BANTAMS.

Western Star, Issue 944, 2 May 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

BANTAMS.

The diminutive breeds denominated bantams, from some totally erroneous supposition that they had been derived from the place bearing that name, have always been popular amongst poultry-keepers, and the space before their pens is nearly always thronged at a good show. Many of them have their good points as layers, and, for the food they cost, are by no means unprofitable poultry ; but all have one conspicuous merit at least —they can be kept in small places, and in neighbourhoods where no large variety of fowls could be kept at all. They are content with small space as well as small meals, and even their little crow does not annoy neighbours who would quickly repeat the teapot storm of the celebrated “ great peacock case,” did the amateur keep a sonorous rooster of the orthodox persuasions. Nearly all of them —even the Game —are naturally tame and familiar in disposition ; and for all such reasons and more, these little minnikin fowls afford an amount of happiness it is difficult to estimate, and place the highest pleasures of poultry-keeping within the reach of hundreds who otherwise must go without them altogether. Many a lady tired of having nothing to pet but a tom-cat, has wondered lovingly whether she might not keep a few fowls; but looking at her garden with regretful eyes, has decided that half of it would be needed, and that she could not spare that; when the happy thought has crossed her mind, “ Why not keep a few bantams P” A little space—just that strip which can so easily be spared —will content them ; and as to crowing, who in the world would mind the voice of a little fellow not bigger than a pigeon? She is made happy; and even the tom-cat, ousted at first from his olden place, but who has provided for him a neverending subject of interest in the perpetually intense speculation as to the possibility of some peculiarly tiny chicken coming some day through to the wrong side of the wire—even he is made happy too. Decidedly bantams have their place in the world. Even more than this may be said for them. They eat next to nothing, and may often be kept going entirely on breadcrumbs and such like rejectamenta from a small household; while we have already remarked that some of them are really good layers. And if their eggs are small—well, most delicious things are small. We have often wondered why peas were not made as large as beans, but they are very good as peas, nevertheless, and we could ill spare them. And bantams lay delicious, delicate, fairy eggs, to be tenderly ransacked by fairy fingers with a fairy spoon ; or, if there he a very little child, who so delighted as she either to eat herself, or to see her mother eat, the little egg from “her little hen ”P We have heard, too, of delicate invalids, who on “ bad days ” could touch nothing but those same bantam eggs laid by the pet hen—the first morsel that had passed the thin white lips when the life and strength so nearly lost began to come struggling back, and still relished at times when everything else was turned from with disgust—brought iu on bright green moss, to he welcomed with a smile, and cooked there and then (as bantam eggs should be) by simply pouring boiling water upon them in sight of the invalid, so as to awaken interest and appetite together. — Gas • sell's Booh of Poultry.