Mother Earth Survey of Chicken Breeds and Hybrids Results

[jojo54]

Mother Earth Survey of Chicken Breeds and Hybrids Results
This is the link of a survey they had on breeds, etc. Might find it interesting.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Chicken-Breeds-Hybrids-Survey.aspx

 

[GardeNerd]

I just took it! It took about 5-7 minutes since I have only had a half dozen breeds.

I am a Mother Earth subscriber so I was curious. They are publishing the results in the Spring, but you can click and view the results in progress.

It is an interesting survey. I think it will be very useful for someone starting out, to help make a choice about what some breeds are like. I like that you can view the results without taking the survey as well. It demonstrated that there is a little bit of variability within each breed.

 

[Chickndaddy]

Well I took the survey, but I don't think it was a very good one. It seemed like for every class there were only one or two breeds that were very commonly raised. Most people picked that they didn't have enough experience with the breed. I think the questions are very unclear and provide false answers.

For instance, I raised my birds in outdoor runs with a coop. They free-ranged in the afternoon. I couldn't show that though.

Do polish become broody? I don't know I only ever had males wasn't an option I had to pick that I didn't have enough experience.

Some questions required you to answer something that has a lot of variables. Like what is hot or cold. In East Texas cold is 30 - 40 degrees. It doesn't often get colder here. Hot is 90 - 100 degrees. For other areas I am sure that hot and cold are completely different things. Or Jumbo, X-Large, Large, Medium, and Small for the egg sizes. My large and someone else may be different. I realize that it technically depends on the ounce weight of the egg, but I honestly didn't weigh mine that often.

There was no specification for Large Breed or Bantam. A lot of those breeds have representatives in both sizes.

And what in the world did they want you to put for strain? I listed colors...

And while Marans is in the actual poll, they do not show up in the results or several other places.

 

[Mahonri]

I took the survey... too simplistic IMHO.

Where do we find the resluts????

 

[Illia]

I'm a little down for the fact that they missed out a lot of "misc" breeds. In my opinion it is a nice little survey, though. But, yeah, some things are iffy - Like cold or heat tolerance. Uh, depends what someone thinks is cold or hot. It rarely gets up to 80 degrees out here, and rarely gets to 20 degrees, so. . . Cold to me is 30's, and hot is 75 or above. .

So in the end I just based it off of the few days we had extremes ( low 20's or mid 80's )

 

[sloallie10]

i took it

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

That survey stinks.

I am sure the MEN will take the comments and make pronouncements extoling the "free range" benefits over the abormation of confincement and show that the Heritage Breeds are so much better than the crosses.