What's the best chicken for you - part 1

When selecting your first hens, you’re probably thinking about eggs and production and how healthy you’ll be, but once you own poultry, you’ll probably find egg-laying is never as important again.

When I chose my first hens, I stood in a large pen of pullets of different breeds and pointed out the prettiest ones: a Dorking (pictured below), a Light Sussex and a Brown Sussex.

When my brother finally finished building his poultry “hotel” (it’s big enough to be a spare room for guests), there was only one breed for him, the birds he had loved since he owned them as a child: black Orpingtons.

For my friend Carolyn, it was supposed to be a choice of practical egg layers, but since then a flurry of breeds have appeared in a rainbow of colours and she seems to spend a significant portion of her summer days hunting for nests and doing other chook-related activities. For some reason, this is never a chore.

The most common story we hear at NZ Lifestyle Block magazine is the people who say they are going to get some hens “just for eggs”. But almost without fail, the poultry addiction starts. I’ve met a lot of poultry people over the past five years, and the egg-laying prowess of their birds is never the first thing they mention, often it’s not the second or third, and a lot of the time it’s never mentioned at all. It’s always “this is Matilda”, or “she’s a Silkie and the best mum” or most commonly “I love my girls”.

So while you may think egg-laying is an important factor in your decision, it’s not quite that simple.

5 tips to finding the best chicken for you

1. How much room do you have?
If space is at a real premium, especially if you live in an urban area, then a breed that lays well and takes up minimum space is your best bet in which case commercial Hyline or Shaver hens are best.

We recommend you buy them as point-of-lay pullets to get the best production out of them, but if you wish to rescue a former commercial layer, look out for sales in your local community newspaper, on Trade Me or try a website like the Chicken Rescue Network. If you do buy them as rescues straight from a farm, they will look terrible as they will be moulting for the first time at 18 months of age and will have spent much of that time laying.

Because they are prolific layers in their first year, these hybrids tend to only live a few years and their egg laying can drop off quite quickly after the first year or two. Some birds won’t make the transition from caged bird to rescue due to the shock of leaving a warm, climate-controlled, almost disease-free shed to live in the outside world.

2 Do you want pretty eggs?
Different breeds of hen lay different kinds of eggs, from creamy white of the Ancona to blue-green of Araucana to the warm chocolate browns of the Barnevelder.

There’s something very beautiful about gathering a rainbow of eggs, and it’s quite delightful to share a simple joy with other people who may never have seen anything other than a plain brown or white egg.

Tomorrow: eggs or edible?

Nadene Hall NZ Lifestyle Block magazine