Best breeds for Laying?

[JimWWhite]

Gold Comets are the best!!! Also known as Red Sex Links, Red Stars, Cinimmon Queens, etc. they're the best layers. We have 30 of them and with the newest 11 we added back in mid-May we're getting 25-27 big brown eggs every day. Even back in the winter when it was miserably cold and wet we were getting 15-18 eggs every day from Nov 1st until May. Now it's been miserably hot and they are still laying consistently. And the GC's are sturdy birds and they are people friendly. They like to be around you when you're out with them, especially in the evenings and especially if they think you might have a treat for them.

 

[beachchickie]

I am curious how often your EE's lay? I have 2 that lay nice sized eggs and they lay 4-5 eggs per week. They lay as well as my RIR who lays 5 eggs per week. After they are 18 mos they don't lay everyday but the eggs are larger. At least that is the way my girls lay. I have some BSL that just started to lay. I can't wait to see how they lay. One of them is quite feisty. She pecked us hard this am when we were clipping her wings. We did get her all upset but none of my others act like her.

 

[Beth G.]

My orp's lay just about everyday. I also have a Lav Orp Boy. He is really good with the ladies and shows no signs of aggression.

 

[Oreo]

I've revamped the way I do things, but last summer we bought three pullets and two roos at the local auction. My neighbor said they were red sex links. After keeping them in a cage for a couple days, I let them out with no facilities whatsoever. They stuck around. One of the hens got lost eventually, before they started laying, and I sold one of the roos. I also added a black hen of unknown variety with feathered legs. These chickens were completely free range and I did not feed them ANYTHING. When the two remaining RSL pullets started laying, and I found out where, they did not miss a single day for three months. That was with no supplemental feed. The black hen did about 5 per week. Then a neighbor three houses down complained to the sheriff that my chickens were free-ranging in her yard, and so I had to catch them and take them to my friend's house to keep them for me. I got them back now and have them at my boss's house where they have plenty of room to free-range and he has other chickens there and they have access to grain. The day before I caught them one of them laid a huge double-yoker which we weighed and it was well over half the weight of the world record. Free-ranging can work, but they have to have enough free range for them to go on.

 

[newTexan2chickens]

I currently have 2 BR, 2 americana mixes and 2 FBCM that are laying.... I am getting about 32 eggs per week from the 6 hens and the ones that are on the low end of production are the Marans.

 

[mordarlar]

We got lucky with our first egg layer. After an adjustment week, when we brought her home several months ago, our Red has laid an egg every single day. 7 days=7eggs. She is our only layer so we know that the egg each day comes from her. Because she lays at a slightly later time each day i suspect we will skip soon skip a day accommodate the slightly longer than 24 hour schedule she seems to be laying on. She was sold to us as a RIR but i suspect she may be a New Hampshire Red. Another thing, her eggs are extra large+ I've personally never had eggs this large. We sometimes half the eggs in baking recipes.

She is definitely not the friendliest chicken though. She likes things "just so." She never pecks at me but she is pretty hard on the other birds.

We're waiting on some Buff Orpingtons to reach maturity and i am glad to see here that they are pretty good layers as well.