Favorite Chicken Breed?

[mamadelbosque]

So, long story short, we're thinking of getting chickens again (selling the dark cornish we have right now first though - they either don't lay or lay in the woods where we can't find the eggs, and their just skiddish and boring...), and I'm trying to decide on a breed (or 3 . We've had rhode island reds & barred rocks in the past, but theres just SO many different chicken breeds!! Having scanned through the McMurray catalog I'm liking Salmon Favarolles, Buff Orpingtons & Speckled Sussex atm... any experience with any of these? Or others?? Lots of thanks!

[sparkygirl74]

We have used this
http://www.mypetchicken.com/chicken-...ht-for-me.aspx
and
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenders...ks/chooks.html
to help us pick our breeds.
We have had Buff Orpingtons, Delewares, Australorps, Easter Eggers, Cuckoo Marans, Welsummers and Barred Rocks.
I would say the Marans are a little flighty but not bad and the Barred rocks aren't as friendly as the rest. All of our other chickens are total sweethearts! I would totally buy any of them again

[karne]

Ditto the Welsummers. They are pretty (the Roo was the model for the chicken on the Kellog's cornflakes box, I believe), lay beautiful darl brown/reddish eggs, and are friendly.

[Tizzy]

So far I'm really enjoying my Buff Orpingtons, but my all-time favorites are still the Harco Black Sex Links. I don't even know if you can get them in the US or not? But they are lovely birds. In fact, the 6 I have are STILL laying. The first started to lay in October of 2009 which seems impossible. But we have 37 hens and are getting 36 eggs per day. The other 31 hens are Shaver reds. Great producers for eggs but not so bright

Anyway, these harcos are nice to look at, they will go broody if you want them to, they are hardy, produce really REALLY well.

[sunnylady303]

Definitely the Buff Orpingtons and Salmon Faverolles. But I have to say our friendliest breed - seriously, these three hens are like puppy dogs following us around - is a Silver Gray Dorking. They crack me up. They are also good egg layers.

[jtsmom]

My favorites were black astrolorps and buff orpingtons. I'll get more of them if I start another flock. I also want to get something that lays other colored eggs as well.

[henny penny]

I've had two different flocks with about 10 different breeds and the Buff Orps really stand out as all around excellent hens! By far the friendliest breed we've had, ours are very consistent layers, and I think they are the most beautiful, too. The sight of a bunch of fluffy, gold chickens strutting on a green lawn.........ahhhhhh.

[WaitingForKiddos]

I have a buff orpington, 2 wyandottes (gold laced and silver laced), a plymouth barred rock, and an Easter egger (mutt with cheek and beard puffs
that should lay a blue/green egg).

It's so hard to pick a favorite!!

The bo is super sweet....and also jealous! If I'm holding another bird on my lap she's jump up and insist on getting into the place between me and the other bird! She's the most consistant at wanting to just lay down on my lap and be pet.

Then there's the barredrock. She's the head hen and does her job well. She's the mellowest of them all. She likes to be held snugly and loves to get her head up and under my chin, having a hen snuggle in is pretty cool.

The wyandottes are interesing. As chicks they were friendly but not super friendly. Kinda flighty. Then they got big enough to leave the brooder and they totally wrote me off. They weren't mean by any means....just not sweet. One day the gold laced must have seen that my lap provides treats because since then I can't get her off of me! The second I sit in the coop she's up on my lap (or shoulder) and sits down to claim her spot. The silver laced still wants nothin to do with me.

The easteregger is great. Shell put up with her beard being messed with, her wings being opened, and her waddles being tugged. She's not quick to jump on my lap but she doesn't mind being pet and grabbed from the ground and then brought up. She is the most likely roll on to her side while getting love.

So, I can't pick a favorite! They all have their qualities. I do hear that most people's buff orps are sweet, mellow, and good layers.

I got my girls from my pet chicken and was VERY happy. Their sexing was 100% right, shipping was great because I didn't want 25 birds, and they have a nice
selection. Oh, they also don't practice massive culling of their boy chicks.

[lucyem]

This is just my experience, I think people have different experiences with different breeds depending on a lot of factors like environment etc.

Silkies are sweet and a bit dim. We ended up spending the coldest day of the year making them their own coop because another hen was trying to kill them. I have 2 and it seems like I get two eggs every 2 out of 3 days. It is kind of a pain now to have a second coop to have to deal with but they ended up being my DS's pets and he can sit with one in his lap and she will happily sit with him for as long as he wants.

Easter Eggers, I have 6. Three are downright nasty, one of them is pecking all the muffs off everyone else this winter. Three are OK and one will not get off the roost unless she has to. They started laying later, about 35 weeks and one did not start for another month after that. Probably the roost attached one.

Buff Orpingtons are the most friendly. We had three but one died this winter and we are not sure why. They are the first ones looking for treats.

White Crested Polish Bantams are a riot. They can pretty much fly. Have always been the first to fly out of the brooder and the run. One managed to spend a night of a snowstorm living in the kids swing set. They do not have big poufs, just small rounded ones so they see quite well. They are the most fun to watch. All three produce and egg a day.

We are getting more this spring. I will get more Easter Eggers. We plan on letting them free range as much as possible this summer. I really do not want to feel bad when we have missing birds etc. I want them to have some survival skills and so far based on the ones I have these do. We want eggs, not pets and the blue/green eggs are cool.

We also used MyPetChicken. I ended up with three roosters. (4 out of 7 bantams were roosters, the full size were all females) We still have 2 roosters, one we gave away. I was given a credit at MPC towards chicks this spring so will order from them again. Since we have a rooster I will probably hatch our own next year. Either with a incubator or try with the silkie girls.

[Chicky2]

My favs here have been Buff Orps, and light Brahmas. We also have a great Cornish Hen who is really sweet. I love the look of any of the Brahmas, but esp. the light ones. They make pretty crosses, too. We also had a great Phoenix roo, who would fall asleep in my dd's lap. She would sit on the swing w/him and rock him to sleep and stroke his long tail feathers, lol.

[spring978]

LOVE my astrolorps super great docile non flighty gals
My silver laced wyendotts are good girls but kind of skittish

both breeds are cold hardy.

[CCJWGM]

We have 1 Buff Orp and 2 Gold Laced Wyandottes. The Gold Laced at beautiful and while all 3 are docile the Wyandottes seem really mellow and great for the youngsters. All 3 wintered fine and are great egg layers.

[Pepper44]

I have owned a ton of different breeds.

Buff Orps have been very cold hardy. Mine are unfriendly, but that's not the breed norm. They came from Ideal.

Salmon Faverolles are one of my VERY favorites. They are like puppies! They haven't been hardy for me at all, sadly. Mine also came from Ideal and aren't great breed standard, but their personalities are so wonderful.

Easter Eggers, also from Ideal, are super friendly but not as much as the SF's. They lay big green blue eggs every day. My EE roo was pure evil, but the hens my 3 year old carries around.

I made Faverolle/Easter Egger mixes and they are perfect. They have huge muffs (beards) and they are very friendly, and they lay green eggs! Plus they seem very hardy.

Polish and Crevecoeurs are hilarious. Some are more friendly than others, some have been like puppy friendly. They aren't very hardy and are the first to get picked off by predators because of the crest and some of them are really stupid. I love those two breeds, regardless. I have an issue with the other birds eating the crests that are white...only the white crests! Some of my cresteds are from breeders, some are from Meyer.

Black Sex Links from Mt. Healthy have been really great birds. They lay very dark brown eggs for sex-links and some of them are semi-friendly. They lay a lot and are fun to watch.

One of my other favorites has been the Spitzhaubens. They lay smallish white eggs every other day and they're very friendly, pretty hardy, and have small crests. They are a bit more intelligent than the Polish and Crevecoeur. They are so pretty, I love to look at them out on the lawn! They look like dalmatian chickens. Mine came from Meyer hatchery.

Buff Brahma roosters and hens both are very friendly and hardy! I have really loved my buff Brahmas.

[Shahbazin]

What sort of chickens depends a lot on expectations; one of the better dual purpose breeds that lays quite well is the Australorp. Wyandottes come in lovely colors, & are good dual purpose; Easter Egger/Araucanas are usually attractive & lay eggs in green, blue, & pink shades. I actually have both an Easter Egger X Favorelle, & a Wyandotte X Favorelle, & both are good layers & nice birds. My kids' favorites are the Mille Fleur bantams (we have 1 pure & 1 Silkie X Mille Fleur). They lay pretty well, are tiny, & have tamed beautifully.

The heavier meat or dual purpose breeds tend to be mellow, as is anything with a lot of Asiatic class (Cochin, Langshan, Brahma) bloodlines (pretty much all of the American class - the RIRs (Malay in them, way back), Rocks, Wyandottes, Buckeyes, Javas, etc. Silkies are, as mentioned, great pets, but very determined to be mothers (ie they go broody all the time) & don't seem real bright. Game class breeds are incredible free rangers, but tend to have feral tendencies, are often seasonal layers, & are very quarrelsome among themselves.

[philomom]

My Buff Orp is very broody and super food aggressive with the other hens. Doesn't like to be handled.

My Austrolorp is a reliable layer and quite docile to be handled.

My Americauna is a great layer of green eggs and docile. She's a bit more picky about her feed and needs more oyster shell in her diet than the other two.

[MamaMonica]

The light Brahmas we have are sweethearts. But my very favorites are Mille Fleurs. They come up to see me whenever I go outside and follow me around.

Buff Orphingtons are great, too. The most agressive are the easter eggers. They chase wild birds!

[1jooj]

I got my Red Star sex links from murray mcmurray and they are fantastic. Personable, good foragers, not afraid of the sheep, goats, or cat, and they have just started laying (we got them in late summer). Gorgeous, dark red-brown eggs. I love Silkies for their broodiness and sweetness. I don't love Americaunas, because they like to hide their eggs. We have a couple Salmon Faverolles and I like them, too. Sumatras I don't love. I LOVE Japanese bantams, but they are small and fragile. Our roo disappeared last summer. We LOVED him, and so did all the hens. He was a ladies' man.

Dh wants to try a few fancies this year. We'll see what we can afford.

[Block family]

Our hens

In July of 2009 we got, as part of a large group-buy in my office, 6 hens from McMurray.

We chose:

• Golden-laced Wyandotte
• Barred Rock
• Partridge Rock
• Araucana/Ameraucana
• Black Australorps
• Black (Jersey) Giant

All are healthy, though the "easter egger" (Araucana/Ameraucana) was sickly and spindly-legged for a while there. Panacure (a dewormer) took care of it and she quickly caught up to the others (relatively-speaking, she's still one of the smaller breeds in our small flock).

Here are our experiences:

Of all, the Barred Rock ("Joan Jett") will approach the most readily, especially if you have earthworms to feed her. She was always this way, but a week in our bathroom as she was being treated for a few punctures and skin tears from when she flew over the fence and into the part of our yard where the dogs run, desensitized her to being handled extensively and made her more friendly, we think. We clip all of their wings now (just one side), so there will not be any more unwanted encounters with our dogs.

The next most friendly is the Black Australorps ("Miss Cleo"), who has been laying for a little under three weeks; we have received about 20 eggs from her so far...and no others are laying yet. She's also BY FAR the most vocal, with low rumbling growls and croaks. She's actually a bit goofy. She also extremely broody, she have to reach under her to retrieve her eggs.

The Araucana ("Jezebel") was held so frequently by my 5 year-old daughter (especially when she was sickly) that she's probably the most comfortable being held, but will not let you pick her up as readily as a Miss Cleo. She will let you roll her on her back, she will stay that way, allowing you to scratch under her wings, inspect her feet, etc.

The next is the Black Giant ("Queen Latifah"), who was tough to tell apart from the other black hen (the australorps), until recently, and now she's now possibly as much as 3 inches taller; though not as plump. Just a clam, placid bird. Handles easily. Purple and green iridescence makes what would otherwise be (perhaps) a boring-looking bird (like Miss Cleo), pretty fantastic.

The next is the Partridge (Plymouth) Rock ("Cluckers"...the one name my kids chose), who is beautiful in her own right, (especially close-up), but the lest interesting personality of the bunch, and was always one of the hardest to round up to put them in the coop at night (now we just wait and by sunset, they're all in there, we just close the door behind them for the night). This bird seems the least intelligent of the bunch, but we do not presume that, she's just a little different. For example, she was the last one to figure out how to hop up on a lawn chair and then into one of the egg-access doors up high on the coop.

The Golden-laced Wyandotte ("Lacey") is by far the showiest, but the least approachable and will even mildly bully the others. As they leave the coop, she's the one to peck at the others, letting them know who is boss. She's the beautiful bitch; hard to be prejudiced against because she's so damned great to look at, but could use an attitude adjustment, though she's plenty calm too, just less so than our others.

We had a 13-day period below freezing, including two days were it never got above 20 (with a low of 16 or 17). You might have thought these birds enjoyed the cold, because it did not slow them down one bit. They handled the cold not just fine, but amazingly well. Lots of straw hay in their coop (which was pretty drafty, until recently).

When we get more birds (when these begin to quit laying or when they die), we will surely get more Barred Rocks, and we think we might try a Cuckoo Maran, Buff Orpington, Silver-gray Dorking and several other breeds we are learning about.

By the way, but for the "happy eggs" from our chickens, we are a vegan family.

[sparkygirl74]

Block family, that is funny about your Ausrtalorps doing the growl thing. Out of all of our chickens they are the only ones that do that!
We have had a very cold winter and as long as it is above 0 I have been letting our chickens out for the day. They go crazy if I don't.....they have no problem with the cold and lay better with the fresh air.
Our Marans and barred rocks have been very nippy when I reach under them for eggs. I am hoping that means they will go broody in a few months

[blastomom]

We've had Welsummer, Silkies and young bantam Cochin/ISA Brown crosses. All are very sweet, but we've hatched them all from eggs and they've been handled nearly every day of their lives. Our Wellie girl rules the roost and has taken to pecking me once or twice, but she has always been very gentle with my boys. Her eggs are absolutely gorgeous--terracotta with darker spots. Our Silkies were the sweetest pets I've ever owned and I have 4 more due to hatch on Friday. If you want a chicken your kids can walk up to, pick up and hold on their laps while they pet them for half an hour, then Silkies are the breed for you. The Wellies and the Silkies do a little better than an egg every-other day except in Winter.