Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Best chickens, egg layers

[quote=MartinStrummer]Egg laying cycle for a hen.



If a Chicken lays an egg a day, how long does it take a chicken to make an egg?

* Hint, the yoke takes 9 days to make!

Commercial chickens never see a roster.

Red Stars are hands down my favorite chicken. Although it's not a Rhode Island white cross, but a White Plymouth Rock typically.

We started out with them years ago, then tried plenty of other breeds, mostly for a change of color, and came to our senses and been back to Red Stars ever since. Nothing else comes close if you want an easy keeper, brown eggs and lots of them. They start laying at 20 wks instead of the typical 22-23 wks and end up laying large brown eggs and more of them than most any other breeds.

We've had barred rocks, columbian wyandotts, golden laced wyandotts, black astrolops, buff orphingtons, speckeld sussex. Speckeld sussex I did like, but still didn't hold up to a red star. So we've given plenty of others a fair shot.

Here's today's haul freshly carried in from the rain. 14 hens, 12 of which are now just 21 weeks old. A full house today of 14 eggs. So the young ones are already up and running full bore. Best bang for your buck chicken out there in my view, they never fail to impress.

Ones that don't cross the road?

https://twitter.com/rdwhiskey/status/1788828930410996035

Which breeds came out on top for your needs?

Wife bought a 20 pack of day old mixed “colored egg layers” from McMurray. Got them 6/1/23. They started laying in October??? Lost a few to a big black snake. 1 is a rooster even though they were sexed. Have 12 hens of about 4 breeds. Get blues and greens and browns. With 12 hens we average 11+ a day. Will see how long that lasts.

There is local breeder who hatches 600 a week of various breeds. I got a dozen each red sex links and cinnamon queens. Along with a rooster of each. Gave 4 to the mother in law. We get 16-20 eggs daily from the remaining 20. Wife sells 7-9 dozen weekly at the gym. We have a regular list of buyers along with a waiting list.

I think 95% accuracy is about right for sexed birds. Typical age for first eggs is about 5 months.

Checkout Buckeyes.
They they are true dual purpose chickens and are fantastic foragers. Their meat is excellent and egg production is good. Here in Oklahoma there were always some hens laying all winter long. They are cold hardy and here they only needed a wind break from N and W winds.
They also flourished during during the summer but were able to forage in brush. They will happily eat snakes, lizards and about anything they can swallow. Ticks were practically non existent. I opened the gate to their coop at 5 weeks of age for foraging and never closed it again. I started with 5 rooster chicks in addition to the pullets and culled down to the 2 roosters the hens liked best by about 8 months.
Any roosters the bullets didn't get along with were culled immediately.
If anyone decides to try them I would order from Privet Hatchery in NM followed by Cackle in Lebanon MO.

Been getting 6 eggs a day this morning got 6, usually have a couple in the afternoon. The Black chicken idea is a fine one!