Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: brookegard on August 22, 2011, 19:44
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i am considering getting a few chucks :wacko: for their eggs, but not sure which breed is best :unsure:, i only have room for four, grabbing at snippets of info here and there, i am close to settling on four well-summers, as they seem to fit what i want :dry: can anyone advise me please :(
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Welsummers are lovely birds that lay a real lovely coloured egg. Being pure breeds they don't lay daily but will lay eggs for a longer period :)
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Lots of info on them on the club website WelsummerClub (http://www.welsummerclub.org/)
and stuff on another brown egg layer The Marans Club of Great Britain (http://themaransclub.co.uk)
You will mostly get less eggs per week from the traditional breeds, but they generally live longer than the egg laying hybrids
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thank you both for your input, would i be asking to much to ask if you both had a choice what you would start with ::)bearing in mind its only for egg supply and not breeding :blush:
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I have Copper Black Marans hybrids and they are fairly consistent layers of very dark brown eggs (see darkbrowneggs photo for an idea of colour). I have eight of them and get an average of six eggs per day, which is pretty good, plus they are gorgeous to look at when the sun is on them! I have two Welsumers (and a cockerel) and although they laid fairly consistently in their first year, they have tapered off to about three eggs each a week.
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I have 2 Burford Browns, which lay really beautiful deep brown speckled eggs, with a lovely dark gold yolk. They have been laying since the Spring and lay around 5 or 6 a week each.
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I have a Cuckoo Marans who is 5 now - she still lays when she isn't broody (sadly for me she goes broody about 4 times a year, but she is a great mum) and have had a welsummer in the past. She was Brenda Lees (my Cuckoo Marans) best friend and was called Peggy Lee, she was very timid and sweet. Sadly she is no longer with me. I couldn't chose one over the other - so why not get both? :D
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I would second that. Why not go for a selection so you have different coloured birds and different coloured eggs - Say Welsummer, Marans, Cream Legbar - all traditional established breeds, and then maybe a White Star as an egg laying hybrid type.
That should give you 4 different eggs and 4 different looking birds
This is a piccie of one of my Cream Legbar pullets, you have looked at the Welsummer and Marans, and here is a link to
White Star Chickens (http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0h&oq=whi&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_en-GB&q=white+star+chicken)
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you have given me food :nowink: for thought all of you and thank you i will probably have you all tortured by the time i get set up :D this is definitely something new for me but really looking forward to it all :) one more thing :lol: would i be better setting up after the winter or go for it asap :mellow:
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No go for it!
And we want to see pictures.
All the best.
X
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Whatever you decide you will love them and have hours of pleasure watching them do their "chickeny" thing - Plus some lovely fresh tasty eggs :)
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We have a limited range of breeds here in New Zealand (no Welsummers and no Marans :() but I would like to second the advice of getting a range of different breeds.
Not only will they ahve different eggs (very pretty in an egg basket!) but they also have different laying habits. So one might lay through the winter, one might start earlier in spring and one might tend to go broody. These are all different breed characteristics so by getting a variety of breeds you are 'hedging your bets' for an egg supply in all seasons.
I have six pullets: 2 Light Sussex, 2 Barnevelder, 2 Barred Plymouth Rocks. They are all delightful characters and I wouldn't be without them! They have just started laying (it's almost spring here) and today laid their 99th egg in 60 days of laying. I'm delighted with that laying rate, and delighted with my choices. :)
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OK, question from a fellow Newbie. No-one has mentioned the birds tailing off laying in the Winter. I've had various "advice" from a number of people but the jist was that pure breed birds would stop laying October/November ish and not restart till spring whereas hybrids would continue through the Winter but at a reduced rate. This was the main reason we ended up with 4 breed hens and 2 hybrids so that we didn't lose all egg production in the winter. We plan to add a couple more hybrids in 2 years time to start to spread the age of the flock. (And a couple more pekins if I can squeeze them in ;) ).
If it's eggs you want then it would appear that the most prolific layer is the leghorn. I've seen claims of 320+ eggs in the first year though as was stated below they run out of eggs quicker. There's only a finite number of eggs in each bird so the quicker they stop them the sooner they run out.
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ben-H if you read Lindeggs post just above yours you will see that she did mention birds not laying in winter :).
Hens depend on daylight hours to lay their eggs which is why poultry farms (and even some backyard poultry keepers) have light bulbs in the hen houses to extend the amount of daylight. For their first laying season my balckrock and my bluebelle also laid 5 eggs a week each but after that the following winters they eased off to just 2 a week each.
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I have one Leghorn who lays a chalky white egg almost every single day with only a small downturn during the winter. She's daft as a brush mind. I also have two Cream Legbars, also prolific layers.
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If I had the choice of 4 birds I'd definitely choose 4 different ones personally speaking. Why? Because I don't want to look at 4 birds the same! And 4 different coloured eggs are just cool in my book! Plus this helps you to know who is laying and who's not and may alert you early if any probs. I have personally found my welsummer to be a great layer (almost daily since she came into lay) but she is not yet a year old, she is treated the same as the others and has regular contact but has remained 'scatty' and what I call 'flighty' but she is sooooo beautifull!! My Orpington (Gold Laced) of the same age has a good laying history too although ot quite as good as the WS but again she is stunning and has a temperent to match, she's like a chicken dog lol!! They are well known to be great 'pet' chickens. I remember playing with my dads ones as a child in my play house ::) also known to be great mothers too. Just to add too we had eggs last winter regularly from a rescued ex barn hen and that was with no light or extra heating and our hens are also not shut in at night but choose to roost in their nest boxes, they are in a well protected enclosure but don't have a hen house, a freak chicken maybe lol! Best of luck am envious of you at the thought of choosing 4 new hens, you wont look back, best of luck and happy choosing :)
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I have been happy with Hybrids which are available in various colours producing various egg shell colours. They are prolific layers and in their first year laid an average of 338 eggs each and in their second year to date an average of 320 eggs each. Throughout their first winter egg production continued more or less as normal except on the very coldest of days. I expect egg production to start reducing in their third year. To some degree I assume egg production depends on how well the birds are looked after and how well they are fed but they do have an finite number of eggs that they can lay (not sure what the number is though but I think it's up to about 800).
My Hybrids are Blackrocks, Speckeldies and Bluebelles.
Whatever breed you go for you will enjoy. Good luck.
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Ah, but Joyful the message I was getting was ALL breed hens stop laying over winter and I would be really lucky to get any eggs from them between Oct- March etc. This seemed quite a prevalent opinion and hybrids would be my only option for winter eggs. Now I could probably have done wider research before buying and I hadn't found this site at the time.
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hehe you will just have to get more birds :lol:
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thank you all for all the good advice, a lot i hadnt even considered, will keep you informed of outcome :blink: