I am new to chickens too. THe first thing I did was go to every website I could find that described each chicken breed. Portage GIrl listed a great one. Here is another: My Pet chicken.com and find the chicken selection tool at the bottom left. THen I realized I loved so many of them BUT I couldn't have everyone of them! My favorites were BO and GLW. Oh, yeh, had to learn the breed lingo, too!
SO . . . I defined my goals. What did I want my chickens to do for me?
For me it was: High egg production. No roosters. Easy temperments. 25 birds. SO I picked the top egg producers (5 breeds) from the dual purpose chickens that were camo colored to avoid predation by the hawks. I eliminated Faverolles, nice birds, but feathered legs. We live in mud in the spring and thought they might not fair as well; DH wanted RIR, some sources say they are dominant birds and tough on shy/quiet birds. No whites as they are prone to attack by hawks.
I picked:
SLW are used to produce sexlinked strains; and are almost a GLW.
Blk Austrolorps are great egg layers and related to a BO.
Black Stars--because red stars were not in stock.
RIR--because DH wanted them.
Speckled sussex--because they are the perfect camo color in the woods.
ANd then I added BO and EE. High egg prod, pretty and just PRETTY!
I can't quite remember but I think the SS is sometimes broody, and the BO is often broody. ANd the EE is sometimes or often broody. BUt I didn't really want the broodiness as it decreases the egg production and I would rather incubated and have the chicks in the house protected from hawks and crows. And as you can see chicken math has taken over, and I did get 3 roosters among the original 25 . . .
so I'm already planning matings for when I need to replenish my numbers and have been working on how to build a very cheap incubator . . . .
OVerall, Is this kinda what you were looking for for a senerio??
GL
SO . . . I defined my goals. What did I want my chickens to do for me?
For me it was: High egg production. No roosters. Easy temperments. 25 birds. SO I picked the top egg producers (5 breeds) from the dual purpose chickens that were camo colored to avoid predation by the hawks. I eliminated Faverolles, nice birds, but feathered legs. We live in mud in the spring and thought they might not fair as well; DH wanted RIR, some sources say they are dominant birds and tough on shy/quiet birds. No whites as they are prone to attack by hawks.
I picked:
SLW are used to produce sexlinked strains; and are almost a GLW.
Blk Austrolorps are great egg layers and related to a BO.
Black Stars--because red stars were not in stock.
RIR--because DH wanted them.
Speckled sussex--because they are the perfect camo color in the woods.
ANd then I added BO and EE. High egg prod, pretty and just PRETTY!
I can't quite remember but I think the SS is sometimes broody, and the BO is often broody. ANd the EE is sometimes or often broody. BUt I didn't really want the broodiness as it decreases the egg production and I would rather incubated and have the chicks in the house protected from hawks and crows. And as you can see chicken math has taken over, and I did get 3 roosters among the original 25 . . .
so I'm already planning matings for when I need to replenish my numbers and have been working on how to build a very cheap incubator . . . .
OVerall, Is this kinda what you were looking for for a senerio??
GL
