show bird. This is not a short-term proposition and we expect it to take a number of years. These are stunning birds and make great setters.

Bantam Blue Cochins

The bantam cochins have all the beauty and gentleness of the large cochins but in a much smaller package. The Blues are a long-time favorite color, the beauty of which is hard to imagine until you see it shining in the sunlight. The genetics of the blue is such that blue mated to blue produces approximately 50% blue, 25% black and 25% splash (a whitish color with "splashes" of blue). Black mated to splash will produce 100% blue. Black/blue and splash/blue matings will produce approximately 50% of each color used for the mating. White can also be mated to blue and acts like black in these matings. Our matings occasionally produce white offspring. For further details on the genetics of blue, see our Genetics page.

We have cut back our chickens to mostly pets. We may occasionally have a few spares to sell but will not regularly sell eggs or birds. Please Contact Us for availability. There are plenty of great books and web sites to help you improve your chances of a good hatch. A great book covering many details of owning chickens is called "Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens" by Gail Damerow. Strombergs has a book called "A Guide to Better Hatching" which is also a helpful resource. Quacker's Home is a great site for duck or chicken enthusiasts with tons of links to really good sites on incubating, candling and hatching eggs, brooding, housing and care of birds, health and science articles and much more. FeatherSite is another very useful web site for all sorts of poultry. Please see our links page for other sites we recommend.