Egg Layers that are good family pets too?

[shortgrass]

Red stars. Aka Red sex links. I have one as a trial, and she us absolutely wonderful. She lays a beautiful perfect pink egg every day, takes a day off every 10 or so.... Such a sweetheart, and I plan on more next spring my red star roo was/is the best rooster I've ever seen, too. He is huge, but very protective, and i trained him very easily; really a great breed for eggs, meat, AND pet

This is "Peaches"

Silkies, awesome for kids, but as mentioned, can take punishment from being the bottom of the pecking order. Mine do just fine, but they are definitely the bottom 3, one is my beta rooster, so he's awesome, been trained by the kids lol

This is Batman lol

Cochins- bantams... Wonderful as well. My banty Cochin is my lap chicken. When she's not broody, lol.. I got HER for brooding and at 5 months, she has already taken it upon herself to hatch out a chick... So those are good mommies Standard Cochin; mine aren't near as friendly as the bantam, but still fairly docile.

Lap Chicken, AKA Momma

EEs. Not quite as docile as the red stars. But out of the 4 I have, we have one named Chipmunk that is just a doll, jumps up on my shoulder when I'm feeding.... She coos at me and follows me around, great personality. On the other side, I have "Wildie"... She lays the most beautiful mint green egg, and I can't get near her until roosting time at night

Here's Chipmunk taking a ride in the feed bucket

Barred Rocks. My favorite. NOT pet material lol, but they have the neatest personalities, in my experience, anyway lol. They can be your worst enemy, or they can be your best friend and lay eggs in your camper when you're not looking

This one has no name lol, I have too many BRs to tell them apart

The best trick to getting ANY breed to be docile is time. Time and trust. Food helps on the trust part. Hand fed treats force them to come to your hand and learn to trust you. Kids,can help, but they can also make skittish chooks if they chase them all the time. But really, time and treats can help with most breeds, but there are certain " free range" breeds that will NOT make good pets... Ancona, Buttercup, and Hamburgs are the only ones I have experience with, but those 3 breeds are NOT meant as pets, and will tell you just such as they run away time and time again lol

Spot and Dot

 

[shortgrass]

Good points, @ChickenCanoe. Silkies are near blind, making them horrible at escaping predators, cochins and the feathered feet get snow and mud packed in them, the tame BRs get into more trouble than the flighty ones... I have never lost an Ancona, but I also can't get them to sleep in the coop, they're SO "free" range lol... Cold tolerance, heat tolerance, etc... I like the Mediterranean breeds too, they aren't great meat birds, but they lay very well and I don't have to worry about them hardly at all.

I guess that's why I have 2 flocks; free rangers, and layers. The layers are my pets, and the free rangers are just eye candy

Great idea on breeds per year @Talithahorse ; if I could keep it to ONE breed per year ha-ha; I started with 2, and since coming on here, I now have 11


Wanted to add a link to Murray McMurray... They have a "chick selector" that you can play with and wheedle choices down by desired traits; its pretty neat
https://m.www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/chick_selector.html

 

[Michael OShay]

Yes, I think I mentioned above in one of my posts that my husband will build a seperate enclosure for my silkies/bantams. My main concern is decent egg layers of course docile ones. Silkies would purely be for enjoyment so maybe this spring ill start thinking about a coop where I can keep them too.

Yes, you actually did mention it in your 2nd post, but it slipped my mind as I was typing out my post. At my age, there's nothing wrong with my memory; it's just short. )