Best Chicken Breeds for Eggs, Meat and Dual Purpose Varieties with Photos (2024)

Aninformation guide to good egg layingchicken breeds available with images for your homestead and backyard.See which of the best laying hens and chickens are right for you.

3 MAIN TYPES OF CHICKENS: Hybrids, Pure-Breeds andBantams

There are so many types of layingchickens outthere that it is understandably overwhelming when you first set out toget some backyard chickens as egg layers. However, they can be brokendown into 3simple types:

1) HybridChickens- The majority of commercial birds are of hybrid stock. These being across between a number of different chicken breeds. They are hardy andlesssusceptible to diseases and some of the best egg laying chicken breedscan befound in this type of fowl.

2) PureBreeds -Many of these are of old heritage chicken breeds are bred down throughgenerations. Heritagechicken breeds areideal if you are going to exhibit your birds. They are also ideal ifyou want toensure the future of pure bred birds that have been bred for certainqualities that you will enjoy, whether it be for egg-laying or for meatproduction.

3) Thereis another type ofchicken- BantamChickenswhich are in a class on their own, andideal to keep when you don't have a lot of space as they are muchsmaller than the ones mentioned above. However, besides true bantams,there are also many large breeds of chickens which have been bred tobecome bantam chickens in size.

Of these hybrid and pure bredchickens,there are those that are good as egg layers, those that are good tablebirds for meat production, those that are just pretty to lookat, and those that are dual-purpose; good forboth eggs and meat.

3 Classes of Chicken Breeds

What makes up hybrids, pure breeds andbantams are 3 main classes of chickens:

• American Class of Chickens
• Asiatic Class of Chickens
• Mediterranean Class ofChickens

American Class

The main American chicken breeds are:

• PlymouthRocks
• Rhode Island Reds
• Wyandottes

Asiatic Class

Themain Asiatic breeds are large, solid birds, quiet birds that make verygood chickens for pets because of their docile natures. However,primarily the Asiatic birds, because of their large size are reared asmeat chickens:

• Brahmas
• Cochins
• Langshams

Brahmasare the largest of the breeds, docile birds that don't wander off, andtheir weight means that they don't fly too far. Brahmas are excellentbroilers and also lay a large number of large, brown eggs.

Cochinshave been bred for their size and there are several varieties such asthe Buff Cochin, Partridge Cochin, Black Cochin and White Cochin. Theyare not great egg layers.

Langshams, both black and white were introduced intoAmerica, and again are large, docile birds bred for their meat.

Mediterranean Class

TheLeghorns are the best breed from theMediterranean class for eggs, andin fact, the best layers around at the moment. Other than the Leghornsthere are other types:

• Black and White Minorcas
• Andalusians
• Anconas
• Whitefaced Black Spanish

Chicken Breeds for Meat

If you are only interested in breeds of chicken for eating then youshould be looking at:

• Brahmas
• Jersey Giants
• Langshams
• Cochins

However, this list isnotlimited to these meat breeds as you will see below. But these are justsome of the more popular chicken breeds for meat.

Here is a list of both hybrid meat chickens and old breed andcrossed meat chickens

Modern Hybrid Meat Chickens

* White Feathered Cobb
* Shaver Starbro
* Marshall
* Arbor Acre broiler
* Red Feathered Shaver Redbro
* ISA 657 Red-feathered broiler

Chicken Breeds for Eggs

If you are only interested in keeping chickens for eggs, then youshould be looking at the following chicken breeds:

• Leghorns
• Spanish
• Minorcas
• Anconas
• Andulusians
  

Chicken Breeds for Meat and Eggs

Finally, if you want to keep chickens for both meat and eggsthen youshould be looking at keeping:

• Rhode Island Reds
• Plymouth Rocks
• Orpingtons
• Wyandottes

My Opinion on the Best Chicken Breeds for Eggs

As far as I amconcerned, the bestchicken laying breeds are by far the White Leghorns, the Plymouth Rocks,and the RhodeIsland Reds.

In the past I have kept RhodeIsland Redscrossed with Light Sussex and they are excellent layerstoo producing eggs 6 days out of 7 during the layingseason.

Theydid go off theboil for a while when a lot of them were broody, but eventually theysorted themselves out and went back to laying eggs once again. However,this is one disadvantage of Rhode Island Reds crossed with Light Sussex- they do tend to go broody more than other laying hens.

Ifyou want to your hens to raise their own chicks, then this chickenbreed would be the perfect mother. However, if you are just keepinglaying hens for eggs, then you may want to look at Leghorns crossedwith Rhode Island Reds, or pure Leghorns.

If you are looking for good layinghens in general, trying to decide on the best chicken breed for you.There are plenty to choose from, as you will see from the listbelow, and although pure bred chickens, in the main, are pretty to lookat, mixed-breeds are more hardy, and often very good layers for thebackyard chicken keeper.

However, having said all that, not allchickenbreeds lay at the same time throughout the year and it is better tokeep two breeds that will give you a good supply all yearround.

Manychicken keepers will keep Leghorns as their main flock, but then theywill also keep American breeds of chicken as well. This is becauseAmerican chicken breeds will often lay throughout the winter, while theLeghorns won't. During the summer, the Leghorns are betterlayers thanthe American breeds.

PlymouthRocks, although good layers, only out produce Leghorns inMarch. However, because they are hardy birds they lay well duringwinter.The Wyandottesproduce more eggs during December, January, September,and October.

The RhodeIsland Reds lay wellin January through to April, but during November, May, June, July, andAugust, the Leghornsusually outlay all their competitors.

Finally, on a personal level, I thoughtI would mention ISABrowns. They are nota chicken breed, but rather a hybrid chicken. They areexcellent chicken layers of brown eggs that are often the choice ofchicken used by egg farms.

I have just acquired 2 of late, and areimpressed with theirperformance. They are said to lay 300 eggs a year. The only downsideis, that because the ISA Brown is such an egg-laying machine, they havea very short lifespan. However, I am hoping to beat this by keeping uptheir protein levels. We shall see. I also keep PlymouthBarred Rocks as they are an excellent dual purpose birdthat do well in cold weather. And we also have Columbian Rocks.

Basically,if you want to keep chickens for eggs, you really have to keep a numberof different chicken breeds that will produce eggs for you over theyear, because you will find that when one type is not laying as well,the other varieties are.

So you can see thatkeeping a number of different chicken breeds for eggs would make farmore sense, than just having one type of chicken.

However,I do have to add, that if you don't get your hens to lay by Septemberor October after they have moulted, they probably won't lay again untilthe following spring.

As a result you will findthat some breeders force their hens into moulting by reducing the graindrastically from mid-July through to mid-August, giving the hens onlyenough grain to keep them alive. After that, they are then given lotsof grain and lots of sunflower seeds.

Thisseems to result in a total loss of feathers almost all at once.However, a month later, by mid-September the hens are through theirmoulting and laying again.

Here is one of my ISA Brown hens,along with my Plymouth Barred Rocks.

My personalpick for good laying hens is any of thefollowing 4 chicken breeds that are cross-bred with each other:

• White Leghorns
• Rhode Island Reds
• Light Sussex
• White Wyandottes

Rhode Island Reds,crossed withWhite Wyandottes makes another excellent cross-breed forchickens.

Cross-Breeding Chickens for Eggs and Sex-Linking

If you are going to go intocross-breeding chickens, you need to know what the off-spring will looklike.

Ifyou mate a Rhode Island co*ckerel with a Light Sussex henthe malechicks will be white in color, like the hen, and the female chicks willbe reddish brown, like the father. This is called "sex-linking" inchickens and makes identifying the sexes easier.

Ifyou mate a Rhode Island co*ckerel with a White Wyandotte hen,you will againget the same result where the female chicks are reddish brown, and themale chicks are white. The offspring of this mix, makes better layersthan those crossed with a Light Sussex.

You willnot be able to sex-link chicks if you have a light colored co*ck, suchas a White Leghorn and mate it with a Rhode Island hen, forexample.

However, sex-linkingcan be donewith mixed-bred chicks in a following generation, if you mated a RhodeIsland Red co*ckerel with a hybrid that was the result of a mating of aRhode Island Red co*ckerel with a White Leghorn, for example.

Chicken Breeds that Lay Brown Eggs

Despitethe fact that there is no nutritional difference in both brown andwhite eggs, many people want chickens that lay brown eggs.

Thereare many hybrid breeds as well as pure breeds or first crosses that laybrown eggs, and I thought I would list them here for you, as onoverview.

Hybrid Layers of Brown Eggs

* ISA Brown
* Hisex Brown
* Shaver Brown
* Hy-Line Brown
* Babco*ck Brown
* Ross Brown
* Hubbard Golden Comet

Pure Breed ChickenLayers of Brown Eggs

* Maran
* Rhode Island Red
* Barred Plymouth Rock
* Black Rock
* Rhode Island Red x Light Sussex
* Dorset
* Wellsummer

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