How many breeds to start with?

[Maple Hill Homestead]

Forgive me if this is posted in the wrong forum. This forum seemed like the closest fit but if there is a better forum please feel free to tell me to repost or move the thread.

I am new to chickens and new-ish to the forums (lurked for a few years) so if there is an FAQ or sticky somewhere that addresses this I missed, feel free to point me in the right direction on that as well.

We are looking at ordering 25 chicks comprised of 5 different breeds from a hatchery because...

1) 25 chicks is the order minimum and 5 chicks per breed is the breed minimum.

2) We don't have a lot of selection breed wise in our area, most of the feed stores carry buff orpingtons, barred rocks and easter eggers and not much else. Lots of people own chickens but not many breed their chickens other than barnyard mixes and many of them started with just the breeds available at the local feed stores.

3) Our state is weird and there is a 6 chick minimum for purchasing poultry or waterfowl from a retail store of any kind but that minimum doesn't apply to small farm direct sales. I can sell as few or as many as I want to individuals (not stores) from my own flock.

I don't really want to start with 25, I'd rather start with about half that, that was the original plan when I was just going to buy them from the feed store. I don't know anyone who would like to split the order with me. None of the feed stores have the option to let me tag a special order on to their orders without a bunch of fees. I have thought about possibly ordering 25 and selling off the extra chicks, either as chicks or pullets, so I can start smaller, so that is a possibility. That would also give me a bit of an idea of the demand since ultimately I would like to raise and sell harder to find breeds in my area. I'm not totally opposed to starting with 25 and we definitely have the land (7 acres) and can acquire the needed infrastructure for them no matter how many we get. Ultimately, if I'm stuck with all 25 birds, it's not the end of the world, and we will make it work.

Like I said we are interested in starting a breeding program, at first while we get our feet wet in this, just to sell some breeds that aren't common around here since most people get their chickens from the feed stores here. But eventually we would like to try to improve the breeds and get into showing and breeding on that end of things.

I originally though I should get 5 breeds since that meets all the minimums for the order and let's us "try out" a few different breeds that we are interested in trying.We are ordering straight runs so there is a chance we might get all pullets or all roos with ordering just 5 chickens from 5 breeds. Or sometimes just things don't work out and we might not have any breeding pairs if we only order 5 of each breed. So I've been wondering if maybe we should start with maybe just 2 or 3 breeds and just order more chicks for each breed. Then try other breeds as we get more established with our flock and breeding program.

So now that you know a little of the back story and some of circumstances I'm working with,(TL;DR start here) how many breeds should I start out with? 1? 2? 3? 4? 5?

Any BTDT or just good ole seasoned advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Pyxis]

My first question would be, is there a reason you want to use that hatchery in particular or would you be open to other hatcheries? There are plenty of hatcheries that don't make you order 25 chicks and don't make you order five of each breed. So, if you're open to other hatcheries, you wouldn't have to deal with those restrictions.

That said, there's not really a problem with having as many breeds as you want, provided you have the space for all of them. Chickens are chickens, and they tend to get along fine. Sometimes ones will unusual features may have some problems. For example, I have heard that a polish in a flock of regular chickens sometimes will have its crest plucked out by curious other hens. However, I used to keep two polish in a mixed flock and never had that issue myself, so really it's not for sure you'd have problems.

My first flock was basically made entirely from chicks of all kinds of different breeds, one of each usually, with no issues.

 

[Maple Hill Homestead]

My reason for using this hatchery is they have the best prices (including shipping) on the breeds that I am interested in that I have found.

So far, every hatchery I've looked has either 15 or 25 chick minimum to my area. Not all the hatcheries I've looked at have breed minimums but I've not seen any hatcheries that would let me order less than 15 total. And the ones that would let me go as low as 15 charge double or more for the same breeds.

If there are hatcheries that would let me order between 10 and 15 chicks (which is the amount I had imagined starting with) and doesn't charge significantly more than I would pay for this hatchery (my current order of 5 chicks each of 5 breeds, averages about $4 a chick with shipping accounted for).

I would love to buy from a breeder and some day I will but right now, we have try to keep costs down as much as we can to get started. But if there are some hatcheries that will let me order 15 or less that I haven't looked at yet, I'm all ears. I've looked at

Murray McMurray (25 or 15min depending on when we order),

Cackle(15 min or there is an extra fee or we could potentially drive there and pick them up but gas and lodging since it would need to be a two day trip would make it more expensive than the shipping or fees ),

Ideal (no minimum but all kinds of fees for small orders),

Welp (this is the hatchery that seems to have the best deal on the breeds we want),

Meyer (low minimums but high shipping),

Stromburg (a bit out of our price range right now and don't have all the breeds we are looking for)

and Hoover (doesn't have the breeds we want).

Honestly, I would rather get more chicks than spend almost as much on fees and shipping as I do for the chicks. We have the land and what not so more than we intended isn't a problem per se.

I'm not really worried about everyone getting along. Either they will or they won't. If they fight like cats and dogs for some unforeseen reason, we have room to run separate flocks. I'm more worried about having to divide my attention and time to learning the idiosyncrasies of 5 breeds vs fewer breeds. I've raised 5 kids and still raising one more and I think I did alright, they all survived lol, so maybe I'm just over thinking this (wouldn't be the first time lol)

I was really just wondering if anyone had any BTDT experience and could say "Yes, the more the merrier! You'll learn as you go and it will be great!" or "Noooo! 5 breeds is too many and you will be in over your head! Start with fewer and add more breeds when you've mastered the first ones." Or "You really need to concentrate on a couple of breeds and have more than 5 of each one to get a real feel for breeding."

 

[Pyxis]

Well, in my experience, the more the merrier has always worked out I used to keep a big flock just for eggs that had basically any breed I took a fancy to in it.

But I moved away from that after I got more into showing and wanted to be serious about breeding. I wanted that space for a breeding flock for one of the breeds I was focusing on.

From what you say, it sounds like breeding is your end goal? If so, starting with hatchery birds to get a feel for things isn't a bad idea, and to find out if it's going to be something you enjoy. But be prepared that none of those hatchery birds are really going to be fit for breeding, if you intend to breed to the Standard. If you want to be serious about breeding, then you definitely do want to buy from a breeder with good stock. Hatchery birds never stand up to birds from breeders that have been selectively bred to the SOP.

And, the more breeds you have, the more pens and runs you'll have to build in order to keep them separate. So that's an added expense to consider with more breeds.

For an egg flock and to get into things, though, hatchery birds are a good way to try out several breeds to see if you fall in love with one and want to pursue breeding. My first two chicks were hatchery brahmas, which completely enamored me to the breed and now I keep several breeding flocks of brahmas in multiple colors, all sourced from good stock.

Which breeds are you looking at getting?

 

[Maple Hill Homestead]

I was kinda hoping "the more the merrier" would be in at least one response lol!

Right now, we are looking at

Cream Legbar (I like the looks and the egg color and not available in our local stores),

black australorp (dh likes the looks and it's a good choice for our climate that isn't available in the feed stores)

Olive eggers (purely for egg color and not available in stores here),

barred rock (I like the looks but it is available in the stores here every now and then and honestly it would be the first one dropped if we decided to get more of one of the other breeds)

and blue andalusian (one of the first breeds I fell in love with in catalogs, good for our climate and not available in our local stores)

And yup I know we won't be able to get top dollar, or possibly nothing at all, for breeding hatchery birds, if we can even get a good breeding pair out of them at all. We'd be lucky if our endeavor even covered our costs for feed, much less everything else. We are looking at this project as more of a proof of concept with the added benefit of (pretty and colorful) eggs and birds lol. I would love to get breeder stock but I would hate to spend so much on the birds only to find out that breeding isn't a good fit for us. And this way, if we end up not doing the breeding thing for some reason, at least we have birds that we personally like the looks of and are good for our area.

So we are taking baby steps knowing that if we get really serious, we will have to get much better stock.

 

[Perris]

I have acquired my flock by buying two or three of each breed that seemed to fit my needs (good foraging and predator awareness as they free range dawn-dusk, plus different egg colours for a pretty basket) and I now have five breeds, some crested some not (a propos your concern with Polish). There have been no interbreed issues. Indeed, some siblings prefer to spend time with hens of other breeds than with their sisters. So I wouldn't worry about that when deciding the way forward.
But I would definitely second Pyxis' point that hatchery birds are not really suitable if you want to breed to sell specific rare or relatively rare breeds. Look for breeders in your travel range and you would be able to buy the numbers you want then too. 10 hours on the road to get 2 pullets is worth it in my view - don't need an incubator or brooder if they are 6+ weeks old and fully feathered. And here birds of that age collected direct from the breeder don't cost much - £10-15 each even for stock whose parents were show winners.

 

[Pyxis]

I was kinda hoping "the more the merrier" would be in at least one response lol!

Right now, we are looking at

Cream Legbar (I like the looks and the egg color and not available in our local stores),

black australorp (dh likes the looks and it's a good choice for our climate that isn't available in the feed stores)

Olive eggers (purely for egg color and not available in stores here),

barred rock (I like the looks but it is available in the stores here every now and then and honestly it would be the first one dropped if we decided to get more of one of the other breeds)

and blue andalusian (one of the first breeds I fell in love with in catalogs, good for our climate and not available in our local stores)

And yup I know we won't be able to get top dollar, or possibly nothing at all, for breeding hatchery birds, if we can even get a good breeding pair out of them at all. We'd be lucky if our endeavor even covered our costs for feed, much less everything else. We are looking at this project as more of a proof of concept with the added benefit of (pretty and colorful) eggs and birds lol. I would love to get breeder stock but I would hate to spend so much on the birds only to find out that breeding isn't a good fit for us. And this way, if we end up not doing the breeding thing for some reason, at least we have birds that we personally like the looks of and are good for our area.

So we are taking baby steps knowing that if we get really serious, we will have to get much better stock.

You'll have a very pretty egg basket! The olive eggers are nice too because they're not a real breed - those you can do whatever you want with, because there's no Standard. So hatchery olive eggers are basically as good as any others you might buy, haha.

I had legbars for a bit myself. Very pretty birds and very good layers, and the autosexing is always nice. I just found I liked breeds with a calmer temperament, so I ended up moving away from them. Their single combs weren't great in the VT cold, either.

 

[Maple Hill Homestead]

@Pyrxis I didn't realize olive eggers weren't a "real breed". That's cool because we definitely haven't seen them for sale in stores or Craig's list or bargain trader anything around here. And I am glad we don't have to deal with winter cold and frostbite so much. We are MUCH farther south than you are lol! We are about 5 hours northeast of DFW in the shadow of a mountain that gives us a nice little microclimate that is pretty mild for most of the year. We do get some snow but it is not even a guarantee every year that we will get any at all.

@Perris - I've told dh we just need to move overseas, lol! I've been to the UK but he hasn't been overseas at all. I loved that we got to see a lot of the country when we were there since most places were within a day's drive. We've looked all around within a day's driving distance for us where we are now and there is not much that we are interested in. On an overnighter, we can get more but with dh's chronic medical issues and my medical needs, an overnight trip isn't as easy as it sounds. I used to be able to just up and do a weekend trip just for the fun of it but now that I'm getting older, not so much lol. We would definitely do it for breeder stock when we are ready but it doesn't feel worth it for getting started and just learning if this is even something we want to do long term.