You’re all very lucky! With Rachel and I both temporarily out of work due to COVID-19, you’re likely to get a lot more posts than we’ve been providing these last six months or so.

At the moment we’re in need of more hens. With the grocery stores cleared out of essentials, I told Rachel that we’ll never again be caught with fewer than 8 laying hens and 2 goats in milk at all times. She readily agreed. So, a few more hens are a must. Now that we have a few years of raising a backyard flock, I’m here to provide an idea of the characteristics of some of the more popular breeds. Each one has their own benefits and drawbacks, and this is our experience with them:

White Leghorns

These birds are the primary breed for commercial production. They lay a ton of large, white eggs. Plus, they are small, so their feed intake is minimal. That said, they don’t forage for bugs, worms and tasty plants like our other chickens do, so they realistically eat the same amount of purchased feed as any other chicken. They tend to be flighty, and they are FAST – good luck trying to catch one. You’ll notice I don’t have a picture of ours on here; it’s for precisely the aforementioned reason. They also have large combs on the top of their heads that are prone to frostbite in cold weather. If you don’t find their personality difficult to manage in a backyard setting and cold weather isn’t a concern, then they are a good option for someone looking for high production. We appreciate the size of the eggs in cooking, but honestly for us they are not worth having around as a backyard hen.

Barred Rocks

These black and white hens are good, reliable layers. Their brown eggs are a bit on the small side, but they do lay frequently enough. They’re more settled than the White Leghorns (as are pretty much every other breed on here), and they make a good backyard chicken. The only reason why I rank them behind the Ameraucanas (next up) is because they’re a little bit boring in appearance. That said, it’s pretty much a tie between the two breeds.

Ameraucanas

Ameraucanas, often better known by their nickname ‘Easter Eggers,’ are flashy birds with a variety of tawny patterns. They lay slightly less than the Barred Rocks, but their eggs are a bit larger so pound for pound it evens out over a year. Fun bonus: the shell is a bluish green. I wouldn’t ever have them exclusively, as they don’t lay quite enough to make it worth having an entire flock of them. That said, variety is the spice of life, and if you’re going to have your own flock you might as well give it a good dose of color – both in plumage and in egg shell. It’s definitely worth having a couple of them around.

Rhode Island Reds

If we could only have one breed, it would be Rhode Island Reds. Why? Because after the White Leghorn they have the highest production. They’re more relaxed, cold weather hardy, and while their brown eggs aren’t quite as big as the Leghorn’s, they are bigger than any other breed we’ve had. The only place I’d take points off would be lack of variety. As with the Barred Rocks, the sameness in their plumage isn’t particularly interesting to look at. But again, if only one breed can be chosen, they check the two most important boxes of high production and low maintenance.

And now a word about laying ducks….

I really enjoyed having laying ducks. We still have a laying duck left, Jemima Puddle-duck. She’s a rare heritage breed called Silver Appleyard, and she’s welcome to live out the rest of her life with our chickens. That said, unless we make some considerable changes to our homestead I don’t envision having a whole flock of laying ducks again.

Laying ducks have a lot of things going for them, and I don’t mean to make light of some very real benefits that they offer. The right breed can be very high production, and some sources say that they will even outlay chickens pound-for-pound because their eggs are huge. Plus, if you want to keep a breeding flock and raise your own replacement layers it’s far easier to do it with ducks rather than chickens. Drakes (male ducks) are pleasant creatures that hardly make a sound. Roosters are aggressive and noisy. You wouldn’t want one in your backyard.

BUT ducks do come with a very large drawback. They are naturally messy and very, very wet. They play in their water and quickly soil it, splash it around and create a swamp of their living quarters. Plus their manure is much larger and wetter than chickens. Blissful and enjoyable they may be, but they can also be a headache to clean up after. If you’re going to go with laying ducks I would strongly suggest making sure that their housing and yard have excellent drainage.

Also, on ‘new varieties’…

Each year there seems to be a new variety of layer. Usually it’s some kind of hybrid or a different color of something else that already exists. Generally I steer clear of these. Why? While I certainly appreciate an assortment of layers in a backyard flock, I’d rather not be working with an unknown so I stick with the tried and true. There are enough unknowns in homesteading, you don’t need to add more for yourself. Most of these new varieties are bred for high egg production, and that is good, but you might not be guaranteed other things that are important such as personality, cold hardiness, ability to forage for their own food, etc. There’s a reason why many of these new varieties are around for a year or two and then disappear altogether to make way for the next flash in the pan.

What we’ll be trying out:

When selecting our new layers, we got some Speckled Sussex and Colombian Wyandotte chicks in addition to more of our old favorites. One year I would really like try the Bresse and Bielefelder breeds as per the Swedish Homestead’s suggestion. Unfortunately, these breeds aren’t as widely available in the US as they are in Europe. You CAN get them on this side of the pond, but they’re very difficult to find and, in the case of the Bresse, prohibitively expensive (most chicks are $3 – $5 while the Bresse will set you back at least $25 each!) I doubt we will ever have Bresse chickens due to the expense, but maybe some year we’ll be able to get some Bielefelders. There’s always something to look forward to!