Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
over her feet, but she's not really suitable for tractor life—she's always napping on the perch
while my working hens are scrabbling around in the dirt hunting bugs. (On the other hand,
she makes a good mother.)
The food industry has developed a few varieties that are extremely well suited to egg-
laying or to putting on weight quickly as meat birds. The top varieties of egg, meat, and
dual-purpose chickens are listed below:
•
White Leghorn - egg-laying, white eggs
•
Golden Comet - egg-laying, brown eggs
•
Red or Black Sex-Links - egg-laying, brown eggs
•
Rhode Island Reds - egg-laying, brown eggs
•
Cornish Cross (White Cornish X White Plymouth Rock) - meat, reach 4-5
lbs. in 6 weeks
•
Plymouth Rocks - dual-purpose, good for meat and eggs
•
Sussex - dual-purpose, good for meat and eggs
•
Wyandottes - dual-purpose, good for meat and eggs
In the first edition of this topic, I recommended the Plymouth Rock since the breed has a
reputation of being a good dual-purpose breed. However, after extensive experimentation,
we discovered that a bird that's supposed to be good for everything is really good for noth-
ing. We deleted the Plymouth Rocks from our flock and have instead settled on
raising
Golden Comets and Rhode Island Reds for eggs
—our feed costs plummeted when we
switched over to the more efficient breeds.
If you want to raise chickens for meat,
the most popular meat variety is Cornish
Cross
. Unfortunately, this highly inbred strain has more than its share of health problems,
so raise them with care.
To
check
out
other
varieties,
I
recommend
the
chicken
breed
selector
tool
at:
www.mypetchicken.com/breedQuestions.aspx.
