The Right Breeds For The Kling Klan?

[Ridgerunner]

I agree that coop is pretty small for five hens in your climate, but if you can keep snow out of the run right around the coop so they have access to underneath during your bad weather, it should work out fine. You can follow the link in my signature for my thoughts on space, but it’s not just space in the coop that matters, it’s how much total space they have access to when they need it.

We all have our preferences as far as breeds and such. Buckeyes and Chanticlers were developed specifically for colder climates but in reality, practically any of the dual purpose breeds will work for you as well as some of the mixes. Easter Eggers (EE’s) and Sex Links are not breeds, but instead are mixes. Not all EE’s lay colored eggs. Since they are mixes and their genetics are mixed up, they can lay any color of egg, but I think it’s still worth a try with them. Those colored eggs are unique. If you have a choice, try to get one with a pea comb. That improves your odds of a colored egg.

There is nothing wrong with your selection of EE’s and Black Australorps. There is no telling what color those EE’s will be but many are quite colorful. When I started out with my current flock I wanted color too so I went with the song, red and yellow, black and white.

I’m probably not doing you any favors, but you can look through Henderson’s Breed Chart to see tendencies and traits of the various breeds (EE’ and sex links won’t be there since they are not breeds), then go to Feathersite to see photos. This can be extremely time consuming and even addictive, plus will certainly add to your indecision since there are so many great breeds out there. With your set-up, you are looking at cold hardy, lay well, and take confinement well.

Henderson’s Breed Chart
http://www.sagehenfarmlodi.com/chooks/chooks.html

Feathersite
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/BRKPoultryPage.html#Chickens

Good luck and welcome to the adventure.

 

[song of joy]

The following breeds would be a good fit for your situation (confinement, cold-hardiness, docile personality, good or very good egg production):

buff orpington
black australorp
specked sussex
Easter egger
silver-laced wyandotte

The following breeds are great for egg production, but would not be as happy in confinement: Rhode Island Red, Barred Plymouth Rock.

Sex links can sometimes be aggressive, especially with non-sex links. They may pick on australorps and orpingtons.

Egg production will decline noticeably once the birds are 3 years old, so have a plan for maintaining egg production if that is your purpose in having laying hens. We typically cull the hens once they are 3 years old (and use them as stew hens for chicken soup).

 

[KlingKlan]

Thanks Ridgerunner! We are putting an all weather "heavy duty" tarp over the run and the coop will be inside the run. The tarp will not only cover the run, but will have enough length to roll down over the most exposed side for inclimate weather. We got lucky with zoning for animal shelters because it dosen't specify anything special for poultry. So, we built the coop and run behind/against-ish our house and can expand the run further into the yard if we find we need more space (which I'm already planning secretly in my head, shhhhh). There is about a 3 1/2 ft clearance under the coop that is open so the girls can seek shelter during the day there as well.

We'll see how it goes and since there is still plenty of time until the cold weather comes around again we should have time to make any changes; which really means I have time to convince DH we need more chicken space

!

 

[Ridgerunner]

As far as feeling overwhelmed, chickens need food, water, protection from predators, sufficient room, and a little help with protection from the environment. Heat is much more of a danger than cold. All of these can be pretty simple if you let it. We are all unique. We keep them in different conditions, in different climates, for different goals, with different flock make-ups, have different experiences, and use a wide variety of management techniques. There are a tremendous amount of different things that work. There is practically never only one right way to do something where everything else is wrong. Many people will tell you that their way is the “best” and you have to do it that way or civilization as we know it will be forever altered, but the reality is that many of us do these things a different way and are extremely successful. You’ll get all kinds of conflicting advice because a lot of different ways work. If you follow that link in my signature you’ll see some of the variables that I think you should consider when deciding how much space you need. I’m sure I missed a lot of other variables and some people don’t agree with many of the ones I mentioned.

We can’t agree on what roosts are best, what breeds are best, what to feed them, whether to feed them inside the coop or outside, what to use to water them, the best way to raise them healthy, should the inside of a coop be light or dark, much of anything. That’s because so many different things work. In general, people care about these things a lot more than chickens.

All that conflicting advice can get overwhelming. The hard part for you is to see that most of that is personal preference, not a requirement, and decide which are really essential in your unique circumstances. What is really required for food, water, protection from predators, sufficient room, and a little help with protection from the environment?

 

[KlingKlan]

Well we went to a local flea market that was having a special "Saturday Sale" of small animals today (thanks to the "Pennsylvania!! Unite!!" thread for the info) and were able to see just how big chickens can get and just how small bantams are... we need more space in the coop by winter for sure if we want to have 5 full size girls! Then we went to TSC to get the rest of our supplies, seeing as now we are even more excited to get this adventue started

!! We almost, almost bought our perfect 1st flock (which sold for a grand total of $17.50... shut the front door!!), but we knew we had to have a secure home in place for them before we made the comitment! It was made up of 3 Black Aracauna (EE's I know haha) and a Roo, which we would have to get rid of even though he was GORGEOUS and 2 Speckled Sussex pullets... all in the same cage! I wasn't even aware that EE's came in all black, but I am new lol.

So, tomorrow we will be finishing the chicken accomodations (including a tractor for pseudo free ranging), yes there will be pictures, and then we'll officially be on the hunt for our flock! Thank you all so much for your input and advice, it has been very helpful!

 

[howfunkyisurchicken]

Araucaunas should be rumpless and tufted (they have little sprigs of feathers coming out near their ears!), but Ameraucanas do come in black. I'm a little ashamed to say that *I* would have snapped them up at that price (even if they had been EEs) and figured out what to do with them when I got home. No doubt about it. Kudos to you for waiting until you had everything worked out first!

 

[KlingKlan]

Araucaunas should be rumpless and tufted (they have little sprigs of feathers coming out near their ears!), but Ameraucanas do come in black. I'm a little ashamed to say that *I* would have snapped them up at that price (even if they had been EEs) and figured out what to do with them when I got home. No doubt about it. Kudos to you for waiting until you had everything worked out first!

I know, right?! A little piece of me died inside as they carried the cage away *sniff*!! Trust me, they weren't really Araucaunas around these parts for that price, but thanks to BYC, I knew they were at the very least Easter Eggers lol. Plus I knew that we had to head to TSC to get the chicken wire (on sale for $19.99 for 36"x50', can you say DEAL?!), coop bedding and feed before we brought any chickens home. It was more for the experience of it all, the atmosphere of the auction, ya know?!

I like to think that as a mother of 3 growing boys in today's economy I am fairly good at understanding the neccessity of meeting "family member's" needs lol. As much as I wanted to raised my numbered card a 100 times, I held it together and knew that we weren't quite ready to add family members. Our perfect 1st flock is out there waiting for us to find them... THIS WEEK gammit, and they will come home to a happy, abundant situation

!

As my mother-in-law would say; "it's my cross to bear" lol.

 

[budgetboo]

I can't comment too much on climate conditions as I'm in Wales UK, except to describe ours here - always raining! Mud glorious mud is often the order of the day. (Have laid a concrete base for our coops!).

I have a 9 year old lad. He is part of a community farm project that gave him the chance to learn about keeping livestock before we got any of our own, so coop cleaning & wing clipping is something he's already competent at lol! There are birds from at least a dozen different breeds on the farm which has been great in helping us make our final selection.

From observing the various breeds of birds on the farm we have chosen 2 bantam breeds to start our back garden flock:-

English Chocolate Cuckoo Marans - originally came from the marsh lands of France, so tend to be naturally hard and disease resistant. (For a child I didn't want anything too delicate as kids get really upset when animals are ill) The English standard calls for clean legs - useful on what is often muddy ground. Our hatching eggs came from a 220+ annual egg laying strain - which i hear is about standard for this breed. Which for bantams is pretty good. The eggs are the same size as the small ones in the supermarket which is reasonable as I didn't fancy peeling quail size eggs every morning for breakfast. They have a reasonable laying life and being bantam size means I'm prepared to keep one roo for flock sustainability purposes. They are an autosexing breed which gives me the choice to cull roos as day olds if I don't want to grow them on.

If I do grow any hatched boys on, marans have a good rep with professional chefs as being very tasty even though we'll only have the banties in terms of size. I have a chef friend in London who is willing to purchase any boys from me for the oven next year.

chocolate is a brand new colour way so we started our flock by hatching our first ever eggs this easter from one of the few suppliers of this colour. I'm hoping the next generation will keep the autosexing qualities of the standard silver variety but only time will tell for sure.

For kids I really recommend the cuckoo marans as they have a nice temperament, are hardy, disease resistant, the right solid plumpy shape & size to pick up & handle easily etc. The eggs are a nice attractive colour and just large enough for a kid to make a little pocket money from. It was important to me that my son feels in charge of this flock as we homeschool, so I consider it part of his "acquire a little responsibility" curriculum. (The sheer entitled gimme dat attitude in today's adult society drives me bonkers at times).

Rhodebar banties. These are on the critically endangered list, so for this reason alone I'm going to keep a small breeding group. (roos aren't so friendly so not sure this is a good breed for kids).

If we hadn't plumped for bantams I would have chosen standard production red pullets - warrens being the friendliest strain over here for kids. No bantam can ever touch the hybrids or even many of the purebred large fowl for egg production but cuckoo marans produce a reasonable amount per bird.

We may also run a couple of aracauna/easter egger pullets with our flock just for the different coloured eggs, but haven't yet decided for sure on this one.

 

[KlingKlan]

Thank you to all who replied, it was very helpful for education purposes!! However, we went to a "Small Animal Auction" at a local flea market this evening and ended up getting 4 of the same breed. DH worked very hard on the coop & run over the past 2 weeks and was extremely anxious to get some girls in their to appreciate his handy work. By the time we got home the sun had already set and daylght was fading, so straight to the coop they went. We crowded around the people door to watch them check out their new accomodations, HIGHLY entertaining lol!

The auctioneer simply called them Red Hens, so we're not 100% sure what we have... maybe Red Sex Links?! What say you BYC?!













Sorry about the picture quality

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