Choosing Your Chickens

There are literally hundreds of different breeds of chickens. Which you choose really depends on your intended purpose for the chickens. There are some breeds that are preferred for egg production that wouldn’t make a good choice for someone wanting to harvest them for meat. There are some meat birds that don’t make good choices for egg laying.

A few breeds are popular because they are considered dual purpose birds. They are good layers and tasty meat birds. Once you determine what your primary purpose is for your birds, you need to consider a few other factors in choosing the right bird. These factors include:

 

Weather Tolerance

This depends of course on the weather you experience in your area. If there are periods of harsh cold or intense heat, you will need a bird that can tolerate that type of weather. There are usually indicators when you are ordering your chicks as to their tolerance for various weather patterns.

Confinement Tolerance

There are some breeds that cannot be confined very well. This is in part due to temperament. If you are planning on confining the birds check into the confinement tolerance as well as their temperament. There are some breeds that will beat themselves against the enclosure wanting to get out. Stay away from those.

Temperament

As with dogs, there are breeds of chickens that are calm and docile, and then there are those that are anything but. If you have young children, that real pretty Cubaya may look nice, but if you end up with a Cubaya rooster, know that they tend to be pretty aggressive and may scare or hurt young children.

Broodiness

Broodiness refers to a hens’ inclination to sit on her eggs and raise them to little chicks, teaching them to find food and mothering them. Bantam hens are especially good at mothering, however, Turken hens, the ones we owned, would eat their eggs as soon as they were laid. Make sure you inquire as to the broodiness of the breed, especially if you are wanting to raise chickens and sell the young ones.

Eggs: Color and Number

While this isn’t the most important factor, if you want to have green, blue, brown or white eggs to make your collection of eggs colorful, it’s the breed that determines the color of egg. And while all hens of all breeds do lay eggs, you may want a breed that lays many eggs as opposed to a breed that lays an average amount.

Noise Level

Believe it or not, this is a factor! Some breeds are quieter than others. If you are raising these hens in your backyard, and you are not in a rural area, you may want to consider making the noise level the chicken makes a priority.

Appearance

There are chickens that are absolutely beautiful and some that you wonder what kind of bird is that. You may want to raise chickens to show at a fair, the show stopping winners are either perfect specimens of a common breed or attractive specimens of a rare or odd breed.

Rarity

Perhaps you want to raise a combination of rare chickens for the purposes of selling the offspring. There are rare breeds that some people would pay a lot of money for; the trick is in keeping the roosters of common breeds away from the hens of rare breeds.

Keep in mind all of these factors before ordering your chicks so you can make sure to get the most out of your new pets. And while we are on the topic of ordering chicks, let’s cover the different ways to get your chicks before we press on to the guide to different breeds.