You can always add in some bantam Easter Eggers for a bit of color variety in the egg basketThis is my kind of thread! Like most all of you, I keep livestock (dairy goats and chickens, and now a Jersey heifer calf) for their practical qualities. I want good quality animals, because I have to look at them, but they've got to earn their keep. I am just taking a break from butchering a goat who didn't give enough milk to justify feeding her, and the same criteria applies to the chickens. Right now I've got Golden-laced Wyandottes and Black Australorps, but I'm seriously considering switching to bantams, for several reasons.
For one thing, it's only my youngest daughter and I living here (she's mentally handicapped and will always live with me, so no growing up and going away to college to reduce the size of our household).
For another, I'd like to keep a few bantams as caged birds in the house to entertain DD, and would like to be able to rotate them in and out of the main flock (I'm thinking of using the house cage for raising chicks, and for broody hens -- DD would love that!).
Then there is the fact that I have several all-wire chicken tractors made from rabbit cages (bottoms removed, they work very well as long as the goats don't get out and walk on top of them, which did happen once!). The cages aren't tall enough to use as breeding pens for large fowl, but would work fine for bantams, giving me ready-made breeding pens. I can't free-range here, even with a good livestock guardian dog, the predator pressure is just too intense.
And, if I kept bantams, I could keep more birds, have more young ones to select from, and be able to cull more heavily.
Oh, and I'd like having a smaller carcass that was just a meal or two for the two of us. My frig is usually full of milk (right now it's full of home-made sauerkraut and milk), so there isn't a lot of room for leftovers.
So I think I've talked myself into bantams, LOL! I think I'll use RIR's, OEG (probably Ginger Reds, as I like the color of the hens, as well as the roosters -- a lot of the colors seem to have very bland-colored hens, and since part of the purpose is to entertain DD....), and Spangled Cornish. Maybe a little White Leghorn and New Hampshire if they have the same qualities as the LF versions. Should end up with colorful pea-comb dual-purpose birds!
Kathleen