Reviews by greatergraceoffbg

I bought my first eggs from Lyle Behl. I still have three roosters and one hen from that first hatch. I have since hatched and given away dozens. You will find a great Icelandic group on here and they are very generous in helping you get eggs and chicks. The array of color, the odd stiff legged march of the rooster, the tendency to be able to escape from anything and nest anywhere is both amusing, maybe discouraging for some people, and encouraging in that you know some of them WILL survive! They lay medium white eggs, have every color of chick from black, white, spotted, chipmunk stripped, crested, feather legged, smooth legged, as well as combs never seen on other chickens! These are the best fun in the world, elegant yet tough. With a yard of Icelandics and a comfy rocking chair I have no need of any other retirement plan. I LOVE my Icelandics!

My next door neighbor had white Marans when I was a child. These birds were much cleaner than our Leghorns, they thrived in the muddy pasture and often hatched chicks. I got interested a few decades back and have every color in the book. They are just plain fun. If there wasn't so much out crossing and false advertising from people trying to make easy money we could have a great breed in the Marans. Unfortunately the Marans craze created a lot of unethical people, who hatched and sold all sorts of substandard stock. Now it is what it is.

Leghorns are in my memory the primary small farm egg laying chicken. We had a hundred leghorns, and a few dozen bantams for hatching eggs, and a scattered few assorted other breeds just for fun. There was no waste when I was young and it was an event when we would get new chickens and butcher and freeze all the chickens that were two or more years old. Boil up the big tub of water, and get ready to pluck away. The Leghorns laid eggs in every sort of weather. We never knew what store bought chicken was and those two year old hens sure did make great fried chicken!