Breed recommendation, please

[AccentOnHakes]

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With our first flock of 3, we had two GLWs and a Leghorn. Seemed to be at the bottom of the pecking order...poor thing. Not too loud, but maybe just her? Trying my luck with a bantam one this spring.

I've made a decision never to have one of a kind anymore. I have the same problem with a Hamburg. She is alone and now the lowest on the pecking order. Everyone pushes her aside. All the others are in pairs and they always stick together. From now on, any chickens I get will always be a minimum of 2 of a kind so they have a "partner". There seems to be alot of truth in the old saying, "Birds of a feather flock together".

This spring, we are starting over. We gave them away because of the bird flu, but we are not so worried anymore. This time....6 different bantam breeds, at least 5 different colors.(Don't know what colors the EEs will be, I'm getting 2.)

 

[Crunchie]

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Those are super cool!

Very nice!

I love the look of the exchequer leghorns. Peachick here on BYC has them--I've seen them in person--they are beautiful!

 

[TipsyDog]

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Wow! Those are beautiful! I had alot of those that a friend of my Mom used to make years ago. I displayed them every Easter and suddenly they just cracked.

It must take you hours to make one of those!

 

[elem]

What about a Dorking or a Holland? They are both kind of rare but there are a couple hatcheries that have them if you can't find a breeder. They are bigger than a leghorn so they might hold up to your winters a bit better.

 

[greathorse]

If you want large eggs and heavy breeds you should perhaps give up on the white egg. There are many many options if you can live with brown eggs. Any one of the sex linked birds will give you great productioin as well as large eggs and good disposition.


The leghorn has really dominated the prolific white layers and I think the production driven breeding has made them a little wacked for some folks and they are bred to be small. I had a cople of them and they were not bad at all. They liked to fly a bit, but layed like crazy and did not seem overly skittish. They do have very large combs and so would be at risk of freezing combs in your part of the world.

SLW are great layers heavy and rose combed with decent sized eggs. I would sure think about them, but they of course lay a light brown egg.

OOPS just saw your post about the egg art, very nice by the way. Makes a lot of sense that you need a white egg layer. Why not get any white layer that appeals to you and not worry too much about production. I bet even a poor layer can lay them faster than you can paint those beauties, LOL. I could not do that if my life depended on it.

Seriously my Leghorns were not bad at all. I would also guess that the exhibitioin leghorns are less flighty than the more production driven ones. Maybe you could look for an exhibition breeder.

 

[cposz]

Thank you for all of these suggestions - if we add another hen or two it wouldn't be until spring when we can enlarge the henhouse a little. I might give the brown leghorn a second thought ...