Jersey Giants are a dwindling American heritage breed and I love that you got a couple hens. They are getting rarer as people instead are desiring faster growing breeds and ultra productive egg layers (Sexlinks) who get spent after only a couple years -- but really, this JG breed is lovely and worth saving. I would suggest not eating her and you may find both girls so endearing and entertaining that you'll want to keep them. Don't expect huge eggs as pullets - it will take a while to get past the medium size. They are a slower maturing breed because they are larger. I envy that you even found a feed store that sold JGs! If you do add another hen to your flock make it a breed 6-lb or more to match your big Sexlink and JGs in size. Javas are another American heritage bird that is a larger bird and slower growing like the JG and a good match in size and a good egg-layer. GL whatever you decide -- read all the internet sites you find on JGs to give you a good background about them. JGs have been bred in the Blue color too but probably only private breeders have those.Hello.
We live in San Jose and just started with chickens. We bought chicks at Half Moon Bay Feed & Fuel as I called around and the SJ stores didn't have any. When we drove there, they had one black sex link and quite a few black jersey giants. We took the sex link and two of the jersey giants. They're ninety-x percent (forgot the exact number) likely to be female . They were born Feb 11th so are almost 2 months old now.
We didn't know anything about breeds when we bought them, only picked this type because that's all they had at the store. We've now learned the jersey giants are extra big, which is not ideal for the small home depot coop we bought (which is advertised as comfortable for four, but have learned on here perhaps better for regular/medium sized chickens). Plus variety would be more fun anyway, I woulda got another type if they had it. I suggested to my wife we eat the biggest one and try buying another type chick. She suggested how bout sell it since she's not super happy with the idea of killing/cleaning/eating a chicken we raised. Then I told her there's a norcal area on the forum I've been reading that maybe has other bay area people and maybe someone would trade us some other type of chicken for this one, anything's possible!
