What breeds are in your egg laying pen?

[WallTenters]

A friend and I were talking about this today

. She and I are working together on our Dominique project, but she also sells eggs to some local stores and individuals as well, so she has a large coop/run of mixed breed birds that lay a rainbow of sizes and colors of eggs. She's just missing olive eggs so is going to hatch a couple of those out this spring to add in there as well.

So far in there are....

Some Dominique hens that aren't being used right now for breeding
Some Dominique hens that are good layers, but are breed culls
Some Orpington (beautiful!) hens that aren't being used right now for breeding
Some Orpington hens that are good layers, but again are breed culls
Some Americauna hens
Some Marans hens
Some Buttercup hens that aren't being used right now for breeding (she has a trio of these as just kind of a fun side project)
The proud lone rooster

He's a happy guy.

Our hope is to put ALL the hens in there next winter, and then have a few bachelor pens of roos that get along, so there are less waterers/feeders to fill and so all the eggs can be collected from one coop in the winter time. Then in the spring pull out our breeder Doms and her breeder Orpingtons and put them in the breeding pens. She kind of did this to some extent this year but still has a few other coops with hens in there and then our coop is on her place as well. Her sons have bantam Americaunas and Japanese, a trio each I think, so their birds will probably always be seperate as they have to feed, water and clean their pens as part of having the birds.

She gets a beautiful rainbow of eggs each day, so fun!

Feel free to post pics of your rainbow of hens and their eggs!

 

[briteday]

I would be breeding the doms to an RIR roo and get sexlinked chicks. That way you can sort the pullets from the cockerels on the day of hatch and not spend the money to raise up a bunch of roos.

 

[AllCoop'dUp]

Older Group: 2 Australorp, 2 Light Brahma, 3 Delaware, 1 Dorking, 4 Easter Egger, 3 Mottled Java, 5 Buff Orpington, 1 Plymouth Rock, 6 Rhode Island Red, 1 Sussex
Just started Laying: 1 Ancona, 1 Appenzeller Spitzhauben, 1 Cochin (white), 1 Columbian Wyandotte, 1 Cornish, 2 Hamburg, 2 Lakenvelder, 1 Partridge Rock, 2 White Rock

Don't have any separate breeder coops "yet"! Got 32 eggs yesterday!

 

[WallTenters]

The Dom hens in that pen aren't going to reproduce unless they get chosen for EE mommies or something. But that's irrelevant...

Purebred Dominiques are sex-linked at birth anyway.

AND we actually keep the extra roos - they taste GREAT.

 

[they'reHISchickens]

We had Orps, Blue/Black French Copper Marans, RIR, and blue egg EEs together for the winter, with a head Blue egg Ameraucana roo and a underling Orp roo. Today we separated out the FCBMs to put with our BFCM roo for breeding. I won't worry about pure eggs because if the FBCM chicks are from the Ameraucana Daddy we will have olive eggers.
When we get enough EE eggs to incubate, I will rehome our roo and let the Orp take over.

 

[dirtsaver]

We started with Black Australorps and Buff Orpingtons. Then added a couple of Silver-laced Wyandottes. Later we picked up three Welsummer pullets.

I will add we are not happy with the Wyandottes. They are ok layers but the are very rough on the other girls. Also at least one of the Welsummers is the same way. The Orpingtons are not as good layers as the Australorps either. The Wyandottes and a Welsummer will be rehomed soon. We can't decide wether to concentrate on all Australorps or maybe try some Speckled Sussex.

Larry