For years, we’ve tried out various chicken breeds, often favoring brown egg layers.
But the best-laying bird on the least feed that we ever raised was a white egg layer.
It was the best forager as well.
Yep. The White Leghorn.
They out-lay every other bird and they do great on less feed than other birds. They also have entertaining personalities.
This year I plan on getting at least twenty of them, and making them our mainstay coop bird.
I don’t need big, chunky birds that have a lot of meat on them. We can raise Cornish Cross for meat.
We really just need more eggs – and it’s hard to beat Leghorns.
5 responses to “I’m done with “dual-purpose” chickens”
NOOOOO! I CAN’T TAKE THE PRACTICALITY OF THIS POST!!! hehehe…
Ha! Me too! Just a couple days ago I told my husband I’m so done with Americaunas (with a “u” lol) and Marans. Thankfully he agreed, lol.
Americaunas are flighty, ill tempered, obstinate, uncooperative and they are constantly causing issues with the other birds in our flock. I’ve had quite a few because I love their blue eggs but it’s just not worth it. No more.
Marans are just big bullies, both male and female, all breeds. My husband likes their dark brown eggs but they’re constantly bullying the other chickens, I’ve had several breeds of those and I’m so over it.
We have a male olive egger we picked up as a hatching egg in Hannibal this year, he is the nicest Roo. I’ve had other olive eggers before and they have all had nice personalities. We have some silver, grey and white chickens, they’re nice too. Give me a chicken mutt any day, I don’t care what color their eggs are.
We’re trying Freedom Rangers (or red or ginger, whatever) for meat this year. We did Cornish Cross last year, they were mutants! 9+ pounds at 8 weeks old. Man could those chickens lay waste to some feed!! I really am hoping for better quality of meat and more dark meat.
He is a practiculturalist, after all.
We had some pretty birds, Wyandottes, salmon favorelle, etc, but when some of them died last year we decided to just get some red sex link producing birds. It’s finally paying off and we have a reliable number of eggs per day
Leghorns definitely can lay some eggs. We had a few pure ones for awhile but bred them into a mixed flock of several varieties. Hatch a new flock every year and butcher the older hens once the new ones start laying reliably. Having birds between 6months and a year old results in good laying all year round including the coldest parts of winter. We aim to have the newer birds laying by Oct to Nov. So many genetics mixed into our birds. Probably at least 10 varieties bred together over the last several years. It’s nice to have sizable roasting birds but since many aren’t super large we usually just debone them and can the meat and use it from there. Chicken salad!