What breed and how many?

[ilikepigeons]

I'm hopefully going to be getting chickens sometime before next year, and I'm clueless on what birds I should get or how many. I'm totally new to chickens.
The traits I'm looking for in a breed are,
Good free ranger. The predators we mostly have are large feral cats, occasional falcon, opossums, rats, stoats, ferrets.
Able to tolerate our temperatures (17 to 104f).
Long lived, healthy.
Docile, good with people.
Decent egg production.
Able to naturally hatch chicks, would like to get a rooster.
For pets and eggs.
As for number of birds, there is 6 people in my family that eat eggs if that helps.

 

[HappyClucker7]

Australorps would be a great choice, as they have everything you're looking for. Maybe look at Orpingtons, and Sussex too.
If you want to have a steady supply of eggs for 6 people, I would probably go with around 8-10 chickens. But even 6 would be enough for your needs.

 

[MysteryChicken]

I live in a similar environment.

PureBreeds I have are:

Buff Orpingtons

Black Sumatras

Malays

Heritage Plymouth Barred Rocks

Silkies

OEGBs

Brahmas

Easter Eggers

Project Wheaten Crele Orpingtons

I have various mixed breeds, but best survivalist crosses I have are Cracker Hens(Red JungleFowl/American Game mixes)

 

[Lizzy733]

How many dozen eggs would you go through in a week?

With warmer temps, a larger combed breed will be most tolerant, but chickens are sensitive to extreme heat in general, so adequate shade and water is a must in any setup.
Long lived and healthy rules out hybrid egg layers. They tend to burn out quite quickly, but give an egg a day for their first 2 years before production drops drastically and many end up with medical issues.
Light weight breeds tend to be great foragers and flighty ones will have the best predator evasion, but eggs may be on the smaller side and they may be trickier to manage if not hand-raised. Good egg producers don't tend to want to brood their own chicks. You could get one or two bantam mommas for your flock, like silkies, who go through regular brood cycles you can easily plan around and give them eggs to set.

Lots of us here can't really settle on one breed and keep a good variety, especially those with flock size limits to worry about.

How do you plan to handle 'spares'? Chicken dinner? It always happens and you can't always sell them all. If you let the flock do its thing, it will grow and eventually you'll need to manage numbers before you're overrun.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I personally love my pheonixes and leghorn production wise, but they're very flighty and leghorns tend to not go broody. Then pheonixes are awesome with brooding though.

My Mystic Onyx, Asian black and NNs all lay more often than they don't, but they're also not super friendly

 

[HorseGirlAbby]

I'm hopefully going to be getting chickens sometime before next year, and I'm clueless on what birds I should get or how many. I'm totally new to chickens.
The traits I'm looking for in a breed are,
Good free ranger. The predators we mostly have are large feral cats, occasional falcon, opossums, rats, stoats, ferrets.
Able to tolerate our temperatures (17 to 104f).
Long lived, healthy.
Docile, good with people.
Decent egg production.
Able to naturally hatch chicks, would like to get a rooster.
For pets and eggs.
As for number of birds, there is 6 people in my family that eat eggs if that helps.

Orpingtons, as others have said, are very good all-around chickens that would suit your purpose very well. Wyandottes are also a good breed, though not too heat tolerant. When it got up to 116ºF last summer, however, all of mine survived. Some people say Wyandotte roosters can be aggressive, but I personally cannot verify that.
Other breeds that may be good are Barnevelder, Java, Easter Egger (sometimes marketed as Ameraucana), Delaware, Rhode Island Red, and pretty much any dual-purpose breed. Silkies are the queens of broodiness, so if you want to hatch eggs, that's a good breed to get. I have had most of these breeds, and all are very friendly.

 

[ilikepigeons]

How many dozen eggs would you go through in a week?

About one dozen/12.

How do you plan to handle 'spares'? Chicken dinner? It always happens and you can't always sell them all. If you let the flock do its thing, it will grow and eventually you'll need to manage numbers before you're overrun.

I meant as in when I want to hatch chicks it's not impossible to get a broody, rather than letting them do as they please.

Thanks for the informative response

 

[Lizzy733]

Only 12 eggs a week? Keep the flock very small or keep girls that lay infrequently. If you are getting two eggs a day, that's 14 by the end of the week, so you may need to plan some egg heavy meals like quiche, pavlova, eggnog.... Or plan to offload on your friends and neighbors. I recommend starting an egg crate exchange.

I would not recommend less than 3 birds though for companionship reasons. And some lower production breeds can still lay a lot at once if the reason for their low production is broodiness - very bounty and famine with them once they get into a brood cycle.

Many will stop laying over winter due to shorter daylight hours (they may lay right through their first winter though, especially high-yeild birds, but will start taking a break from year 2). - you'd probably do best with a slow and steady layer who will give you 3-4 eggs a week and are less inclined to take winter breaks. Maybe something like a Dorking? There are lots of breeds out there and many weird and wonderful kinds to experiment with.

 

[ilikepigeons]

Only 12 eggs a week? Keep the flock very small or keep girls that lay infrequently. If you are getting two eggs a day, that's 14 by the end of the week, so you may need to plan some egg heavy meals like quiche, pavlova, eggnog.... Or plan to offload on your friends and neighbors. I recommend starting an egg crate exchange.

I would not recommend less than 3 birds though for companionship reasons. And some lower production breeds can still lay a lot at once if the reason for their low production is broodiness - very bounty and famine with them once they get into a brood cycle.

Many will stop laying over winter due to shorter daylight hours (they may lay right through their first winter though, especially high-yeild birds, but will start taking a break from year 2). - you'd probably do best with a slow and steady layer who will give you 3-4 eggs a week and are less inclined to take winter breaks. Maybe something like a Dorking? There are lots of breeds out there and many weird and wonderful kinds to experiment with.

My bad - that is the amount of store bought eggs we use a week currently.

How many eggs would we use a week if we had unlimited, backyard laid eggs? More like 3-4 dozen, although that's just a rough estimate. We have many friends, neighbors ands dogs who would love spare eggs, too, so extra eggs are pretty welcome. May I ask what an egg crate exchange is?

Dorking look like a breed I'd be interested in.

 

[saysfaa]

I'm hopefully going to be getting chickens sometime before next year, and I'm clueless on what birds I should get or how many. I'm totally new to chickens.
The traits I'm looking for in a breed are,
Good free ranger. The predators we mostly have are large feral cats, occasional falcon, opossums, rats, stoats, ferrets.
...
Docile, good with people. ...

These two traits are not very compatible - the traits that make them good at one are the same traits that make them not so good at the other. The good free ranger needs to be alert and to react quickly to small things in the environment that are different; to fight and flee. Docile (for sure) and good with people (at least most of the time and especially for people new to caring for prey animals) means not reactive, calm, accepting of small things in the environment that are different.

The opossums, rats, and ferrets aren't too likely to be a problem while the chickens are free ranging - they mostly take eggs or roosting birds or chicken feed. So, for them, it doesn't matter as much how good at free ranging or how docile the chickens are. The secure coop for the night is more important. The falcons do hunt active prey in daylight hours. Cats do both. I don't know much about stoats.