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?

They are probably one of the most unusual looking chicken breeds, everyone loves the looks of these guys. Polish chickens have huge poofs of feathers on their head and many have beards as well. Polish are friendly and quiet. They will almost always be at the bottom of the pecking order due to their docile nature, which makes them great pets, but keep an eye on them to make sure your other chickens aren't picking on them. Their feather head poofs can get in the way of their vision, making them a little skiddish if you approach them from their blind spots. A couple times per year, we trim the feathers in their field of vision and that helps calm them down a bit. My Polish girls are some of the first to greet me and remind me of my cat because they always seem to be under my feet, weaving between my legs lol. They are not great egg layers, but will lay 2-3 smallish-medium size white eggs.