Considering Chickens: Episode 3: Birds of a Feather

By far, the most fun part of considering chickens is choosing the breed you will raise.  It is, though, kinda like starting to look at new cars.  You think you know what you want, and then you get online and look at another car with better features and more options and then you're all confused.  Same thing with chickens.  It can be a bit of a "What the flock???!!!" experience.  I'll try to be helpful by breaking down the criteria I think are important to consider for backyard chicken owners.  (Please remember that these are recommendations for normal people, with normal homes and a bit of space.  These would not be the same criteria a farmer would use!  Also remember I am taking into account that these are going to be pets for us!)  Before I get down to business, I'll tell you what I did on our first chicken go-round.

The first time I wanted chickens, I knew I wanted only females.  I knew I didn't want to order a large quantity, so I asked my farmer friend Will at Whitmore Farm if he could guarantee me a flock of only females.  Of all the breeds he raises, he can only "sex" the Welsummers.  (Sexing is the ability of a farmer, hatchery, etc. to tell the gender of a chick from birth.  Some breeds look nearly identical at birth, while others, like Welsummers, have slight differences that make them easier to distinguish.)  That was about the extent of my research into breeds.  I knew that getting chicks locally, thus avoiding the "mail order" chick process, was a good, safe, and healthier way to start my flock.  (There's obviously a higher risk of death when chicks are sent through the mail, and more incidence of disease or sickness when they come from a large hatchery.)  There's also something SUPER fun about driving around in a mini-van with two excited little girls and a box full of peeping fur balls.

I wanted something different this time.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVED our Welsummers.  They were beautiful birds (the female version of the Corn Flakes rooster for those of you that remember the Corn Flakes rooster) with sweet personalities.  They were not, though, the best of layers.  Chicks start laying an average of 5 months after birth, and that put us into November of our first year with chickens.  Their lay rates depend on the amount of daylight they receive.  We got very few eggs that first winter, which I figured was kinda normal.  But after looking into it more this time, and talking to others with Welsummers, I realized that they are not known as the best layers.  As a potential flock owner, you can select breeds that will really lay much better and make all those COLD mornings of feeding and watering the chickens worth your time and chapped hands.

That meant that this time, I had to consider the "where" and the "who" of acquiring chickens. There are quite a few online hatcheries, the most distinguished is probably McMurray Hatchery.  They have tons of breeds, great availability, BUT you must buy a flock of at least twenty five birds.  (Great idea if you want to split a batch with another chickening family.  Not such a great idea when you only want ten.)  Immediately I was limited to a place that would sell in a smaller quantity.  I ended up going with My Pet Chicken,  a lovely little online "all things chicken" retailer, which also happens to be the place from which I ordered my coop.  They have been an awesome choice so far---they have fabulous customer service, they answer emails right away, and best of all, you can order as few as three chickens.  They can mostly guarantee flocks of females-only, although they are honest that a rooster might slip in here and there.  (Please, dear Jesus, no rooster.)

Now for deciding on which breeds.    Here are the criteria I used:

1.  Lay rate:  This time, I really want to get more bang for my buck.  I want lots of eggs in the winter so that I really don't have to be buying eggs at all.

2.  Ability to Handle Confinement:  There are some chickens that handle confinement better than others.  Although I am using a movable coop, and plan to regularly exercise the chickens, I wanted to find breeds that will not go stir crazy and start pecking each other if I can't let them out for a day or two.

3.  Personality:  Just like people, there are some chickens that respond better to humans, and since these are pretty much the only pets we will ever have, I want them to be friendly!  Now, I have no proof of this, but it is my gut suspicion that most any chickens can be made into great pets, but this requires that you get them as chicks (obviously) and really handle them, bribe them with food, and get them used to human interaction very early on.  Not a problem for this family.  I will have a hard time dragging the girls away from the babies!

4.  Looks:  I really wanted a mixed flock this time.  Chickens, like people, come in so many different shapes, sizes, and colors, and I'm interested to try something new.  I wanted to branch out from the brown Welsummers into something a little more eye-catching.

5.  Egg Color:  In an ideal world, and as vain and silly as it sounds, I wanted a flock that would lay me all colors of the egg spectrum:  white, light brown/pinkish, medium brown, dark brown, and blue/green.  Due to availability of the chicks at My Pet Chicken, though, this is not possible.  See #6.

6.  Availability:  There are just not as many breeds available right now as there are in the Spring.  But I wanted to get my flock now so that we would have EGGS by Spring.  (Easter Easter Easter!  Eggs Eggs Eggs!)  This not only affected which breeds I could get, but also means that I will not have my total ideal with egg colors.  Oh well.

When I first sat down to research breeds, I opened up some of my books.  They were not as helpful as I had hoped.  I needed lots of information in one quick glance, so can you imagine my utter joy when I stumbled upon this website????!!!  This "Henderson" has saved every potential backyard flock owner HOURS AND HOURS of researching breeds.  Okay, I should say, hours and hours for those of us Type A people who would actually do something like "research breeds" in the first place.  (You can, from many places, order a "surprise" flock, where you will get a random assortment of whatever the hatchery gives you.  I imagine that could be fun, but this control freak is not going to leave her flock up to someone else.)  I referred almost exclusively to the Henderson chart, and also the information about each breed that I found on the My Pet Chicken website and the McMurray Hatchery website when taking my criteria into account.  The Dream Flock, the breeds I would've bought if ALL the chicks I wanted were available, would've contained some assortment of the following breeds:

Leghorns
Auracana/Americana/Easter Egger
Delaware
New Hampshire Red (or Rhode Island Red...I had trouble choosing...)
Sussex
Welsummer
Plymouth Rock
Wyandotte

Here is the flock I will end up with based on what was available for delivery in October:

Three Leghorns, which are prolific layers of white eggs.

Two Speckled Sussex, which are good layers of creamy to light brown eggs.  (Good winter layer, which is nice!)

Two Silver Laced Wyandottes, good layers of light to rich brown eggs.  (And another good winter layer, supposedly.)

And three Easter Eggers (also called Auracana or Ameraucana, but I won't get into the naming issues and rights of this breed!) which are good layers of the greenish or bluish eggs.

I'm so looking forward to the arrival of the miniature versions of the above birds in about seven weeks!  There's really nothing cuter than baby chicks.  (It's kinda like puppies.  You don't ever want them to get bigger.  Except with chickens you do, because then you'll get eggs!)

I should mention that if you want to skip the cute puff ball stage, you can also order pullets (ready-to-lay females) and roosters that are "started" for you.  Needless to say, this is a much more expensive option, with its own set of challenges, namely that you don't get to "people train" the chickens yourself.  That said, if you want an instant flock of layers, without the hassle of raising the babies, it's something to think about.  You could also do the reverse, and get the hatching eggs and an incubator, and hatch them out yourself.  Talk about an awesome homeschool experiment!

Anyway, my time is up.  Stay tuned for our  next edition of Considering Chickens...where I think I'll talk about all the "Eggstras."