Six chickens is exactly what I ordered for my first batch of chickens, coming this July. Here is what I ordered, and why:
1) Black Copper Marans - Beautiful dark brown eggs. I am drawn to dark brown eggs for some reason, even though I know they taste the same as other eggs, and have the same nutritional content that eggs laid by other breeds do, under the same feeding conditions. But I still love those dark shells.
2) Silver-Laced Wynodette - Very pretty bird, and cold-hardy.
3) Gold-Laced Wynodette - Very pretty bird, and cold-hardy.
4) Buff Orpington - My designated lap pet. I've heard orpingtons are super-friendly, and I wanted a chicken that liked snuggles and petting and sitting in my lap. Also, cold-hardy.
5) Australorp - Friendly, cold-hardy.
6) Easter-Egger - Ok, I got this one just for the eggs. I think it would be fun to get green or blue eggs. I know, they only lay one color for their whole lives (which was sad for me when I learned that, LOL!) I'm hoping for a pretty jade-green egg, or a pretty sky-blue egg.
Because this is my first batch of chickens ever, I wanted to have six different breeds, so I could tell them all apart, and see the personalities of each breed.
I wanted mostly clean-legged breeds. I have this (weird) phobia of dirty feet. Heavily-feathered footed breeds such as cochins are cute when they're all clean, but ewwwww.....dirty, poopy, feathered feet would gross me out. Clean-legged birds don't have a problem with poopy feathered feet. I know, the Marans chick I got will have feathered legs, but most of the ones I've seen aren't too heavily feathered on their feet.
I needed cold-hardy birds. I live in northern Utah, and the weather here is awful. I needed birds that could survive in our cold snowy winters.
It will be fun to see the contrast in personalities in these hens (I ordered all females). I want to try to train them as well. I'm hoping to teach them how to read simple English words, such as "Worm", "Water", "Feed", etc. by labeling items in their run with both the word, and a picture. Then, when I ask them to get a worm, they can run over to the correct trough and get one. I think chickens are pretty intelligent... I want to see HOW intelligent they are. (Yeah, good luck with this project).
