Choosing The Best Breed of Chicken to Keep

There is a huge choice of breeds to choose from and the one you select will largely depend upon your reasons for wanting to keep chickens. You should consider whether you want to keep them for eggs and meat, as a family pet or for showing and exhibiting.

If you are considering which is the best breed of chicken for meat, eggs or both, you basically have three choices.

Laying Breeds

Laying breeds are the best choice if you want to have eggs above all else. A typical egg laying breed chicken can produce between 180-240 eggs a year per hen. If you keep three hens then you can expect them to produce up to 720 eggs a year, that is an average of just under 2 eggs a day.

Your laying hen should start laying eggs at around 5-6 months old and will continue to lay at a steady rate for several years. As your hen ages, egg production will slow, as the hen becomes older and 'spent'. Laying breeds expend most of their energy during their lives producing eggs, therefore afterwards 'spent' hens are usually skinny with little real meat on their bones.

 

Meat Breeds

Meat breed chickens are bred for their suitability for the table. If you buy these breeds of chickens, be prepared for the fact that they grow very fast, as the faster they grow, the more tender their meat is. Certain meat breed chickens can reach eating weight within just 6 or 7 weeks.

There are two main types of chickens you can raise for meat, these are:

• Broilers- Fryers - butchered at between 3-5lbs in weight.
• Roasters - butchered at between 6-8lbs in weight.

Baisically a Broiler-fryer is a chicken suitable for the BBQ or grill,whereas the roaster is as it indicates is more suitable for roasting. Broiling differs from roasting and baking in that the meat is turned during the process so as to cook one side at a time. Broilers are likley to be younger and therefore more tender.

Dual Purpose Breeds

However if you wish to have both eggs and meat from your chickens, dual purpose chicken breeds are a great choice for the home chicken owner. Dual purpose breed chickens lay a steady supply of eggs whilst building a decent amount of meat on their bones. As you might expect, there is some variations between breeds, with some producing more meat than eggs and others the reverse. So it is a case of choosing the best breed for your family's needs.