- Jan 26, 2010
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We discovered this site a couple of days ago and this is our first post. Both my wife and I have experienced having chickens as kids. Now as we are getting ready to retire and move to property that has few acres we want to have chickens again. My wife enjoys crafts, like painting Ukranian eggs, so she needs some white eggs for that, and would also like tinted eggs. I like eating most any eggs, but prefer brown.
We have some fenced pasture, and also have Llama's. We want chickens that like foraging on their own, and that tend towards being friendly and easy to care for. We also like the idea of supporting breeds that are threatened. 6 or 8 chickens will provide more than enough eggs for us, so it does not matter if they are all prolific egg layers.
So we are leaning towards the following ecletic mix of chickens. We would probably order two of each to increase thye chances that if we lose some we would wind up with what we want. We have some friends that would take some chickens, so we could order 25 and give away the extra chicks. We are in the Pacific Northwest and also want cold hardy breeds for the winter.
Our proposed mix would be Dorking, Sussex, Holland, Wynodotte, Americana, and a bantam of Belgium D Uccle (small white eggss for crafts). It looks like Ideal hatchery is one of the only ones that can help us with all those different breeds. We we were looking at their website, we saw a breed we were not familiar with called the Brabanter that sounded interesting.
We want birds in about June. It appears Dorkings are sold out until then anyway. Is the Brabanter a better choice as a white egg layer than Holland or Dorking? What are the flaws in our plan otherwise, and is Ideal the right hatchery?
We have some fenced pasture, and also have Llama's. We want chickens that like foraging on their own, and that tend towards being friendly and easy to care for. We also like the idea of supporting breeds that are threatened. 6 or 8 chickens will provide more than enough eggs for us, so it does not matter if they are all prolific egg layers.
So we are leaning towards the following ecletic mix of chickens. We would probably order two of each to increase thye chances that if we lose some we would wind up with what we want. We have some friends that would take some chickens, so we could order 25 and give away the extra chicks. We are in the Pacific Northwest and also want cold hardy breeds for the winter.
Our proposed mix would be Dorking, Sussex, Holland, Wynodotte, Americana, and a bantam of Belgium D Uccle (small white eggss for crafts). It looks like Ideal hatchery is one of the only ones that can help us with all those different breeds. We we were looking at their website, we saw a breed we were not familiar with called the Brabanter that sounded interesting.
We want birds in about June. It appears Dorkings are sold out until then anyway. Is the Brabanter a better choice as a white egg layer than Holland or Dorking? What are the flaws in our plan otherwise, and is Ideal the right hatchery?