The Best Chicken Breeds for Your Homestead | McMurray Hatchery

[Music] welcome everybody you too people family friends we're today we're in my backyard my coop my own homestead all acre and we're gonna talk about the the best breeds for your homestead and so we're gonna kind of break that down a little bit everyone's got different needs and different wants and so we're gonna talk about that a little bit happy to have my kids out that's the best breed to get [Music] chicken breeds really fall into two categories so there's the you know the meat type breeds and then there's the layer type breeds you know that's the general overview so if you're trying to raise your own protein obviously eggs are a great source of protein but so is chicken chickens are very lean meat you know raising your own meat is a little more undertaking than raising chickens for eggs so you really gotta know what you want there are breeds that fall into both of those or they're dual purpose breeds and they're kind of they're not gonna be the best egg layers and not gonna be the best meat birds they are in the middle so that's kind of people really need to know it's like dual purpose is they're gonna serve both purposes but not as well as is one who specifies it as an egg layer or me there are only a couple types of meat birds meat breeds the other side of things are the egg layers and there are there are a lot more breeds of egg layers I mean there's four hundred and thirty-two degrees some chicken and ninety nine percent of those are are egg layers everything was a meat birdie fifty years ago but now they're more specialized so lots and lots of egg layers and and there's lots that are especially for for different reasons they're for warmer cold climates they're some that are good any where there are better egg layers there are more show birds so you really need to decide what you want for your for your homestead for your place [Music] yeah so egg layer breeds there's a lot of them the United States and Europe took kind of two different paths between their their best egg laying breeds the United States said hybrid versions color sex bull breeds Europeans that auto sexy and breeds so their color sex bowl but it's a number generation trait but they don't have the hybrid vigor that you would get out of the you know the crosses that are more available in the United States your best egg layers your your red stars your you know I surrounds your amber links you know the sex link birds are your black stars those are your best egg layers the eggs you buy in your grocery store if you're buying a brown egg that's a that's a red star so if you're looking for egg production like a lot of egg production with a really nice dark brown egg those are those are your best options Pro white leghorns that's the number one egg layer in the world white eggs very consistent very large in minimal feed intake so that's one thing you really need to look at - the bigger the birds more feed they eat and that doesn't always translate into egg size so one of the things to to look for is is feed intake and you're only gonna get that my calling it talking to somebody really knows [Music] you know obviously your Brahmas and your coaching's or you know those are bigger birds there they're a medium egg but they that you know for that body size they eat more still really good birds they're really great for cold climates [Music] if you were really looking to raise your own breeds you're gonna want a broody hen we tell you how what we feel is a broody bird or not broody bird so are they willing to sit on their nest are they willing to sit for 21 days in action egg and so there are really great birds for that and they're not necessarily the greatest egg layers or the best producers but they're gonna be the best mothers or they're gonna be able to sit on a nest for 21 days [Music] so breathe for your homestead I like having some variety some of the breeds that we have the lighter red ones or red stars those are the best egg layers the speckled ones those are Sussex they are they are fantastic layers of kind of a light cream egg turq ins are really great layers - they're a dual purpose birds the Roosters being fairly good-sized by far that's our back double yogurts I feel like so out of all the breeds we get and that's not necessarily a good trait nice nice Birds they're very nice birds ginger broiler that's our broiler meat bird so the problem with meat birds is that they grow too big to be really active well we with our ginger boilers I don't feel like that's the case so he's out scratching very active he's not particularly young they don't grow as fast as a as a Cornish cross would would but they get just as big but just takes longer so I mean him being he's full-grown it he's probably 25 weeks old but there's no livability issues so he just keeps on living which makes them makes them a really nice breed for a homestead if you're going to raise your own [Music] some of the things you really need to consider or how many eggs you need for your family are you trying to produce eggs to sell are you trying to produce enough eggs neighbours are you trying to preserve eggs hard-boiled eggs know how many eggs you eat and it's a lot easier to get the number of chickens to meet that typically a chicken doesn't lay an egg every day and the older it gets the less eggs at lay so every year it lays about 80% of the eggs are laid the year before so typically it's it's it's like two chickens per person if you're going to try to sell eggs one of the most popular breeds are Americana's the blue egg layers like bars Americana's there's a couple of variations out fires so they they add a lot of variety to your eggs cream in you do a farmers market and they obviously gonna want some colored egg and I like having those colored eggs in our basket anyway they're really super pretty they're really nice large eggs great egg layers they're great for any homestead they're cold hardy they're warm weather tolerant no problems americanas great breeds chocolate there's the myrrh on the cuckoo mehran's the black copper miron's so black copper bronze white mehran's those are real super-tough you'll get a white egg layer to really make the other eggs pop you should have some light white eggs in there with being the best egg leaders I don't know why anybody would exclude those so pearl leghorns Sussex being a lighter breed you get a Polish because they're fun and they lay a white egg just immense so yeah so that's I don't know the best breeds for your for your homestead that's what I think and later today we'll talk about the equipment that you need so that'll be that'll be another fun video [Music]

Channel: Murray McMurray Hatchery

Views: 114,008

Keywords: best chicken breeds, homesteading, getting started with chickens, fresh eggs, McMurray Hatchery, Homesteaders of America, broiler chickens, blue egg layers, raising chickens, homestead living, grow your own food, sustainable living, learn how to raise chickens, brown egg layers, Murray McMurray, Murray McMurray Hatchery, where to buy chickens, dual-purpose chickens, best laying chicken breeds

Id: mzrpyWRb0T0

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020