Sandwitch
Chirping
- Oct 27, 2022
- 60
- 74
- 81
Hello! I’m trying to get a good sense of what breeds of chicken might work out best for our situation. We actually got chickens for pest control with our horses. The egg laying has just been a good bonus.
Right now we have 11 chickens (started out with 15) two of which are roosters.
Current breeds we have: silkies (4), French black copper Moran, Easter eggers (2), olive eggers, starlight green eggers (2), and a prairie bluebell egger.
With our assortment of chickens we can tell almost all of them apart super easily (then we got three white silkies lol) which is very nice and helpful. I also do like collecting some of their interestingly patterned feathers so that’d be a really nice plus. I’ll include some pictures of our flock.
We recently had one of the silkies get killed by what we suspect was a domestic dog. During that event the entire flock fled. Most were smart enough to go towards home and/or go high. However during that two had fled (likely into the woods) and later were picked off by coyotes. The coyotes have become way more interested in our property (they used to stay away because horses are scary when you are small) since they discovered our flock. We also lost a chicken to what I believe was a fox however she tended to be a bit too bold and grew up with cats who she could easily boss around. I genuinely think she probably tried to chase a fox away.
Their coop is quite secure however it’s not super big and they really really love free ranging. Finding a good breed that can still free range but do so more safely (ie be able to escape better and be smart enough to stick close to home) is quite important to us.
We’ve had a couple olive eggers who I’ve really enjoyed/liked. It’d also be nice to have a smarter breed because we have one EE who is so unbelievably dumb (which luckily is endearing) and one stupid chicken is more than enough. Although somehow our dumb EE has managed to survive this long?
The silkies while they are adorable (we mainly got them because a friend got them then realized that they couldn’t fly and at their farm they had zero chance of surviving) aren’t a great fit for our barn. Mainly due to being flightless, not waterproof while living in the PNW, reduced vision and being more high maintenance.
Some of what I’d ideally like in a future addition to our flock: be a good forager, have enough survival instincts to not stray too far away, be friendly to humans, probably be more flighty, bigger chickens might work better since they look less like toys/snacks?
I’m just curious if anyone has breed suggestions that may work for us. Thank you guys!
Right now we have 11 chickens (started out with 15) two of which are roosters.
Current breeds we have: silkies (4), French black copper Moran, Easter eggers (2), olive eggers, starlight green eggers (2), and a prairie bluebell egger.
With our assortment of chickens we can tell almost all of them apart super easily (then we got three white silkies lol) which is very nice and helpful. I also do like collecting some of their interestingly patterned feathers so that’d be a really nice plus. I’ll include some pictures of our flock.
We recently had one of the silkies get killed by what we suspect was a domestic dog. During that event the entire flock fled. Most were smart enough to go towards home and/or go high. However during that two had fled (likely into the woods) and later were picked off by coyotes. The coyotes have become way more interested in our property (they used to stay away because horses are scary when you are small) since they discovered our flock. We also lost a chicken to what I believe was a fox however she tended to be a bit too bold and grew up with cats who she could easily boss around. I genuinely think she probably tried to chase a fox away.
Their coop is quite secure however it’s not super big and they really really love free ranging. Finding a good breed that can still free range but do so more safely (ie be able to escape better and be smart enough to stick close to home) is quite important to us.
We’ve had a couple olive eggers who I’ve really enjoyed/liked. It’d also be nice to have a smarter breed because we have one EE who is so unbelievably dumb (which luckily is endearing) and one stupid chicken is more than enough. Although somehow our dumb EE has managed to survive this long?
The silkies while they are adorable (we mainly got them because a friend got them then realized that they couldn’t fly and at their farm they had zero chance of surviving) aren’t a great fit for our barn. Mainly due to being flightless, not waterproof while living in the PNW, reduced vision and being more high maintenance.
Some of what I’d ideally like in a future addition to our flock: be a good forager, have enough survival instincts to not stray too far away, be friendly to humans, probably be more flighty, bigger chickens might work better since they look less like toys/snacks?
I’m just curious if anyone has breed suggestions that may work for us. Thank you guys!
