The Top 16 Chicken Breeds for Your Backyard Flock
For the past couple decades, chickens have been growing in popularity as people become more interested in knowing where their food comes from, and desire to live a more natural lifestyle. But they are so much more than just egg factories. Watching chickens scratch about the yard is relaxing and de-stressing after a long day at work. Many pet chickens are extremely tame and will eat out of your hand and sit on your lap. Need more convincing that chickens are awesome?
Chickens are an easy pet to incorporate into nearly any family. They don't bark at your neighbors, they don't need to be walked, you can leave them over a long weekend without worrying while you go out of town and of course they give you all the fresh eggs you can eat. There are hundreds of breeds of chickens, so how do you decide which ones make the best pets? I will separate my top picks into excellent egg layers and poor/moderate layers. When you are keeping chickens as pets and high egg production isn't the main goal, you can add in a few of the gorgeous, ornamental breeds! These exotic birds are beautiful, but aren't usually the most reliable egg layers. Sometimes having a flock of high production breeds can be overwhelming for backyard chicken pet owners. Excellent layers can give you 5-6 eggs per week. Even with a relatively small flock of 6 chickens you are talking about 3 dozen weekly eggs. Every. Single. Week. For at least half of the year.