Chickens
A to Z List of Chicken Breeds
Jul
Which Chicken Breed Is Right For You?
With more than 400 chicken breeds to choose from deciding on the right breed for your needs can be a challenge.
When it comes to picking the right chicken breed you must first consider how their characteristics match your needs and situation.
Are you after a family pet? Did you want to keep chickens for their egg production value or to farm them for their meat?
Have you considered the cost of feeding them? Will they thrive in your local climate? You also need to think about how much space they’ll need.
If you can decide which of these are most important to you, it will simplify the process of choosing the right chicken breed for you.
Each breed has a category list noting their key characteristics. Where the plumage colour is listed this generally represents only a very small sample of the possible colours for that breed.
Many of the large breeds have bantam versions as well if size is important.
Best Choice for Meat
The following breeds are noted for the quality of their meat: Dorking, Croad Langshan, Faverolles, Barnevelder, Australian Langshan, Plymouth Rock, Delaware, Brahma, Catalana.
Family and Child Friendly
Popular chicken breeds for keeping as pets include: Ameraucana, Silkie, ISA Brown, Pekin, Frizzle and the Australorp, Brahma, Booted Bantam, Houdan.
Cheap to Feed
The following breeds are very economical to feed: Jungle Fowl, Silkie, Rosecomb, Frizzle, Modern Game, Japanese, Belgian Bantams, Sultan, Sebright.
Top Egg Layers
Popular chicken breeds most suited for laying eggs include: ISA Brown, Leghorn, Australian Langshan, Rhode Island Red, Australorp, Barter Black, Barter Brown and Barter white, Wyandotte, Orpington, Belgian bearded d’Uccle, Cinnamon Queen, Catalana, Sussex, Minorca.
Australian Breeds
Australorps, Barter Black, Barter Brown and Barter white, Australian Langshan, Australian Game, Australian Pit Game.
Rare
Ameraucana, Houdan, Booted bantam, Buff laced Polish, Dorking, Japanese bantam, Norfolk grey.
Ancona Chickens
Are most recognisable by its black feathers with a beetle green sheen.
Ancona
Ancona chickens make a great backyard pet as they are hardy and easy to care for. They are a dual-purpose breed, meaning they can be used for both eggs and meat.
They are a rare breed, originating in Ancona, Italy. The Ancona chicken is most recognisable by its black feathers with a beetle green sheen. Each black feather has a small white tip on the end.
Ameraucana Chickens
They have dark grey feathers with small black sections on their wings and tail
Ameraucana
The Ameraucana chicken is a unique and rare breed. They are currently growing in popularity in both Australia and the USA.
Ameraucanas are known for their light blue eggs. However, there is more to this breed than just blue egg laying. Backyard chicken owners are falling in love with their fluffy face feathers and gentle personality.
Australian Game
Australian Game Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Australian Game (Colonial Game) is a large (up to 4.5 kg for the hen) show and meat breed. It does exist as a bantam version too. Long legs and muscular appearance hint at their fighting pit origins.
Category: large, meat, Australian
Australorp Chickens
Australorps are an egg-laying breed of chicken that is prized for its efficiency
Australorps
Australorps are excellent egg producers. They average around 250 to 300 large light brown eggs a year and in 1922, six hens laid 1,857 eggs over 365 days for the new world record!
Australorp chickens live quiet lives with adults and children alike – they can cope well even through cold winter weather too.
The hen is about 3 pounds when fully grown into adulthood so it’s an ideal size as far as roasting goes!
Australian Langshan
Australian Langshan Image from backyardpoultry.com
A popular cross-breed which was developed in Australia and are well suited to our harsh climate. The Australian Langshan comes in both bantam and standard size.
They are often kept for exhibiting or egg laying and they are considered a good “all rounder”. They are known to be quite friendly and docile.
Category: large, good egg producers, family pet
Australian Pit Game
Australian Pit Game Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Australian Pit Game is a large very athletic looking bird. The meat is said to be reasonably good but they are bred mostly for show purposes.
They are alert and very agile birds and not at all amenable as family pets. A bantam version is available.
Category: large, meat, black plumage, Australian
Australian Langshan
Australian Langshan Image from backyardpoultry.com
A popular cross-breed which was developed in Australia and are well suited to our harsh climate. The Australian Langshan comes in both bantam and standard size.
They are often kept for exhibiting or egg laying and they are considered a good “all rounder”. They are known to be quite friendly and docile.
Category: large, good egg producers, family pet
Australian Pit Game
Australian Pit Game Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Australian Pit Game is a large very athletic looking bird. The meat is said to be reasonably good but they are bred mostly for show purposes.
They are alert and very agile birds and not at all amenable as family pets. A bantam version is available.
Category: large, meat, black plumage, Australian
Bantam Chickens
Bantam chickens produce a good number of rich, fine-tasting eggs.
Bantam Chickens
Barnevelder Chickens
They tend to be quiet and shy
Barnevelder
The Barnevelder is a large chicken that produces good meat and lots of eggs. Barnevelders tend to be shy and quiet and are especially good with children.
The female sports a striking feather coloration. Barnevelders are reasonably hardy and will tolerate colder conditions. Category: large, meat, black or white plumage, good egg producer (230 chocolate brown eggs), family pet
Barter Black
Barter Black Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Barter Black originates from an Australorp and Rhode Island Red cross.
A Barter Black is a good layer (1 light brown egg per day) with a friendly, calm temperament and makes a great pet.
Category: large, black plumage, excellent egg producer, family pet, Australian
Barter Brown
Barter Brown Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Barter Brown originates from a Rhode Island Red and a White Leghorn cross.
A Barter Brown chicken is economical, as they do not need much feed and provide plenty of eggs.
They are a very friendly, quiet and calm bird that makes for a great pet.
Category: large, brown plumage, excellent egg producer, family pet, Australian
Barter White
Barter White Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Barter White originates from a Pure White Leghorn rooster and Rhode Island Red cross. This economical chicken eats less than other breeds and still lays plenty of eggs.
With its calm, friendly nature it makes a great family pet.
Category: large, white plumage, excellent egg producer, family pet, Australian
Belgian Bearded d’Uccle
Belgian Bearded d’Uccle Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Belgian Bearded d’Uccle are true bantams but what they lack in size they make up for with prolific egg production, and larger than life personality.
Long leg feathers and a beard give this chicken a very exotic appearance. They are hardy in hot climates but don’t like excessive cold. They are sweet natured and calm.
Category: small, black or white plumage, excellent egg producer (200—250 tinted eggs)
Booted Bantam
Booted Bantam Image from backyardpoultry.com
Booted Bantams (true bantam, also known as Sabelpoot in the Netherlands) are small birds distinguished by the large feathers on their feet. Booted Bantams lay around 160 small tinted eggs each year. Their friendly nature makes them a good pet for children. The hen weighs around 750g.
Category: Small, rare, black or white plumage, small tinted eggs, family pets
Brahma Chickens
these chickens make excellent family pets that love attention
Brahma
Brahma are one of the largest chicken breeds in the world. These feathery friends weigh 4 kgs and come in bantam sizes too!
They’re sweet, friendly, easy to handle – making them great pets for families with children or other animals.
Brahma also lay well during winter months; producing eggs that can be a much-needed supplement when your family is craving fresh egg yolks over those store bought varieties from grocery stores who may have spent weeks on end sitting around waiting to get fresh stock!
Buff Laced Polish
Buff Laced Polish Image from backyardpoultry.com
Buff Laced Polish are an unusual looking chicken with a crazy bouffant hairstyle. Egg production can be unreliable but their richly coloured appearance, crazy antics, and gentle personality make them a great choice for pets.
Category: small, relatively rare, reasonable egg production (120 small white eggs each year), good family pets
Catalana
Catalana Image from backyardpoultry.com
Catalanas produce lots of eggs, are good for meat production, and love the heat. They do best with lots of free ranging space and tend to be lively and flighty but they don’t cope with cold conditions. They are not very friendly so do not make great pets.
Category: meat, brown plumage, good egg producers
Cinnamon Queen
Cinnamon Queen Image from backyardpoultry.com
Cinnamon Queen are egg laying machines—up to 300 eggs per year. They will also start laying earlier than most other breeds and are very hardy birds.
They are noted for their docile and sweet nature. You can tell the sex of young chicks by their colour; young males are white, females are reddish brown.
Category: top egg producers (large brown eggs), white plumage, good family pets
Cochin Chickens
Cochins are naturally a laid back and gentle chicken breed. Even the roosters are easy going in comparison to other breeds.
Cochin Chicken
The Cochin chicken makes a great family pet. Sometimes referred to as a ‘lap chicken’, they are easy to handle and happy to be held. This makes them suitable for families with children.
Cochins are most recognisable by their fluffy, feathered toes which make them look bigger than they are.
Despite not laying many eggs, Cochin chickens are growing in popularity with backyard chicken keepers. People can’t help but fall in love with their gentle personalities and big, fluffy bodies.
Croad Langshan
Croad Langshan Image from backyardpoultry.com
Croad Langshans (also known as Langshan) are large-bodied birds. They lay up to 240 pinkish-brown eggs a year. They are easily tamed and need to be kept in dry, sheltered conditions.
A bantam version is available. Their graceful U-shaped appearance makes them popular as show birds.
Category: large, black or white plumage, egg production
Delaware
Delaware Image from pinterest.com
Delaware (formerly known as Indian Rivers) gained fame as meat birds with clean tasting white meat. The hens, weighing around 3kg, lay 150 or more dark brown eggs each year. They cope well with both heat and cold and their calm, quiet, friendly personalities make them ideal as a backyard pet. Delaware plumage tends to be mostly white.
Category: large, white meat, white plumage, dark brown eggs, good family pets
Dorking
Dorking Image from backyardpoultry.com
The Dorking, with its fine tender white meat is widely regarded as one of the finest tasting chickens available. However, it has become quite rare thanks to its slow growth rate.
Dorking hens are also reasonable layers producing around 140 large white eggs. Dorkings are reasonably calm and tolerant but they do have a tendency to brood.
Dorking hens will weigh between 3.6 and 5kg but bantam versions are available.
Category: rare, large, meat, white plumage, white eggs
Easter Egger
Easter Egger Image from backyardpoultry.com
Easter Eggers are renowned for their ability to lay eggs in a rainbow of colours including blue, green brown and pink. Each hen will lay eggs of only one colour during its life.
Friendly, calm, easily-handled, and docile are their typical personality traits. They tolerate all climates well.
Category: large, meat, good egg layer (medium sized, various colours), good family pets
Faverolles
Faverolles Image from backyardpoultry.com
Faverolles are sweet, gentle, calm yet curious birds. They are the perfect chicken for a family pet. They also happen to produce excellent flavoured meat and average 170 medium sized eggs each year. They cope well with cold weather. A bantam version exists.
Category: large, meat, egg production (cream or salmon coloured), family pet
Frizzle Chicken Breed
The Frizzle is a friendly bird and an average layer which doesn’t consume much feed
Frizzle
Frizzle’s were selectively bred for exhibition; however their curled, fragile feathers aren’t suited for rainy or cold weather. A bantam version exists.
Their appearance makes them an interesting addition to any backyard flock. They are friendly and easy to handle, making them a great pet.
Category: large or small, black or white plumage
Houdan
Houdan Image from backyardpoultry.com
Houdan are moderately large chickens with an excellent tender white flesh. Houdan are moderately prolific egg layers; 180—240 white eggs each year. The v shaped comb and head feathers make for a very distinctive appearance.
Houdan cope well with warm climates and like to forage for their food. Houdan make great family pets, as they are friendly, docile, and are happy being handled if trained to it from a young age.
Category: rare, meat, mottled black or white plumage, top egg layers (white eggs), good family pets
Hy-Line Brown
Hy-Line Brown Image from Talking Hens
Hy-Line Brown Chickens are popular egg layers, and are often used for commercial egg-laying.
They also make great pets as they are placid and friendly, and economical, having been cited as having the “Best feed to egg efficiency of all layer hens” on the website talkinghens.com.
Category: large, brown plumage, excellent egg producer (320 brown eggs per year), family pet
ISA Brown Chickens
ISA Brown chickens have a rectangular shaped body that is very lean. They have a short, straight tail that sits upright.
ISA Brown
ISA Brown from backyardpoultry.com
ISA Brown chicken breeds‘ are one of the most popular chicken breeds found in backyards Australia-wide.
They are a hybrid chicken, and are said to produce up to 300 eggs per hen in its first year of laying (they typically lay for 2 years).
ISA Browns’ produce eggs daily, have a good temperament, are sociable and make great pets.
Category: large (up to 5kg), exceptional egg producers (brown), family pets
Japanese Bantam
Japanese Bantam Image from backyardpoultry.com
Japanese Bantams, with their exquisitely elegant appearance, are mostly ornamental. They lay around 160 white or brown eggs annually. At 450g, the hens are small and true bantams.
They are not hardy; they don’t cope with cold weather and may need to live indoors. However, they are very friendly.
Category: small, rare, black or white plumage, eggs
Jungle Fowl
Jungle Fowl Image from Public Domain
Originally a wild bird, the Jungle Fowl produces eggs seasonally. Jungle fowl were probably the first chickens to be domesticated more than 7000 years ago. It is a very wary and alert bird who eats very little. Jungle fowl do best with lots of space.
Category: small
Leghorn Chickens
Leghorns are popular world-wide for laying white eggs
Leghorn
Leghorn Image from backyardpoultry.com
Thought to have originated from Italy, Leghorns are popular world-wide for laying white eggs. They lay an average of 280 per year and have been known on occasion to even reach 320 in a year.
Leghorn chickens are nervous, flighty and highly active. The chickens will be quite happy in all weathers coping well with both heat and cold but they are not a great choice for a family pet, as they tend to be unfriendly.
Category: small, white plumage, top egg layer (large white)
Minorca
Minorca Image from pinterest.com
Minorca (old names include; Red faced Spanish, Moorish fowl) produce 200 or more very large white eggs each year. They need lots of space and don’t make good pets. The red wattles against the black plumage give them a very distinctive appearance.
Category: large, black plumage, egg production
New Hampshire Red
New Hampshire Red Image from backyardpoultry.com
New Hampshire Red are great all-round meat, egg producer, and family pet type of chickens. They are very tame, calm, and tolerant. They don’t fly well and his is an added bonus when keeping them in your average backyard. The average hen weighs around 3kgs but a bantam version exists.
Category: large, meat, white plumage, eggs (up to 240 light brown eggs per year), family pet
Norfolk Grey
Norfolk Grey Image from wikipedia.org
The Norfolk Grey (Back Marias) are distinguished by the silver neck feathers. They like to forage and are cheap to raise if you allow them to free-range.
They are friendly and docile and their poor flying skills make them a good choice for the backyard.
Category: large, meat, rare, black plumage, good egg layer (up to 220 tinted eggs), good family pets
Orpington Chickens
Orpington chickens make great backyard chickens as they are great egg layers and are relatively quiet.
Orpington
Orpingtons are handy egg producers (up to 200 each year), produce fine textured meat, and they make great family pets. They are very relaxed, happy chickens, and are good around children.
They don’t need a lot of attention and they don’t fly but they do like to roam. A bantam version is available.
Category: large, meat, black, brown or white plumage, egg production, family pet
Pekin
Pekin Image from wikipedia.org
Pekins are true bantams (also known as Cochin bantams). They don’t produce a lot of eggs but they are very cute fluffy bundles of feathers and make great family pets. They are docile and friendly although the roosters can be become aggressive.
Category: small, family pet
Phoenix
Phoenix Image from wikipedia.org
The Phoenix is a small chicken that is best suited for show purposes only. They tolerate heat very well but don’t like the cold.
The spectacular tail is its most outstanding feature and this will require care to keep it in good shape. They are not good egg producers and are not friendly.
Category: small
Plymouth Chickens
These hens are the perfect pets for a small backyard with limited space
Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock chickens (also known as Amrocks) are good all-rounders; producing fine tasting meat, good numbers of eggs (240 per year), and they make great family friendly pets.
They are friendly and calm, easy to keep, and their inability to fly makes than a good choice for most backyards. Hens weigh around 3kg but bantam versions exist.
Category: large, meat, black or white plumage, top layers, good for family pets
Rhode Island Red Colour Tone
Rhode Island Red chickens are a light red to tan colour with red beaks and yellow legs.
Rhode Island Red
Rhode Island Red chickens were originally bred in the late 1800’s in little Compton, Rhode Island USA.
They were created by crossing various breeds including Asian Malays and Italian Brown Leghorns. They are the state bird of Rhode Island.
Rhode Island Reds were bred as a dual purpose bird. This means they are suitable to farm both for egg production (as they are a good layer) and for meat production (as they have a heavy build).
Rosecomb
Rosecomb Image from backyardpoultry.com
Rosecombs are true bantams (no larger version exists) that are really only ideally suited for show purposes. At 450g for the average hen there isn’t much meat on them.
Their name comes from the red comb on their heads. They are not friendly birds and can be aggressive.
Category: small, black or white plumage
Silkie
Silkie Image from backyardpoultry.com
Silkies are small, soft and fluffy. Their placid, friendly, docile nature makes them a great choice as a pet chicken for your children.
They lay small eggs, and you can expect roughly 3 per week from them. They don’t tolerate extremes of heat, cold or wet.
Category: small, black or white plumage, family pet
Sussex Chicken Breed
Great egg producers with calm and relaxed temperament
Sussex
Sussex chickens are great egg producers and their calm, even temperament, and poor flying skills makes them very easy to look after. They also produce a tasty meat. Hens average around 3kg but a bantam version is available.
Category: large, meat, white or brown plumage, high yield egg layers (200 light brown eggs per year).
Gold Laced Wyandotte (aka. Golden Laced)
It’s the second most popular found today. They have golden feathers with a black edging.
Wyandotte
Wyandotte Chickens are another great egg laying chicken producing around 200 brown eggs each year. Wyandottes are very calm and gentle chickens and they thrive in cold conditions. Wyandottes are large chickens but they are available as bantams too.
Their characteristic silver lace colour pattern marks the Wyandotte as a special chicken. Wyandottes originated in the U.S. where the breed was officially recognised in 1883. The hen weighs around 3.17 kg, the bantam weighs around 1.36kg.
Category: large, meat, black, brown or white plumage, top egg producers (brown eggs), family pets
See Also
- Chickens That Feed Themselves
- Keep Your Chickens Free From Disease
- The Chook Pen that is Safe, Secure and Comfortable
Sources
- www.backyardpoultry.com
- www.burkesbackyard.com.au
- http://en.wikipedia.org
- http://starttogrow.blogspot.com.au
- kensingtonproduce.com.au
- www.talkinghens.com.au
- www.pinterest.com.au
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