White Leghorns - need some attention

[pascopol]

The real problem with white Leghorns is that they easy fall prey to predators in free range situations like all white birds.

I couldn,t care less if they are flighty or tame. I would keep some but for above reason I do not.

A lady friend, my not very distant neighboor has 200 + birds of all kind, she just keeps them for pleasure, never culling or getting rid of any.

She started with perhaps 10+ chicken breeds about 4 years ago including California Whites, and some pure white leghorns.

By now none of her white birds survived. But many other colored original hens are still alive and doing well.

She lives on 5 acres, about half of this is Florida cypress swamp, half of it is open pasture.

All birds subject to predators: hawks, owls, opossum, coons.

Perhaps brown leghorns would be an answer, they may lay little less than white ones, but I can live with that.

However brown leghorns are not very common and they are harder to find.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

My two Leghorns came from Mcmurray too, I got them from a couple that purchased the rainbow package. They were true free ranged when I got them, no coop and if needed to be rounded up the people used a pool net. They were not crazy about the speed and flightyness of the leghorns and very glad to get rid of them.

So from point of lay age when homed here these girls have settled down quite a bit. They come when I call as they're highly food oriented but still high strung as they will never let you pick them up or pet. Follow us around but at a distance.

Two downsides to these birds (as I believe they'd have been much tamer if I'd raised them from chicks) is they are prolific diggers and combs are simply too big for unheated coop up north. They don't mind the cold at all but their combs are telling a different story.

They lay as well as my production reds and black star and one of them is prolific with double yokers, one a week with largest being 99 grams.

 

[featherz]

Yah the combs are a big negative out here. But the eggs are SO huge. And I hand raised mine - they were my first chickens and were spoiled rotten so I can carry them around, pick em up, etc. My RIR are WAY more skittish than my leghorns! I was worried they'd just fly away since they are supposedly so flight oriented but mine just run along the ground like their big fat RIR hatchmates. I never see them fly!

 

[Judy]

I owned 3 or 4 brown Leghorns, not much of a sample I know. All laid almost daily (my others laid colored eggs.) One survived predators past a year. She laid 6 or 7 huge eggs every week, year round, til her molt around 1.5 years. I could examine her off the roost with minimal fussing; she didn't like it but she certainly didn't scream or panic. I don't really try to tame my birds, except to throw out treats daily (usually grains) so they come when they see me. I was really curious how she would lay after the molt; unfortunately she never resumed laying, and died, I assume from an egg laying problem. Once flew over 20' in a straight horizontal line, about 8' above the ground, and slammed into the side of a building, I assume running from a predator.