What breeds do your Chicken Raising Alaskan Friends have? If they work for them they will probably work for you but you may have some different requirements. For cold weather and good egg and meat production you want a dual purpose breed with a smaller comb, either rose of pea. Your biggest risk is from frostbite. The chickens with the big single combs are most at risk for that. Chanteclers and Buckeyes were specifically developed to be dual purpose birds for cold weather. Wyandottes would be a good choice too with their rose combs. I expect your friends have chickens with single combs that do OK but they are a bit more at risk for frostbite.
You can eat any chicken but don’t expect a lot of meat from any hen. They are just not that big compared to the chickens you buy at the store or the roosters. Half the chickens I eat are hens since I hatch what I eat. Just don’t get your hopes up for a lot of meat. Cooked right (slow and with moisture) they can be delicious.
Leghorns may not be a good choice. Their bodies are really small, there is just not a lot of meat there. They are egg laying machines and you can get brown leghorns with rose combs. If meat is not that high a priority they could be a decent choice for you.
Easter Egger really doesn’t describe much. EE’s are not a breed, just a chicken that might lay a green or blue egg, but then they might not. They might or might not have a pea comb. They might or might not get to be a decent size. I have EE’s and really like them but there are no guarantees with what you will get with them.
Red Stars are also problematic. They are not a breed but are a sex linked cross. They might be based on commercial egg layers or they might be made by crossing two dual purpose breeds. The commercial Red Stars are going to be fairly small but will lay a lot of really nice eggs. The will probably have single combs. The ones based on dual purpose breeds will be larger in size like their dual purpose breed parents and will probably lay pretty well. Most of them have single combs but a few have rose combs.
It’s quite possible you would be happy with any of these breeds but with your criteria they are not at the top of my list.
You can feed any of the Layer pellets or crumbles. They all should be a balanced diet with all the nutrition they need. Scratch is not a balanced diet at all. It is basically a mix of grains that they like but it is missing a lot of other stuff, especially amino acids. If you look at the label you will see some ingredients with really strange spellings. These are amino acids that they don’t get from grains and have to be added to feed. Scratch is OK for a treat but should be no more than 10% of their daily diet. I personally like the 16% feeds. They really don’t need the higher protein and the higher protein feeds are generally more expensive.
You can follow the link in my signature below for my thoughts on how much room you need. There are so many variables that there is no magic number for space that covers all of us. Individual chicken personalities, flock make-up, climate, management techniques, and many other factors are unique for each of us so there is no one square foot number that would work for all of us, but I’d think 10 might be a good maximum number of hens for you with that set-up. You probably could add a few more but I find the more I crowd then the more behavioral problems I have to deal with, the less flexibility I have in dealing with the problems that come up, and I have to work harder. I don’t like to crowd them because it makes my life harder.
Good luck and welcome to the adventure.
