good breeds for first timer?

[Stephanie739]

Quote:
I am very pleased with my leghorn hens. They are fantastic egg layers and not a bit aggressive. They are quite pretty too, rather small...what you may be calling noise is humorous to me. My girls love to let me know when an egg is coming or has been laid. I love the chatter, very sweet, imo. I will be breeding leghorns for eggs in the future. I love my leghorn girls. They were raised from day old chicks.

 

[Stephanie739]

I love to read about breeds here http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

 

[ChickenWisperer]

Quote:
Sometimes you get nice birds still from ideal. My order from Ideal a year ago, I got several in. The Barnevelder and Spitzhauben are VERY nice. The spitz so nice I could use her in a quality breeding pen, had a few spitz breeders on here pushing for it. The langshan and cochin were okay. Though most were typical very poor quality.

I order from ideal because of their customer care and they typically have better birds as far as temperament from the limited experience I've had. Out of the 40 some odd birds I've ordered, I only had aggression problems from the Orloff and the Delaware.

But you're right, there's a huge difference in the hatcheries years back and now. Sad, really.