We have Speckled, Light and Coronation Sussex. We have had many varieties of chickens for well over twenty three years. By FAR, our favorite breed is Sussex. We find them to be great foragers, very curious, gentle and funny. It is a rare day that I can lay in the hammock without one of them there to help.
That being said, we are focusing on the Coronations simply because the Lights are hard to come by. We accidentally stumbled onto some Great quality Lights about seven years back from a breeder in Missouri who was up and running with numerous breeds and then down and done just as quickly. There Is supposed to be a great breeder up in the Upper Peninsula.
We picked up a quad of Coronations last year. We weren’t sure how they would turn out as it was obvious they had had a rough start. They are stunning and although they spent the first four months of their lives in a dark box, they have become the bells of the barnyard.
We took a turn with the Speckleds in the past as this is our first love and why we were drawn to the breed in the first place. Unfortunately, we found what we have found in so many other purebred chickens we have raised through the years...health issues, birth defects and general ”offness”. It seems all the qualities we fell in love with didn’t show themselves in the purebred like it did in hatchery quality. We call those chickens “chickens from the boneless chicken ranch” after the comic The Far Side.
I don’t know if this helps, but there are more of us Sussex lovers out there
