Why do you have the breeds you do?

[chickengr]

DH and I just wanted a couple of hens as pets who lay breakfast. I underestimated how quickly and deeply I’d get attached. I have this thing where when I love something I get a bit obsessed. So I read all about breeds, eggs, food, healthcare, coops, and more. That’s how I found BYC. I started with a FBCM, 3 silkies, and a lavender Ameraucana. Fast forward and we have 10 hens, 2 Roos, and 6 ducks. Since they were always going to be pets I chose based on appearance, egg color, and history. So, why did you choose who you have?

my idea was 4-5 hens and a roo for eggs, backyard decoration and eventually meat. I ended up selling a house I didn't need anyway and buying 1 and 1/2 acre land and planning to make a small farm. chicken (and other poultry) math! the meat part is still to learn though.

 

[ravensnow]

(My chickens are arriving on Saturday, so I don't have them yet. They will be pets with egg benefits.)

I picked Ameraucanas b/c I had an Easter Egger pet as a little kid and adored her (and she looked more like an Ameraucana than anything else), and I loved having blue eggs. I'm getting lavender Orpingtons b/c my partner's never had chickens, and for him to agree to this scheme meant that it was really important to get a pet he could cuddle with and hold. Orpingtons seem like our best bet. Plus, they're adorable orbs.

Also, I think both breeds will do okay in my climate. We get lots of rain, and neither have fuzzy feet to get all horrible and muddy. We get very cold winters, if not super snowy, and both breeds have small/nonexistent combs and wattles.

 

[Acre4Me]

So far, in the past year that we have had chickens, we've had 13 breeds! Some we've sold, and we currently have 7 breeds. We have an order placed for another 9 breeds that we've never had...but all straight run, so we know we will cull (sell or butcher) around half of them. We are still in the decision mode of what breeds do we like and want and how colorful we want our egg basket.

So far, we like the larger breeds that we've had. We picked up more Barred Rocks and EEs from the hatchery we picked up our originals. We've really enjoyed most of the ones we've had, but do not care as much for the really flighty ones.

We have:

Black Australorp
EE
Legbar (white)
Plymouth Rock
Black Jersey Giant
Barred Rock
Silver Laced Wyandotte

 

[Ra_]

Serama as pets
Rainbow Rock for eggs

 

[Medievalmom]

We started out with 3 birds (my profile pic). Most of our birds we got for egg production, egg color, friendliness, appearance, and general hardiness/health. Currently we have leghorns, silver laced and gold laced wyandottes, delawares, gold necked game hens, barred rock, cuckoo marans, ameracaunas, speckled Sussex, new Hampshire, dominiques, lavender and buff orpingtons, ayam cemani, cubalayas, cochins. Our bantams are Dutch, d'uccle, Japanese, cubalaya, cochin, silkies, sebright, bantam ameracauna. Then we have our project birds, leghorn/silkie, silkie/ameracauna, silkie/cochin, frizzled cochins. My broodiest girls are the cubalayas, silkies, and game hens. They sit on anyones eggs! We also have the ducks, geese, quail, pigeons and one female guinnea who patrols everyone. She's great. There are roughly 150 birds, all with names and every one of them love to be petted and loved on! Well, except the pigeons lol. They are my sons project

 

[sarastamand]

I currently have eight 5 week old beauties. I have:

3 - Americana (EE)
2 - NH Reds
1 - Cuckoo Maran
1 - Plymouth Barred Rock
1 - California White

I have been told my California White may not actually be that and one EE may be an Olive Egger. I chose my birds for a number of reasons! Friendliness, beauty

I also have some more specific reasons as to why I have some of them. Living in NH, of course I had to have those! But my main focus was that I wanted a colorful basket of eggs. A little bit of everything!

 

[WhtRos2]

I haven’t named mine yet since I have no idea on gender. They are still ducklings haha.

Name them anyway. I name mine usually according to the type of chicken/duck. For instance, my gold laced wyandotte is named Lacey. My barred rock is named Rocky, etc. My rooster is named Sally because it was supposed to be a pullet, Salmon Faverelle. I have friends with roosters with girls names and hens with boys names. Its more fun/silly that way. In this day and age of cross-dressing and trans-gender, its only natural to have chickens with the 'wrong' gender names. lol.

 

[A_Fowl_Guy]

Name them anyway. I name mine usually according to the type of chicken/duck. For instance, my gold laced wyandotte is named Lacey. My barred rock is named Rocky, etc. My rooster is named Sally because it was supposed to be a pullet, Salmon Faverelle. I have friends with roosters with girls names and hens with boys names. Its more fun/silly that way. In this day and age of cross-dressing and trans-gender, its only natural to have chickens with the 'wrong' gender names. lol.

I named them Eeny, Meeny, Miny, and Moe

 

[Little Jerry Seinfeld]

Name them anyway. I name mine usually according to the type of chicken/duck. For instance, my gold laced wyandotte is named Lacey. My barred rock is named Rocky, etc. My rooster is named Sally because it was supposed to be a pullet, Salmon Faverelle. I have friends with roosters with girls names and hens with boys names. Its more fun/silly that way. In this day and age of cross-dressing and trans-gender, its only natural to have chickens with the 'wrong' gender names. lol.

Haha! I can't wait to name mine either that's why my broody hen is named Gideon but it worked out because i call her herd of chicks the Gideonites. I name my groups based off movies, my silkies are all named after seven brides for seven brothers : adam, benjamin, frankincense and gideon, and the other 2 girls are some of the wives names, millie, dorcus. I'm ordering more silkies soon and they will get the rest of the names from the movie.
I also name based on breed too, like my easter egger is clint eastwood, and his hens are mrs eastwoods.

 

[Kluk-Kluk]

I've been loving this discussion!

Why do I have the breeds I do? (1) I wanted my chickens to be beautiful as well as practical. (2) Once I got into chickens and saw that they lay different colored eggs, I wanted more of a variety, not a boring dozen of brown eggs.

I started out with four Red Sex-Links. I say "I," but really it was my high school-aged daughters who were my "farmers." We had goats, and one day when we returned from an outing, we found four red hens wandering among the goats in their pen. Surprise! We were suddenly chicken owners; a man from our church decided to give us a present since he had too many hens.

Next spring my girls bought six day-old Barred Rocks. Raccoons got a couple of them, but Chicken Math was already at work. Then they got some silkie eggs and incubated them. They returned all the roosters to the farmer who gave them the eggs, but now we had a white, black, and blue silkie. LOVE the silkies. Their personalities are adorable - so sweet and cuddly and mellow.

The goats are long gone. When the younger of the girls went off to college, she was concerned about the chickens: would Mom be able to handle caring for them? Would they get adequate care? Little did they know that I became not just a chicken mama, but a chicken fanatic.

I began to expand the flock by getting day-olds of different breeds bought for color and patterns: Speckled Sussex, more silkies, Blue Cochin (so fluffy!), Golden-Laced Wyandotte, and Ameraucana. I also bought Light Brahmas (another very mellow and sweet-tempered breed) and Japanese bantams from local farmers. Those Japanese were feisty!! Despite their small size, they were up there in the pecking order. Too bad a raccoon got the last of them last summer. At four years of age, she was still laying regularly - and going broody regularly too! We had her raise a couple broods of chicks as well as some day-old ducks that she mothered well, even after they outgrew her in size.

Almost six years have gone by since I took over the chickens. Racoons, hawks, and foxes have culled the flock. We started our war against predators early on and with bird netting everywhere, managed to keep away hawks, but recently the foxes have gotten more aggressive or clever. I went for years without losing a hen to losing three in a short time. And some died of old age. Currently rebuilding and reinforcing the chicken pen. (Chicken coop is pretty secure after adding hardware cloth to the floor to prevent predators from digging under and in!)

I now have ten birds:
- two Buff Brahmas (Buffy and Brahma mama)
- one Buff Orpington (Orpy)
- one Polish (Polka)
- one Silver-Laced Wyandotte (Lacey)
- two Easter Eggers (Prisma and Earmuffs)
- two Black Marans (Marania and Maranochka)
- one black Leghorn (Leggie) who was purchases as a Jersey but grew up into a Leghorn

This spring/summer I plan to add some olive-eggers for the color of the eggs. Someday I'll get some more silkies again.

Thanks for reading!