Welcome to BYC. Glad you decided to our flock. The very best layers are White Leghorns (for white eggs) and Black and Red Sex Links (for brown eggs). These are the hens used by commercial laying houses as they are egg laying machines, consistently churning out more than 300 eggs per hen per year. The most colorful eggs are those of Easter Eggers (blue, olive, green, beige, and sometimes even pink or gold), Ameraucanas, Araucanas, and Cream legbars (blue), and Marans, Welsummers, Barnevelders, and Penedescencas, all of which lay chocolate (very dark brown) eggs. In my personal opinion, the chocolate eggs are the prettiest eggs in the chicken world. How many hens you will need depends on how many eggs per week you want. If you get White Leghorns or sex links, you will typically get 6-7 eggs per week. With the colored egg breeds I mentioned, only about 3-4 eggs per week. Most owners' chickens come from hatcheries (which is fine for egg production), but for those who want show quality stock that meets the APA standard of perfection, they purchase their birds from reputable breeders. Please feel free to ask any other questions you may have. We are here to help in any way we can. Whatever breeds you decide to get, good luck with your flock.