a newbie question

[frodo]

i am a newbie...do not laugh at my dumb questions to hard,,

i want brown eggs, i have been told brown eggs come from brown chickens, white eggs from white chickens
is this true? what kind of chicken would be a hearty chicken for southern mississippi
it gets hot here..

 

[popsicle]

No. White Rocks are white and lay brown eggs. Brown Leghorns are brown and lay white eggs.

Generally, though there are exceptions, chickens with white ears lay white eggs, chickens with red ears lay brown eggs. To get an idea of what that means, look at a picture of Black Minorca compared to a Black Jersey Giant.

Most chicken breeds should do well in Mississippi, though we would need more information to help with better breed selections. For instance, will you free range? How many birds do you want? How hot and what sort of heat relief will they have? What kind of egg/meat production do you need?

Mediterranean breeds should do better in heat than some of the other classes.

 

[frodo]

they will have shade,,coop will be under trees..i am think 6 birds..all i really want is fresh eggs. brown eggs
the free range thing is out.we have coyotes around...cats dont stand a chance at night.
so i figure a chicken will be a night time snacky snack

dozen-18 eggs per week.. my wife does not want to eat a chicken she feeds .tender hearted...
i'm the opposite... south mississippi, 100 miles ne of new orleans
100 degree heat 1-3 mths out of the year

 

[boskelli1571]

Google the Hendersons' chicken chart - this will give you a good idea of what chicken lays what egg, how many, heat tolerance etc. I used this chart with great success in choosing the breeds I wanted for egg production.

 

[donrae]

The Mediterranean breeds are good for taking the heat, but they pretty much all lay white eggs.
Most of your dual purpose brown egg layers will do okay where you are. They'll be hot during the summer, but so are all animals in your AO. Shade, plenty of water, maybe a mister. They may not produce really well during July/Aug, but you'll balance that out with eggs at other times of the year.

Just for learning basic info about several different breeds of chickens, I like Murray McMurray's site. It's a hatchery with several different breeds. They show pics of the adults and chicks, with a quick stat section and a breed history. You can learn a lot browsing through there.


Something else to keep in mind are something like a Turken, the naked neck bird. They don't have feathers on their necks and are supposed to have up to 50% less feathers on their body, so that would help keep them cooler.

 

[olderoo]

No. Brown eggs are a trait associated with breed, not feather color. The other answers about this are spot on.

Probably the best all around brown egger, if you don't want a hybrid, is a RI Red.
This would be closely matched by NH Reds.

There are, of course, a dizzying array of hybrids, all sharing the same essential trait:
They can be sexed at hatching, male or female.

Next, they are almost always bred to be good if, not stellar, eggers - it's hard to go wrong with any hatchery hybrid today.
The problem is, they will not breed true. Successive generations will always increasingly throw back to the parent lines... And invariably lose the vigor and egging abilities they were initially chosen for.

 

[popsicle]

I just saw a blog post from one of the hatcheries (Murray McMurray? My Pet Chicken?) that the best breed of chicken for the Zombie Apocalypse would be Welsummer. They will lay brown eggs, be tolerant of confinement or free ranging, will breed true, etc.