Hi everyone,
Let me preface this by saying I have room for say 20-25 free range chickens, maybe 30 maximum. I've been rethinking my flock as I'm switching to breeding my own chicks and intending to butcher and eat excess males. So I've got to tighten down my breeds. I'd like to sell eggs, chicks and maybe even meat as a small pilot project, so performance and marketability are concerns. Laying through the winter is also important to me, btw. I live in Oregon zone 7b/8a and am fine with supplementing heat and light though.
Three breeds in particular that stand out to me are Bresse for it's speed and being a great true dual purpose bird that lays tan eggs, Black Copper Marans for it's dark eggs and the Cream Legbar for it's autosexing, high performance and blue eggs. AFAIK, these three breeds together should let me breed F1's for easter and olive eggers that I could sell as chicks, so the whole is greater than the sum of the parts here. I'm not really sure if I have enough room for all this though, and if I'd be better served by just sticking to Bresse then please let me know.
Some other breeds that stand out to me, mostly for consideration as a cross with the bresse to make my own broiler or dual purpose breed (ideally autosexing) are white/barred rock and white/dark cornish. But I think I could just order these as cockerels to borrow genetics as needed.
Marketability, performance, and my own interest in the breeds are all strong concerns. If marketability didn't matter I'd probably just stick to working on Bresse crosses, which I may do anyway, but the 'eggers' (chocolate, blue, easter and olive) are all good sellers for both egg cartons and chicks. If I had enough room I'd do it all but I imagine at a 30 chicken cap I'm pretty limited, and I'd rather see more revenue now (though still microscopic) and do fun genetic work later.
Let me preface this by saying I have room for say 20-25 free range chickens, maybe 30 maximum. I've been rethinking my flock as I'm switching to breeding my own chicks and intending to butcher and eat excess males. So I've got to tighten down my breeds. I'd like to sell eggs, chicks and maybe even meat as a small pilot project, so performance and marketability are concerns. Laying through the winter is also important to me, btw. I live in Oregon zone 7b/8a and am fine with supplementing heat and light though.
Three breeds in particular that stand out to me are Bresse for it's speed and being a great true dual purpose bird that lays tan eggs, Black Copper Marans for it's dark eggs and the Cream Legbar for it's autosexing, high performance and blue eggs. AFAIK, these three breeds together should let me breed F1's for easter and olive eggers that I could sell as chicks, so the whole is greater than the sum of the parts here. I'm not really sure if I have enough room for all this though, and if I'd be better served by just sticking to Bresse then please let me know.
Some other breeds that stand out to me, mostly for consideration as a cross with the bresse to make my own broiler or dual purpose breed (ideally autosexing) are white/barred rock and white/dark cornish. But I think I could just order these as cockerels to borrow genetics as needed.
Marketability, performance, and my own interest in the breeds are all strong concerns. If marketability didn't matter I'd probably just stick to working on Bresse crosses, which I may do anyway, but the 'eggers' (chocolate, blue, easter and olive) are all good sellers for both egg cartons and chicks. If I had enough room I'd do it all but I imagine at a 30 chicken cap I'm pretty limited, and I'd rather see more revenue now (though still microscopic) and do fun genetic work later.
Last edited:
Cream Legbar?
