Once you have all of the basic materials required to keep your chickens happy and healthy it is time to choose your birds.
It really isn't as simple as going into a pet shop and pulling one off of the shelf and taking it home, different breeds require different things.
The first thing to consider is what you want your birds for, the main reasons are as follows:-
- Egg Laying
- Breeding
- Showing
- Ornamental
- Eating
There are probably a few that I haven't mentioned such as the specialist breeding involved with colour strains and genetics but this is such a complicated type of breeding that I would probably need to buy another site just to cover the basics.
PURE BREED OR HYBRID
So which do you go for?
there are arguments for both pure and hybrids. We breed nothing but pure breeds but that is a personal choice. We went through a lot of breeds before we settled on one main breed the Araucana. Personally I wasn't that bothered how many eggs she would lay per year, I was interested in the breed itself and intrigued by the blue eggs that she laid.
Im going to start with egg laying.
There are birds that lay lets say specialised eggs, from very dark brown which look like freshly turned Mahogany to sky blue, even dusky purple eggs ! for these eggs i would always recommend that you buy pure breed birds, the reason being that your bird will lay a uniform coloured egg, by this i mean that your mahogany egg will always be the same colour and you can guarantee that the young bird that you have bought will lay exactly what is required. Where as a hybrid could through an egg from either parent line. So a hybrid blue egg layer would be made up from a parent line where one bird is a white egg layer and one is from a blue egg layer. There would be no guarantee that the bird that you have bought will lay a blue egg, it could lay a white or any colour in between the white and the blue, where as a pure breed Araucana will lay you a blue egg every time.
so lets say that you want a hen that will lay you an egg a day and when it comes into moult it will only stop laying for a very short time.
There are not many pure breeds that will fit this bill, most pure breeds will lay between 100 and 300 eggs per year depending on the breed, but most hybrids will lay 250 to 320 eggs per year, the fact being that the hybrid was bred with egg laying in mind.
There are many different types of hybrid, but all will lay you an egg a day if they are looked after well. here are a few of the breeds:-
The Amber is a very calm hen, great for anyone
starting off with chickens, they do tame up very easily and make great first chickens for children, looked after well this bird will lay you 300 eggs per year.
TheGgoldline is another calm and placid hen. she does tame up quite easily and becomes very trusting. Brown eggs 300+ per year. These birds do make good free rangers.
The Nera is a stricking looking bird, beatle black feathers that shine blue in the light, great free ranger and laying 300 eggs per year
The Bluebelle has to be one of my favorite hybrids. Quite docile but a bit more cautious than the other breeds, they will come and take your bread from your hand but i haven't found many that like to be picked up. Lays a beautiful brown egg approx 250 per year
All of the pictures of hybrids on this page are courtesy of Cambridge Poultry and I would like to thank Adam and Anna for letting us use them.
If you require Hybrids I can strongly recommend Cambridge Poultry a link to their website is included in the buttons to the left
