Hardy, friendly chickens recommendations...

[PetitePlume]

WOW! This is so much information in this tread!
Basically the climate up here is dry. So it makes it easy for a few things. Winter is long and dark. We get freezing temperature from October through April.
The same breeds came up over and over so I'll look into those and then see what is available here.
Chantecler is on the list
RIR. I beleive I one of my hen what this breed last summer and I loved her personnality. She was independant, busy and good at running away from the kids, so much they even gave up. Really good layer as well.
I love the look of the Wyandotte and heard really good things about them.
And the list goes on and on...
Now the problem will be choosing... If only I had the lifestyle that would allow me to have 16 of them!
Will built some kind of an A frame low/half way in the ground. Roosting up high, nesting boxes near by for a maximum warmth during the winter. I got the wide rooster for they won't freeze their toes.
Luckily I'm quite handy, but nothing like my partner and we have mill and time. Will be getting wild on the shovel once the ground thaws to make a skookum big happy run for the days I can't watch them.
Heading out of cell service for the rest of the winter, I'll be drawing like a mad woman and see what comes out of it. My daughters will get to be part of it so here comes an other family project!
I spent my first 32 years without chicken. But I'm in love with them so better have a set up that will last for a loooong time!

 

[black_dove2]

Check your area for the type of chickens people own in your climate. I got some fluffy breeds in our humid SoCalif climate and they suffered in the heat because of their heavily under-downed feathers -- they would've been perfect for snow country though! Now I just get breeds with sleeker feathers, lighterweight bodies, and no comb or rosecomb breeds to tolerate our weather extremes here. Not often, but we do get occasional freezing nights and even with pre-treatment our Leghorn's comb tips froze, so no more straight-comb breeds for us now. We adored our pea-combed Ameraucana for her gentle temperament but we no longer acquire heavily under-downed breeds in our climate zone.

For our temperature extremes we love weather-tolerant Silkies, Breda, and Dominiques. The bearded walnut-comb Silkies are one of the best layers w/good egg size for a bantam and make good natural broody mommas hatching all types of eggs like duck, goose, quail, or chicken eggs -- fluffy sweet docile little birds that weigh around 2 to 2.5 lbs. Breda are nice because they have absolutely no comb and smaller wattles, feathered legs/feet/toes, vulture hocks, and a small tassle crest -- very gentle-nature and good medium to large egg white layers -- mine lay in the winter best -- the hens get around 4.5 to 5 lbs. Dominiques have small rose combs and good for all climates, decent layers of medium to large light brown eggs and hens weigh from 4.5 to 5 lbs -- she's a pesty family-friendly breed that seem to thrive on human attention so definitely a plus for active children. Easter Eggers are sweet birds but you never can rely on whether they want human attention or not. To socialize handle baby chicks often during the day but not for too long at a time as chicks will start to nod off if they're exhausted/stressed and need to be left alone for rest -- just like human babies.

Tired Dominique babies snoozing on a computer keyboard.
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We are not zoned for roos and have had nothing but hens for 7 yrs that free-range all day in the backyard. We have a tall block wall and iron bar fencing surrounding our property and double gates to get into the backyard in case someone doesn't close a gate behind them we have a second that automatically closes. Dogs are our worst daytime predators, Evenings the city raccoons and possums roam the neighborhood so having a secure coop is paramount for us with dog kennel wire walls to lock up the chickens at night. We haven't lost a hen to a predator either on the ground or aerial predator in the 7 yrs they've been free-ranging (without a roo) so in our case we never needed a rooster for protection plus roo's -- especially cockerels -- tend to over-mate the hens and stress them. We haven't missed needing a roo but perhaps in the outback open country a couple roo's might be useful on some properties. We have 5 doghouses, a lean-to, a pop-up canopy, garden beds, plants, composter, lawn furniture, etc, for the hens to hide under whenever our resident Cooper's Hawk lands in the yard. Darnedest thing is these hawks won't engage in ground scrabbling w/ our hens when the girls are hiding. Seems the hawks prefer to swoop down on running hens rather than scrapping w/ hiding hens.

As for chickens, we made the mistake of not researching temperaments of breeds before mixing them up in a flock and we found the docile breeds getting picked on by the more aggressive and larger breeds. The more assertive breeds which I found are Rhode Islands, Leghorns, sometimes Barred Rocks and Orpingtons simply because of their large size they are tempted to bully. We had a bully Marans hen at 7 lbs and never got another Marans again. The big breeds are what didn't work for our flock which we wanted to keep docile, lightweight in size, and gentle-natured but still predator-savvy -- so we trimmed our choices down to Silkies, Breda, and Dominiques as our favorite gentle breeds w/ somewhat decent egg production. Cochins and Faverolles are docile sweet beautiful breeds but way too fluffy and not the most stellar in egg production if we wanted eggs. I think Dorkings would be a nice breed too except that they have larger straight combs than we wanted to see on our birds. We never considered Icelandics because they love to free-range and are rather indepenent and don't like being confined -- we can't have bored chickens flying over the fence into our neighbors' yards.

Our favorite family-friendly breeds:

Blue Breda pullet -- small wattles, no comb, vulture hocks, feathered legs/toes
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Sweet Blue Wheaten Ameraucana -- way too fluffy for our humid climate, blue eggs
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Blue Breda hen -- no comb, pretty lacing, terrific white egg layer
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Gentle breeds flocking together -- 2 Silkies, 1 Ameraucana, 1 Blue Breda
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Ameraucana blue eggs, Breda white eggs, Silkie tinted eggs (under other eggs)
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5 dog houses in our yard and the chickens use ALL of them!
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Our heavy duty chicken coop and dog kennel run under our patio roof
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Sturdy dog kennel wire run keeps chickens safe at night from raccoons/possums
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Can't have just ONE Silkie -- 2 Silkies toodle around together all day
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Cuckoo Breda -- no comb, vulture hocks, feathered legs/toes, triangle tassle on top -- good winter egg-layer that surprised us when she went broody for 3 weeks
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Pesty friendly Dominiques with docile Cuckoo Breda (vulture hocks/feathered legs) The Doms are barely 5 months old so we haven't seen any eggs from them yet.
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I was looking to add another hen in a few months was considering blue or green eggs to make it easier on me to know who's laying what and when.

But I've never seen your Cuckoo Breda and they are beautiful. I'll have to look into whether or not they'll be fine in our climate. I thought silkies wouldn't but there's a breeder nearby so go figure. All your hens are beautiful. Great photos!

 

[CatMom]

If you build your coop into the ground, ... " POST CLIPPED... "here and have not tried such a thing. However, there is a fellow in ?Sweeden or some country in that area who has his birds in a giant green house type building with a huge compost frame in the middle.

I think Lazy Gardener was referring to the vlog "Swedish Homestead" & if you haven't already seen it you should check it out! Here's a recent one concerning their Chickens ~

Also, I see a lot of folks recommended EE's/Easter Eggers. Just so there's no confusion I love Easter Eggers I have had several, however purists among Ameraucana fanciers will point out that EE's are a mixed type of bird, often but not always an Ameraucana or Araucana mixed with anything else. This means that they don't have a true breed profile for temperament. I've had some so-called americanas from hatcheries that turned out to be ease who were fantastic Birds very friendly I got them as chicks in hand raise them I've also recently had one who's part Welsummer part "something with blue eggs" (alleged Ameraucana) and though she's raised by a very friendly Broody she has grown up completely outrageous: difficult to catch, Hard to Handle, but lays fantastic Olive colored eggs (Welsummer brick color bloom on a blue shell = dark olive... if I were ever to sell her, I would bill her as either Easter Egger or Olive Egger)and is a champion forager (a trait you might want to consider important and it's the Welsummer that that has that every one I've known has been a fantastic forager when they free range but don't mind hanging out in the run/ yard when they're cooped). The upshot of this mixed news is that Easter Eggers can be very pet like particular if you raise them from chicks or they can be off the wall insane wild birds and you never know what you're going to get because they're mixed. UNLESS you know somebody who's raising them and you can see the stock they come from and judge by the parent's temperament.

Best of luck please let us know how it goes!

 

[TomZilla43]

Thanks for sharing about your coop, that's a really neat coop design. I'm actually not in the market for one as I'm in process of building a coop currently but I enjoyed the video and I've kind of turned into a chicken coop nerd always looking at design ideas.

 

[Sylvester017]

WOW! This is so much information in this tread!
Basically the climate up here is dry. So it makes it easy for a few things. Winter is long and dark. We get freezing temperature from October through April.
The same breeds came up over and over so I'll look into those and then see what is available here.
Chantecler is on the list
RIR. I beleive I one of my hen what this breed last summer and I loved her personnality. She was independant, busy and good at running away from the kids, so much they even gave up. Really good layer as well.
I love the look of the Wyandotte and heard really good things about them.
And the list goes on and on...
Now the problem will be choosing... If only I had the lifestyle that would allow me to have 16 of them!
Will built some kind of an A frame low/half way in the ground. Roosting up high, nesting boxes near by for a maximum warmth during the winter. I got the wide rooster for they won't freeze their toes.
Luckily I'm quite handy, but nothing like my partner and we have mill and time. Will be getting wild on the shovel once the ground thaws to make a skookum big happy run for the days I can't watch them.
Heading out of cell service for the rest of the winter, I'll be drawing like a mad woman and see what comes out of it. My daughters will get to be part of it so here comes an other family project!
I spent my first 32 years without chicken. But I'm in love with them so better have a set up that will last for a loooong time!

We chickeneers are crazy chicken people and LOVE our birds -- no matter WHAT breed. My gosh, I've even fallen in love with some of our mean flock birds simply because they were nice to me or layed terrific eggs but had to be re-homed because of their mean-ness to other hens.

It's perfect that you are researching before you decide on chickens and their housing. We bought and set up our first coop before bringing home our first two chickens. Some people buy chicks to raise indoors while building a coop but chicks grow VERY fast and most people can't get their coops built fast enough before the chicks are grown LOL!

I started out wanting beautiful Wyandottes but after consulting with owners/breeders I found a 50/50 feedback about their bully tendencies. Even MyPetChicken admits Wyans as being a "dominant" temperament so I decided against them -- but fanciers have bred them in so many color varieties that they continue to be owner favorites. I just didn't want to take the chance I'd get stuck w/ an aggressive Wyan that I'd have to re-home later.

My friend had sweet pea-combed Easter Eggers that layed light green eggs, my sweet APA Blue Wheaten Ameraucana layed pretty light blue eggs -- both these related breeds can be overly skittish or one could surprise you and turn out exceptionally people-friendly -- in any case both hen breeds are generally not aggressive towards humans or children if you want colored eggs -- just don't have high expectations that they will allow humans or children to touch/catch them. Best time to catch these girls for health maintenance/inspection is on the roost at night after they go to sleep! They sort of calm down while holding them and they'll actually carry on a conversation while you hold them -- the trick is to catch them in the first place LOL! The rare Russian Orloffs look a lot like Easter Eggers and Ameraucanas and have sweet personalities and puffy feathered cheeks too but like EEs and Amers the ROs are not always the best egg layers. All these breeds have good docile temperaments.

On the other hand, Dominiques were a common Colonial backyard chickens and hardy in all kinds of weather and probably the pesty-est, most curious, outgoing, unafraid, people-friendly breed we've had in our 7 yrs of chickeneering -- nice small rosecomb and fairly smaller wattles with the softest, nicest-smelling feathers of any breed we've had. The Silkies don't have odorous feathers either and are sweet pets. Dominique girls are NEVER still but are foraging busily most of the time. They don't come running when they see us -- instead they come FLYING to see us! I think these girls might be the most approachable chicken breed as we've had visitors fall in love with these girls who in turn loved every visitor and child and had no problem sitting on visitors' shoulders, laps, shoes, arms, or pecking at their feet. Just don't smile big when close to a hen as they'll inspect the pearly white teeth in your mouth! Like I say, pesty-friendly hens that are easy to pet or pick up and hold.


Dominique juveniles pecking at DH's shoe/pant leg as he's cutting up spinach for a treat.

Our Colorado friends with 2 children liked the Buckeyes and Dominiques we recommended to them for their snow climate. They got a quad of Dom's w/ one Dom roo and got 2 Buckeye hens to try them and they loved both breeds for their sweet personality and gentleness. They allowed their little flock to free-range year-round so they opted to have a Dom rooster for flock protection.

We had Leghorns and Marans and as much as we loved them for their eggs, they were too aggressive for our other gentle breeds and we re-homed the bullies. If there are children in the family the Legs and Marans are not the best pets as they often are stand-offish about human closeness. Their big combs are not good in freezing temps.

We love the Breda and Silkies for our SoCalif humid climate. Both breeds have feathered legs/toes -- we don't get muddy conditions for the feathered toes to get caked in mud/snow. But where snow or heavy rain climates occur I would recommend keeping feather-legged breeds like Langshan, Breda, Brahma, Silkies, Sultans, etc, out of the slush. I personally hate to cage up animals in a pen so I'm fortunate to have pleasant weather conditions to allow our feather-legged breeds to roam free year-round.

The freezing Yukon may not have rat problems but I would still recommend using wire fencing (1/4-inch hardwire square holes -- expensive but worth it for chicken safety) buried about 18 inches or deeper to keep out digging critters from getting into your chicken pen. Rats will chew off the feet of sleeping chickens -- yep, chickens can be THAT dumb while sleeping! The hardwire will discourage digging foxes, dogs, weasels, rabbits, etc that want to get to the chicken feed or get to the chickens themselves. Sounds expensive? You bet! Chickens are a hobby, not a money-maker -- can't even break even. I figure with our chicken housing, feed bills, veterinarian bills, medication bills, maintenance products, etc, the chickens will finally pay off by year 2080 provided we don't need to feed them any more or take them to the vet any more LOL! Chickens are like any other pet dog or pet cat -- requires more to put into them than what you get out of them. At least chickens give back a little by being pets, laying eggs seasonally, useful as garden fertilizer, and good bug/insect control. Some people eat their chickens and that's a good option for culling mean birds but my DH is a softie and prefers finding other homes for our bullies. So far all our re-homed birds went to good layer flock homes or a friend's rescue farm. And so far, our Breda's, Silkies, and Dominques have had much too good temperaments and never needed re-homing!

Go to the BYC thread called "post your chicken coop pictures here" to get ideas about the different types of coops people have bought or built for their particular climates and budgets. It's a long thread but so very interesting and full of criticisms, compliments, good suggestions, and best of all very good advice for coop safety. Coops don't have to be gorgeous Taj Mahal buildings but coops DO have to be secure from predators. Number one cause of chicken loss is from predators and there's nothing more disheartening than to go into the yard and find dead chicken bodies or just feathers and blood from a wandering chicken predator. I almost lost our first two chickens in our first little coop when two stray neighborhood dogs broke down our yard gate and attacked our coop -- we were lucky to have a Good Samaritan neighbor hear the commotion and chased off the dogs but the flimsy chicken hexwire was mangled beyond repair. I absolutely do not recommend cheap flimsy chicken hexwire fencing -- it will keep chickens inside but won't keep aggressive predators outside. Formula for minimum coop/pen builds: coop floor space - 4 sq ft per chicken; pen space - 10 sq ft per chicken; perch space - 1 sq ft per chicken with perch mounted 12 inches or more from walls; open air ventilation (but not drafty) even in snowy winter - 1 sq ft per chicken.

Keep us informed of your choices and builds -- if you can, photos are always welcome!

 

[Sylvester017]

I was looking to add another hen in a few months was considering blue or green eggs to make it easier on me to know who's laying what and when.

But I've never seen your Cuckoo Breda and they are beautiful. I'll have to look into whether or not they'll be fine in our climate. I thought silkies wouldn't but there's a breeder nearby so go figure. All your hens are beautiful. Great photos!

A true Ameraucana breeder is the best way to get guaranteed blue-green eggs. An Easter Egger is related to Amer's but does not meet APA Ameraucana standards for feather color or egg color and EEs will sometimes turn out to be pink/brown/grayish egg layers rather than green or blue. One owner had an EE that layed WHITE eggs! A true Ameraucana is more expensive than a $7 Easter Egger. Absolutely nothing wrong with EEs but if you want guaranteed blue-green eggs than the Ameraucana is best. Some people are breeding designer blue egg chickens like Cream Legbars, Arkansas Blues, and My Pet Chicken has some designer blue egg and/or olive egg breeds they sell -- most of the guaranteed blue-green egg colors cost more than the average EEs sold at feed stores. I just personally found the blue-green layers too skittish as pets but at least they are mostly gentle-natured to keep in a mixed flock -- often found at the bottom of pecking orders.

TY -- our Cuckoo Breda is a real joy. Breda do not have combs but rather a triangle tassle on top of their head where a comb should be. They have large cavernous crow-like nostrils like Houdan/Polish, and they have heavily feathered legs, very long toe feathers, and vulture hocks. The hens weigh about 4.5 to 5-lbs while the roos are about 6+ lbs. Not a huge bird but Breda are lighter on the feed bill than a 7-lb RIR or Marans. BBS Breda (Blue/Black/Splash) are good white egg layers, and our Cuckoo Breda lays tinted pink eggs. Breda come in a variety of colors but so far our Cuckoo has been our hardiest Breda hen laying the largest egg size at 2.25-oz eggs. Our Blue Breda layed 1.75-oz white eggs and started laying as a pullet without stop for 10+ consecutive months. Our Cuckoo Breda took a couple broody breaks but we don't mind her broody to give her body a rest from laying such big eggs. The Breda seem to lay better during the cooler months rather than hot weather. The only drawback I can foresee about Breda are their feathered feet getting caked in slushy mud. We keep our feather-legged Silkies and Breda in the pen during rainy days so they don't build up mud on their feathered toes walking through mud puddles. If it rains lightly and there's no muddy slush on the ground, we let the birds roam. Heavy downpours NO ONE is released to roam.

Cuckoo Breda hen inside the pen and young Blue Breda pullet on the outside of pen

2-yr-old Cuckoo Breda hen -- no comb, triangle tassle on top

Cuckoo Breda hen with docile Partridge Silkie hen

Cuckoo Breda young pullet with 2 Silkies -- the Breda's vulture hocks and feathered toes were still growing in -- she's still losing her baby fuzz here.

This Blue Breda pullet had nice dark lacing on her feathers -- no comb, large nostrils

I switched from heavily-underdowned Ameraucana to sleeker feathered smaller Breda for my humid SoCalif climate. The Ameraucana couldn't handle the hot weather while the Breda seemed to handle our climate much better. GaryDean26 said they would lose their heavy birds during hot Texas 112 degree heatwaves while their smaller lighterweight birds came through just fine and GaryDean raised Breda and Andalusian at the time we dialogued. I never thought to consider a feather-legged chicken until we had Silkies and saw how hardy those little buggers have been through the years -- our oldest hen in the flock happens to be a Silkie!

 

[Sylvester017]

Thanks for sharing about your coop, that's a really neat coop design. I'm actually not in the market for one as I'm in process of building a coop currently but I enjoyed the video and I've kind of turned into a chicken coop nerd always looking at design ideas.

Yeah, I'm not in the market for a new coop ever again after spending so much on our house remodel plus ordering our 2nd and last (hopefully) coop to put under one of our patios. But I still love to see the newest and improved designs anyway. Have you been to the BYC thread yet called "post your chicken coop pictures here" ? There are lots of ideas, criticisms, evaluations, recommendations, pictures, and generally good advice to consider. In our situation as seniors building our own was out of the physical question. No coop was ever EXACTLY what we wanted or could afford but we found a company to customize options and change the design for us and our contractor put the heavy-duty stuff together on the coop for us. My next move will be 6 feet under LOL!

 

[black_dove2]

@Sylvester017

Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I'm in the low desert no mud here, lol. More worried about how they deal with the heat. Since they are sleeker they may be able to handle it well.

My concern is with feathered legs and no comb it may be more difficult to keep cool.

I'll have to do more research. My two are not really pets per see but i can pet handle Danish Brown, not so with RIR. Not too skittish.

 

[Alaskan]

Everyone will have their favorite breeds.

However, for low care cold weather birds (especially if it is cold and wet), you need a breed with TINY comb and wattles, and CLEAN feet (no feathers on the feet). I know some people might say feathered feet keep the feet warm.. but wet snow will ball up on the feathers, and freeze the toes. If you live in a dry area, it can be OK, or if you have a covered dry run. But wet and cold are bad for feathered feet.


For hardy, easy care, great personalities, productive, and roosters that are not people aggressive, I easy vote for the Dominiques. Great birds.

Some males have wattles bigger than I would like... but still great birds. I haven't tried Chantecleer's or Buckeyes.

 

[Sylvester017]

@Sylvester017

Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I'm in the low desert no mud here, lol. More worried about how they deal with the heat. Since they are sleeker they may be able to handle it well.

My concern is with feathered legs and no comb it may be more difficult to keep cool.

I'll have to do more research. My two are not really pets per see but i can pet handle Danish Brown, not so with RIR. Not too skittish.

Danish Brown (Leghorn?) and RIR are good breeds to keep together. More assertive breeds go well together. It's when timid or docile breeds are added to the assertive flock that bullying can start. We had a beautiful Buff Leghorn that turned into a bully at one-year chasing the Ameraucana around the yard and pulling out her cheek muffs and yanking out the Silkie crest feathers so we had to get rid of the Buff Leg. Our White Leghorn was fine for 3 years and suddenly decided she was going to bully everyone in the flock. We loved her and waited to get her calmed down but she never did. In her new flock home she quickly rose to the top of the pecking order as a new hen in the coop. Our dark egg layer Marans was a bully from the start so she didn't stay with us either.

Feathered legs/feet are not a problem in our humid climate zone. 3 months of the year we get nice 30 to 40 degree nights and usually 60 to 80 degree days -- but 9 months the rest of the year we are absolutely sweltering in 80-100 degree days and 60-80 degree nights. Our Breda do fine with no comb and so do the small-comb Silkies -- both breeds have feathered legs/toes. Our 5-month-old Dominique juveniles seem to do really well in all sorts of temps but haven't been through one of our sweltering summers yet -- but I suspect they'll be fine. Our Leghorns did fine in the heat but it was during winter that their comb tips darkened so I don't bother with straight comb breeds any more. I talked with a Breda/Andalusian breeder in Texas about straight-combs for hotter climates and they said the weight and size of a chicken is to be considered more than comb size during heatwaves. So I switched to pea-comb or no-comb chicken breeds in lighterweight sizes to tolerate our heatwave climate. Plus we discovered our 3 breeds are docile gentle breeds that happen to get along well together -- no bullying, no combats, and the Breda and Dominiques don't mind the little 2.5-lb Silkie being top hen. When we considered to keep docile smaller breeds we took into consideration the best laying chickens of the lightweight breeds -- we weren't looking for meat birds. Everyone has their own favorites and these just happen to be our choices.