California Country Ranch: Sizzle Chickens

About Sizzles

Sizzles are very unusual and are on their way to being recognized as a new breed of bantam. Ours are now in their 15th generation and the chicks are getting cuter and more unique looking every year, while still maintaining the sweet, gentle, and lovable personality of the Silkie (which it should closely resemble in all traits but the type of feathering). With body feathers curled backwards and neck feathers curling around their face until their head resembles a Chrysanthemum with eyes, these little guys are the most comical yard ornaments you will ever see. It's almost impossible to look at them without smiling or sometimes even laughing out loud - definitely an overdose of cute!! They come in both curly (frizzle) and smooth varieties. Both types are beautiful and totally different from any other breed. Like their Silkie ancestors, Sizzles are non-flyers so a 24" garden fence will keep them happily contained!

When grown, the hens will provide you with eggs for breakfast and the roosters will be flock guardians keeping an eye out for predators. Both will forage in your yard, grazing on grass and plucking bugs off your plants. Just watching them go about their business is both relaxing and entertaining. Plus It’s great fun when you walk outside to watch them all running to greet you, begging to be picked up and cuddled.

As much as we love these little goofballs, we can't keep all of them (contrary to popular opinion, you CAN have too much of a good thing!!), so we sometimes need to offer chicks for sale. We look for only the best homes possible and with people who will love and enjoy them as much as we do. We won't sell chicks less than 2 wks old so we've had plenty of time to observe them & know that they are healthy & well started. We also sometimes have a few 4-8 week old chicks available, all priced according to age & quality.

We raise a wide range of colors in both frizzled and smooth varieties - all cute and very unique. All of our chicks have great temperaments, outgoing personalities, and tame down quickly so they can be easily handled by children and adults. BE CAREFUL! Most of our Sizzles prefer to be “Lap Chickens” so you may find yourself buying “Chicken Diapers” for your little darlings!

We are NOT a business or a hatchery and the quality and condition of our birds reflects that they are loved and well cared for. Our chicks are fed quality medicated chick starter/grower and we add organic apple cider vinegar and a vitamin/electrolyte supplement to their water to help keep their immune system up during the stress of adjusting to a new environment & a new family. Older chicks get mealworms added to their diet and get lots of exercise chasing after each other playing 'keep away' and 'tug of war'. Our adult birds also receive quality food, along with treats of yogurt, cottage cheese, mealworms, and a lot of fruit & veggies. Word of warning - when you feed watermelon, stand back - waaaay back. And have a wet washcloth ready, for you and the chickens. It's amazing how far watermelon bits & pieces can fly!!

NOTE: We're going to be cutting back on hatching in 2013 so will have less Sizzles available. I plan to concentrate more on selling & shipping hatching eggs so we can share these gorgeous Sizzles with people across the U.S. The more people that are raising & showing Sizzles, the quicker they'll meet the eligibility requirements for acceptance as a new breed. Please contact me ahead of time if you are interested in eggs.

For inquiries about eggs or chicks, please send an email to: sizzles@californiacountryranch.com or call 916-645-1151. We are located in Lincoln, CA. Thanks for looking.
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FLASH******SHOW WINS!!!!!

We're having a great year at the poultry shows!!! We started the year at the large Stockton PPBA show. We entered 14 birds and came home with: 1 fifth, 1 third, and 10 FIRSTS, with 5 going on to win BOV (Best of Variety) and 3 going on to win ROV (Reserve of Variety). We also entered a Sizzle and a Frizzled Silkie and did well. Each took 1st in their division; the Sizzle went on to take Best Variety and the Frizzled Silkie went on to take Reserve Variety. Blossom and FuzzBott have let the wins go to their fuzzy little heads and they now expect to be treated like the queens they think they are. I expect the girls will soon be trying to lay golden eggs for us!

Since then, we've received word of numerous show wins from several proud owners of our birds. They're bringing home prizes at all levels of competition at various poultry show and county fairs. Besides all the firsts, Silkie and Sizzle wins also include several BOV, ROV, BOB, and Best Featherfoot. Congratulations to everyone!!!
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MORE ABOUT SIZZLES

BREEDING SIZZLES
A Sizzle project is not for the faint of heart or for those that are easily discouraged - especially if you start from scratch - which consists of crossing a quality frizzled bantam Cochin with a quality Silkie. Sounds simple, but oh boy, now the work begins. First, there is no blueprint for breeding Sizzles so you are pretty much on your own. Your end goal will be to produce a bird that looks like a Silkie & acts like a Silkie, but has the feathering of a frizzled Cochin.

Okay, so you have your first batch of chicks. Some of them might even resemble a fairly decent looking Sizzle, but it's very doubtful that any will even be close to show quality. Now all you have to do is sit back for about 5-6 months until the chicks are all grown up & you can determine sexes & start putting pairs, trios, or groups together. At this point, if you hatched enough chicks, you can probably give away the very worst chicks with the most faults & work with the rest. If you only hatched a few then be very careful what you get rid of. Many Sizzle breeders (including me) get so enthralled with the curly chicks that we rehome all the smooth ones & keep the rest. WRONG. With any frizzle breed, you should never breed curly to curly - doubling up on the frizzle gene can cause some real genetic nightmares so it is a definite no-no. So by giving away all your smooth Sizzles, you just cut your potential gene pool in half & you have nothing to breed your curly Sizzles to. To be continued......

GENERATION COUNTING
Our Sizzles are really several more generations along than I have listed. I was "unofficically" playing around with breeding them for a few years before I actually started keeping any kind of records, so I can't officially take credit for those generations. If memory serves, I think they were more of a "mottley crew of mutts" than actual Sizzles, so I'm not even sure if I WANT to take credit for them. However, when starting from scratch, the first several generations of Sizzles usually are pretty ditzy looking anyway, but they ARE cute. Even if it's in a "so ugly it's cute" kind of way! lol

Generations f13 and f14 - Hatched in 2012

New Color - Porcelain

Another new color but not sure what to name it! Blue-Gold?

Cotton

Swiffer - Silver/Blue Cockerel Hard to tell which end is which but he took a 1st at the Western Nationals, Jan. 2013 in Stockton, CA & he really attracted a lot of attention. I hope to get some gorgeous little chicks from him in a few months.

Here's Swiffer as a teenager.

New color project - a barred pattern known as "cuckoo" among Silkie fanciers. This is a nice cuckoo cockerel. His wattles are a bit too red but everything else is excellent & his type is great.

Splash Cockerel - too young for the Nationals but I'll probably show him at CA State Fair this summer.

Coal - My only black cockerel. This is his teenage picture. He took a 1st at Nationals.

Two pictures of Sizzle chicks just starting to go through the gawky teen stage.

Splash Pullet - Very nice girl but quite dirty from playing in all the mud puddles.

Here are a few pictures of pullets hatched in 2012. I'm really proud of my Sizzles & I continue to be amazed at the improvements in each generation. Most of these girls are as close to perfect as I can imagine them being - large crests, well shaped mulberry combs, excellent toe feathering, 5 toes, great toe spacing, good wings, & best of all - great type & excellent body shape. I can hardly wait for these girls to start laying so I can see what the next generation will bring.

Pictures from the Hollister, CA show on Jan. 12, 2013. They won.

The Smooth variety Sizzles don't have the curls of the Frizzled variety, but they are still quite gorgeous & unique. The beautiful colors & markings that don't show up on Silkies & Sizzles are very distinct on the Smooth Sizzles. You can even see the lacing & edging around each feather. They are definitely "Barnyard Beauties" & deserve a place of honor in any backyard flock.

Below - Earlier Generations of Country Sizzle Chicks

Petunia - one of my favorite therapy girls!


A cute little blue Sizzle.

Lacy is a smooth variety of Sizzle. The smooths usually have beautiful patterns on their feathers that can't be seen in the frizzled variety.

Geronimo is a striking Smooth Sizzle Rooster. Even though he is a dark blue, the lace pattern still shows through.

Blossom as an adorable chick. She was my first show quality Sizzle and she won BOV (Best of Variety) at the 2010 Stockton Poultry Show.

Blue Dahlia - Another show quality Sizzle and also one of my favorite therapy birds. She is a real chatterbox and keeps the hospital patients thoroughly entertained with all of her vocalizations.