Your first chickens- choosing layers, prices, and how many

Chickens make an excellent choice for a first farm animal.  They aren't too big, so don't take a lot of space or eat a lot, they are easy to care for, and layers begin to produce immediately.  A young child can easily care for twenty or thirty chickens after the initial housing is built, and if you want to go on vacation for a few days they can easily be cared for by obliging neighbors unlike many other farm animals (such as a "fresh" (in milk) dairy cow, for example).

     When buying chickens, there are several important things to be considered.  First you have to decide why you want chickens.  Do you want them just to run around the yard and look pretty?  If so, there are numerous ornamental breeds to choose from, such as the crested breeds including the Polish and others.  There are also the Phoenix, and the Favorelles, to name a few.

      Or you could start with meat birds, though I don't recommend it if you are new to raising chickens.  The advantage to meat chickens though is that you can raise them in a couple months, butcher them, freeze them, clean the coop, pens, etc, and forget about live chickens for the rest of the year.

     But what most people are looking for when they first get chickens, is an egg laying breed, maybe with some of the characteristics of the other categories mixed in.  I think that laying chickens are fun to have, especially if they are free-roaming, although there are some folks who disagree with me on this.  (And I would get pretty fed up with the birds too if they managed to get in the car and roost there overnight once or twice, and refused to lay anywhere but the porch...)  There are many excellent laying breeds, and some are both beautiful, and good meat birds too.  Personally, I like old American and British breeds, primarily because they are usually dual-purpose (good for eggs and meat) and tend to be calmer than many others.  Here are the names some of these breeds, listed in order of my preference.

Orpingtons

This is an old British breed, and is well known in its capacities of egg-layer, meat producer, and setter (hen that goes broody and hatches eggs).  They do not lay quite as much as some other breeds such as Rhode Island Reds, but they lay for a longer time, instead of burning out after the first two- three years.  They come in several different colors- white, buff (or gold), lavender, and black (but I haven't ever found any of these.)  The buffs are the best known, and they are the ones with which I have experience.

Black Australorps
An Australian breed derived from the black Orpington.  Excellent layers and good setters.

Wyandottes.

An excellent American breed, similar to the Orpington.  They are very attractive birds, coming in several colorations- silver laced, golden laced, white, and even red and blue laced.

Rhode Island Reds

A well known and good laying breed, these birds are also a fair size, so old hens and roosters could be stewed, being about the same size Orpingtons, Australorps and Wyandottes.

Barred Rocks

This is another well known layer breed.  They are a very traditional looking chicken, and overall are pretty good birds, but I personally prefer any of the others to them.  Ours were extremely bossy with the other chickens, dominated them mercilessly.  They were also terrible egg eaters (I'll write about this severe problem later).  Some friends of ours said that their's were also very dominant.  They do lay good eggs though, and a B. Rock hen crossed with a Buff Orp. rooster produces a "sex-link" (hen chicks one color, rooster chicks another.)  The hens have brown faces, and the roosters have a white spot on their heads.

Price to pay for chickens

     The price you pay for your chickens is determined by the breed, age and gender of the bird.  Young pullets about to lay, or which have just started are generally the most expensive, ranging from $10 to $15, with the average price being about $12.  If you are looking to buy only three or four hens, and don't want the trouble of raising chicks, this is the way to go.  The eggs you get will soon pay the original price back, and you are guaranteed to get young hens.  (Some roosters can look remarkably like hens when young, and there are folks who will try to deceive you.  Our neighbor was once offered, in my presence, a pen of about six young game chickens as layers.  Fully half were roosters, but the man selling them said that "they were hens, and you might have a rooster in there!" claiming that it was a great deal for about $60.  Needless to say, we informed Mr. L. of the fact that there were at least three roosters, and he did not buy them.)

     You could also purchase chicks, either locally or from a hatchery online or over the phone, which will ship them to you.  Some people say that this shipping of chicks is cruel.  I do not consider it to be so.  The chicks arrive in well ventilated boxes, packed relatively closely for warmth.  They do not receive food or water en route, but neither do they need it, for a chick absorbs all remaining yolk and albumen in its egg before it hatches, and can survive quite well on this for up to three days.  Thus, although they are doubtless uncomfortable, it is not a cruel practice to ship them, as the radical animal rightists claim.  Depending on the breed and hatchery, baby chicks cost from $2 to $5 apiece.

     Cornish cross meat chicks usually cost around $1 apiece from a hatchery.

     As to how many layers to buy- figure two per family member if you want to eat one egg apiece every day.  This may be a slightly high percentage of chickens to people, but my experience, and that of others has been that you need at least that many birds, and they will have to be replaced every few years.  A really good hen will lay an egg every day, but the average is about two eggs every three days.  There is a hybrid out there, commonly called a Red Star, which lays every single day, and the eggs are enormous.  We sold ours though after I read that a company in France controls which hatcheries are allowed to sell them.  This is because I became suspicious that the chickens might be genetically modified, since the strict control kept on this cross is something which would be allowed by a patent, and it is illegal to patent a living organism unless it is GM.  I researched this, but was unable to find anything else about it.  Still, we figured "better safe than sorry", and since we don't like hybrids anyway, and had only the one hen, and she was getting a little older, we sold her and her offspring, and don't intend to get any more Red Stars.  They are great layers though.

     For other articles on food, water, housing, minerals, and behavior, as well as some chicken vetting, stay tuned.  I'll be adding more to the blog's database on a hopefully regular basis.  Until then, God bless you, and have fun with your chickens!