New to the forum and chickens wanting to gather some knowledge on suggested breeds and where i could find then in southern indiana near madison. I am wanting to start a small backyard coop with around 4 hens.
Welcome.
Location matters a touch when you are looking for hens. This time of the year is perfect for buying 4 hens from a chicken person looking to reduce for winter. I have some hens listed on CL and there is another poster that mentioned rehoming hers or they become soup this weekend.
Now if you are looking for baby chicks, it is a touch harder this time of the year. I will have some from the hatchery on the 27th. I ordered extra since the assortment only came in groups of 25. It is possible that there are people near you wanting to place an order that you could add on to. There are chicks on CL too but with the heat we have had the past few weeks it is harder to get fertile eggs that have not gotten overly hot.
We also have a members list linked in the first post of this thread, you can narrow down the list to those closer to you and contact them. Several of the people here either hatch their own chicks or have broody hens that hatch out chicks.
If you are going to go the hatchery route ~ here are some you can look at: Akers (a smaller family set up), Meyers (located in OH), Murry (offers great rare breeds), and Cackle (lots of great assortment deals and small order packages)
As for breeds, check out the Meyer website. They have a world of info listed for many of the popular breeds. Once you settle in on what you want white eggs, brown eggs, meat, or looks, the process gets a touch easier.
Something else to consider is that if you are ordering from a hatchery there is a shipping charge. For 4 chicks you might be able to get high quality almost show quality even heritage chickens for the price of the hatchery including shipping. There are some chicken shows coming up. One in Bloomington on the 21st and one in Lebanon in Oct. If you can make it to either of these, you should be able to see lots of the different breeds up close, even talk to their owners to find out what makes them so great or not so great.
My main breed last year was the production rhode island reds. They lay lots of brown eggs but the chickens are smaller and not as richly colored as their heritage counterparts. I'm in the process of changing over to the Heritage RIR and wow they are amazing but they won't lay as soon and they are super hard to get this time of the year. There is a waiting list. Then I also fell in love with the blue sumatra ~ their looks, the long tails, and they are often broody, something I want to have / try at least once. But their eggs are smaller than the RIR and white (gasp). And they can fly really really well for a chicken. Then lately there has been a lot of talk about blue eggs and chicks that are easily sorted by gender at hatch, so I'm going to give the cream legbars a try. There are some breeds that are easier to sort out the males on hatch day than others, but add in the blue eggs and it makes the cream legbars interesting even if some of their hens are not the prettiest hens imo. I am liking having different breeds. At first I thought I just wanted one breed, that there had to be a best breed out there. But I have noticed that by having different breeds it is easier to name the chickens and make them more pet like. If you have youngsters you may end up with names like King Friday or Thomas and Percy, my children don't even care if they give a boy name to the hens just so long as the name matches up with a show they like.
All those breeds are good. The Australorps are very good egg producers. I have never really seen a white orphington but I would think they wouldnt be much different that a buff.
