Does Anybody Raise These Chickens

[ChooksChick]

Forgot to mention I also have Gold Laced Wyandottes and Blue-Laced Red Wyandottes- they are friendly and hardy and lay buckets of eggs.

 

[rdranch]

Quote:
We have six Blue Andys and I thought I was crazy until I actually caught two of them in the act of climbing the last two feet to the top of the fence to get out. It turns out they just wanted to lay their eggs in the goat house. The only bad part was that they couldn't get back in where their water and food is so we had to make the fence even higher!
Beautiful birds, just a little on the crazy side!

 

[Bullwinkle]

Others have already mentioned the other breeds... but I thought I'd comment further on Anconas.

They are more 'flighty' and high strung than the other varieties I have. I have three of them and have really grown to like them. They are sort of the "watch dogs" of my chickens: Anything that comes to close (or comes into the coop) they start talking and alert the others (My daughter calls them "talkies" instead of anconas). I have two 'normal' colored anconas (mostly black with white spots), but one is 95% white with just a little black in it.

I was getting (until winter days got shorter) about 2-3 eggs per week from each ancona. Their eggs are medium size but edible (I have some silver spangled hamburgs that I call my "Pigeons" because of their shape and also because I'd swear the small size of their eggs are about as big as a pigeons!)

I just got x2 white rocks last night (were less than a day old) so I can't comment on their laying, but I do have a Barred Rock. She lays about 5 eggs/week. She is one of my favorite hens, very personable.

 

[hen-thusiast]

I'll jump in on this.

We have a golden campine and I love her to pieces.... BUT... she is by far and away the most high strung bird we have and almost impossible to catch. You open the door of the coop an inch and she weasels her way out and runs everywhere. She's really loud too. To top it all off, she's the meanest bird we have, just plain old nasty... fortunately for the other hens she's now the bottom of the pecking order. She's an okay layer, not the best but not the worst. Her eggs are big for her, but she ended up full size being small for her breed (she's under three pounds) so her eggs are by far and away the smallest we get. Huge yolks though. Definitely an independent hen and an excellent forager.

It's just not a breed I would recommend, especially based on some of your other choices. All of our other birds are extremely friendly and easy to handle.

(Other breeds we have are silver laced wyandottes, golden laced wyandottes, blue-laced red wyandottes, easter eggers, golden sex link and dominiques.)

Edited to add: Our golden campine is a beautiful bird and her comb gets so big it flops over. I'd put a picture of her on here, but that would require her to stand still for more than a quarter of a second.

 

[rdranch]

Our Blue Andalusians are among the most beautiful we have ever raised but they are a little high strung, and are the first to fly/climb over the fence. Their eggs are averaging just under 2 oz. and they lay about one third less than the EE's and BSL's. They may be feisty, but I do love them. If you are looking for egg production they are probably not the best choice.