I'm reading a lot of this thread and a lot of people say things about leg horns and silkies, I would love to know whats wrong about them so I could be prepared, some breeds I don't like are RIR, I just don't like the color.. good experience with them but the color just... mine have always gotten dirty to and ive never gotten a roo out of my RIR hatchings before so none but 1 hen were ever rude.
Sure. Silkies are sweet but dumb. They can't see well because of the mop on their head either. This combination makes them easy pickins for any hawk, fox, weasel, coon, cat, dog, etc. Anything that slips into the coop, that silkie is done for before they ever even see it. Because they're not too bright they have trouble parsing things like new food (say you hang a cabbage for fun they might not recognize it as food for example) or if you move the water dish. And those fuzzy feathers are terrible in the rain, mud or with wet food. They become matted and no longer fluff up or insulate making them very un-cold-hardy in places that are wet AND cold. (They do OK if dry to my knowledge but we're wet as heck here.) Not to mention they have no meat on them and lay few, tiny eggs so for production they're just disappointing.
Pros, they're very hand friendly, human friendly, and they go broody a lot. If you want eggs that might suck, but silkies are terrible for eggs anyhow. If you wanna HATCH eggs they'll mother a watermelon so yay. Assuming you can keep it safe enough to do so.
Leghorns have a different problem. They're thrifty, good egglayers, etc. But they're moody. Forget being touched - mine have always spooked away from me. They keep a good 5-10 feet away at all times, more than my rooster, and yell when you try to pick them up. When you DO pick them up to do maintenance or health checks mine have always fought HARD, harder than most of my birds who just kinda stare at me after a few flaps. And because their feathers are tight and dense getting hit by those wings sucks more than a fluffy sweet widdle babby birb like an orpington or something. I feel like the best word to describe a leghorn is scrappy. They'll eat anything, fight you for it, go to sleep with one eye open, and then lay an egg the next day before doing it all over again.
The upside to this is they're very predator savvy. They forage well. And they lay a LOT.
But around here you can only find the white ones. And white birds go first to hawks in this household. They just get hit faster than you can blink. We're a migratory hot zone, and in the fall and winter we have several chicken-predating hawk species around and I can't free range or put a pen top on. A white bird in an open-top pen, no matter how many hiding spots they have, is probably a dead bird.
In my experience also, the lighter the body mass of the bird the more trouble they have with tough winters. And leghorns are just plain skinny so they loose condition fast during molt and have trouble bouncing back on normal feed in the winter. That may just be our local lines though. Also tiny bodies make it less worthwhile to butcher a sick or old bird for food. It's a lot of work for little reward.
If you want chicks they will also NEVER go broody. They could not care less about an egg after it's layed.
Both these birds have hard upsides (Great pet, great egglayer) and hard downsides (terrible for anything else). And they don't work out for me. I like a more well balanced bird.
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