Many do backyard mixes. Some crosses are better then the parent stock, 'hybrid vigor' they call it. I used to have, and always swore by RIRs being the best breed. Tried sex link comets, had a bad experience with them, most people swear by the sexlink hybrids, I thought the reds I always had were superior birds. I've been told one hatcheries stock, in this case my sexlink comets, compared to other hatcheries can be like apples and oranges, depends on their breeding practices and what the parent stock was, so maybe mine were just a bad batch being so many swear by them.
I wish I had started with dedicated breeds sooner, feel like I wasted time the last few yrs now. So many awesome breeds out there, many that were not even heard of yrs ago, cool egg colors, feathers, hats, black meat chickens!
I showed my dad a carton of our eggs, have a couple green laying EE and the broody lays olive, with some white and brown mixed in. He said the green and Olive looked "rotten" to him Lol, and looked serious, he'd never had heard of any of the breeds we have available today.
I chose White Jersey Giants as a 'focus' breed because they are rare, some have the blacks blue and splash but not many have the whites. Nothing special about them except for their size. I would like to help preserve the breed. And I will be trying them as capons, what the breed was bred for originally before the cornish x took over the meat market.
The reason the Red Sussex is my second focus, I don't know? Guess I was 'blessed' with them, my order was for the giants and black and blue langshans, Sandhill couldn't fill the order of langshans so substituted the sussex as packing peanuts for free! I would have had two giant breeds, eating a lot growing slow, langshans are very pretty but expensive to grow out like the giants.
Sussex are fast to grow, fast to lay, lay very good, and are heavy meat birds, very similar to good New Hampshire Reds, but a 'ancient' breed. Sussex date back to the Roman conquest of Britain 43 AD. The reds, I have only found two places that have them, Sandhill and Waltz's Ark Ranch.
