What Type of Backyard Chicken is Best?

Last year more people started raising backyard chickens than in years past. If you are considering raising chickens, you may be wondering what type of backyard chicken is best. 

First, you need to decide why you want backyard chickens. The Bearded Rooster wanted chickens for eggs plus to add a food source if the zombie apocalypse happened and after 2020, I’m glad we have chickens. 

Chickens for Eggs

If you just want chickens for eggs, you have lots of options. There are over a 100 different breeds of chickens. 

All hens lay eggs but not all lay every day. If you are wanting a bunch of eggs to possibly sell, you need a high-production breed. These birds lay 250-300 eggs per year. 

• Leghorn
• Golden Comet 
• Black Sexlink
• Production Red
• Rhode Island Red
• Isa Brown

High Production breeds don’t live as long as other breeds and many tend to develop reproductive tumors or diseases. Also, as your bird ages, its egg production decreases. Just something to keep in mind.  

Do you want to raise chicks? 

If you want to raise baby chicks, you will need a rooster. Hens do not need a rooster to lay eggs but they do need one if you want to have babies (birds and the bees).  Being in the city, we are not allowed to have a rooster. If we wanted to raise baby chicks, we could purchase fertile eggs or hatching eggs and use an incubator. 

Even with a rooster, you may still need to use an incubator to hatch because most hens won’t go broody, but with a rooster, you should have plenty of fertile eggs. 

Silkie and Cochins make great broodies. We had a Golden Laced Wyandotte that would go broody several times a year. She raised several sets of babies. 

Hobby

Are you looking for something to do? Raising backyard chickens provides hours of entertainment and believe it or not, chickens are great for therapy. One of the best parts of my day is when I go outside in the evening and the chickens flock towards me (of course, they are looking for treats but still it’s awesome). They are so fun to watch scratching around, dust bathing and doing other chicken-type things. 

Backyard chickens are also great for young children to raise. It’s a great way to teach responsibility, caring for others, and a sense of accomplishment. It’s awesome when you get your first eggs. 

Meat

There are specific chickens bred for meat only, referred to as broilers. You will need to process it between 8-10 weeks. If you wait any longer, you may see birds with broken legs or they will pass away from heart failure. These birds are bred to grow quickly. 

• Cornish Cross
• Freedom Ranger

Many hatcheries sell Fry Pan Bargain chicks, which are roosters from heritage breed chickens. Roosters don’t grow as fast as meat birds but lots of people use roosters for meat. 

There are several breeds classified as dual purpose. They are a heavier bird and don’t lay as many eggs. Dual-purpose birds tend to be slower and roam less. They are great for backyards.

• Australorp
• Wyandotte
• New Hampshire Red
• Buff Orpington

Personal Use

If you are wanting chickens, just for personal use, you have many more choices. There are ornamental birds:

• Polish
• Silkie
• Frizzle
• Serama

These can be a little harder to take care of. 

Bantam chickens are a smaller version of the original breeds which is perfect if you don’t have much space. Just know, the eggs are smaller than a normal chicken egg. 

So now that you’ve determined why you want backyard chickens, what else is important?

If you are going to interact and spend time with your chickens, you want a friendly breed. So far all our chickens are very friendly. With the last batch of babies, after losing two chickens this year,  we swore we would not get close to them but the Littles had their own ideas. They know we give the treats and they run to greet us when we come outside. It’s impossible to not look at them as just livestock. 

There are breeds that are friendlier than others. Our leghorn and easter eggers are more skittish and flighty but they will still jump up in my lap when I’m sitting outside. 

Now, roosters are a different story. We have friends that have the friendliest roosters but many can be mean. Their main job is to protect the flock and many will look at you as a threat. 

Another important consideration is what part of the country you are in. Being in Texas, we try to purchase birds that are heat tolerant and they don’t necessarily need to be cold-hardy. Chickens do better in cooler temps so being heat-tolerant is important for us. If you are in the North, you want to look for cold-hardy birds. 

How much space do you have? Some birds do not do well with confinement and prefer to be foraging. They will pick on others when unhappy, causing injuries. Then there are birds that are happy as can be in a small space. 

Is egg color important? Each of our chickens is a different breed and we love the range of colors we get from them. 

Buying chickens

When buying chicks, straight-run are not sexed and you could end up with a bunch of roosters. If this is a concern, make sure you purchase pullets. We like purchasing heritage-breed chickens whenever possible. These are the original chicken breeds raised by our ancestors and many are being threatened by extinction. 

Make sure your purchase from a reputable source. We got two chickens off Craig’s list and being new to chicken keeping, didn’t know what to look for. The birds had lice and mites and I think they were older than what we were told. 

So that’s a lot of information. I love the breed selector tool from my pet chicken. 

As always, if you have any questions, just reach out. I’m happy to help if I can. 

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