I'm thinking that the one yellow chick that I first guessed was a buff cochin (the large one in the center pictured above) in my earlier post is another Sultan chick. Maybe they gave me another in the assortment. I didn't think it was a Sultan because of a slight grey stripe on its back that the other Sultan chick does not have, but I learned through my Googling that while all Sultans will eventually be all white, some with a silver gene will look like this one. Some may have just a little gray, some may be mostly gray, appearing blue. It has a crest not as puffy as the other, and a tiny extra toe. The other one's toe is more pronounced and separated from the other toe. But it's just as fat and fluffy!
This video from Cackle Hatchery shows the variety of colors in Sultan chicks and explains the silver gene as the reason:
I resisted my husband's desire for our girls to have childhood chicken memories, as I didn't have any myself. But I enjoyed watching him convert the old Cowhaus speaker boxes into nesting boxes, and his open-air coop was perfect for our Florida weather. I love to research and the world of fancy poultry was revealed to me. It wasn't too difficult to find fancy chicks locally on Craigslist and the Talquin Electric newsletter, as well as a few production pullets from the feed store. Now I can't envision living without them. We don't get too many eggs from our fancy flock, since we chose them more for looks than for production, but the colorful ones we do get are delicious. In 2019, we are raising some assorted rare females and rainbow layer chicks to add to our 4 surviving hens and 1 rooster.
Vulture hocks, BTW, are stiff quill feathers growing in the thigh. A disqualification in most varieties, but standard for my favorites, the sultan and Belgian bearded d'Uccle.
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