
Mystery of the shop flock
Mrs Tweedy was recently lucky enough to acquire 9 of the (in her words!) smallest, sweetest chickens she has ever seen. Now that they are off heat, they have moved into the salon garden and are receiving much admiration.
The trouble is these little chickens have proved to be a bit of quandary. She originally thought they were Dutch bantams, but they have turned out not to be Dutch bantams at all, but rather an unusual Belgian breed of bantam chicken.
After much debate, the brilliant contributors on the American Backyard Chickens Forum finally identified them as the more glamourous sounding Barbu de Watermael chicken (variety quail: colour white with buff markings).


Mrs Tweedy is really chuffed about that and keeps banging on about how cute they, but if you look up the definition of ‘cute’ in the dictionary, you just get a picture of Mr Nibbles, not a barbu de watermael. Enough said.