Choosing Your Chicken Breed
When you’re picking out which fluff butt you want to eventually produce your breakfast, you have a few deciding factors to land on. Of course there are more options than what I’m sharing, but let’s just get the ball rolling, ok?!
What matters most to you?
Production
Egg Color
Temperament
Weather Tolerant
If you’re looking for a laying hen that will hold their weight in the production ring, you’re going to be considering breeds like:
Rhode Island Reds
Production Reds
Isa Browns
Leghorn
If you’re into beautiful egg colors you may consider:
Olive Eggers
Ameraucanas/Easter Eggers
Marans
Welsummers
If you’re wanting well tempered birds, consider:
Brahma
Barred Rock
Buff Orpington
Sussex
Live in a warm climate? These do well:
Plymouth Rock
Barred Rock
Rhode Island Red
Easter Egger
Live in a cold climate? Go for these breeds:
Orpington
Wyandotte
Australorp
Plymouth Rock
(You’ll notice many birds cross over to be heat or cold hardy! Just double check before you purchase?)
With our flock, I went for a mix of pretty, heat hardy & great producers. I wanted pretty eggs the most 😅
Moving forward in our farm program, we are only buying 2 breeds of birds each season and rotating them out.
This season, it’s Barred Rock & Americana. Barred Rock for production and Americanas for a pop of blue color (I still have to have my pretty).
Next season, we will be getting Rhode Island Reds & Olive Eggers for the same reasons mentioned above.
We’ve learned that laying hens begin decreasing in production after year 2. In order to maximize production, we need to cull our flock every 2 years.
Cull means to sell to another person (small homesteads are great choices here) or to process and either consume the meat or sell the meat.
We will dive in further to this thought process next month when we talk about homestead budgets and financial farm decisions.
Before you pick your flock, do some research and learn about the different chicken breeds. There are a ridiculous amount of them!