If space were no object I would have a lot more chickens. Not for the eggs per say, but for the visual variety. Chickens are fun to watch and relatively easy to care for so why limit yourself to one or two breeds if you don’t have to? Personally we live in a heavy residential area and I’m sure our neighbors (or certainly the anti-livestock homeowners association) would not appreciate every chicken I pine for… in our backyard. We both understand and respect this unspoken rule which is why we limited ourselves to six hens. No roosters. Docile, quite, friendly hen breeds only. Coop cleaned often. Enough said.

But what if we had the room for as many pretty breeds of poultry as we could handle? Let me show you my “more land, less neighbors” chicken wish list. (By the way mom, the poultry breeds book you bought me for my birthday has left me wanting one of each. *wink*)

Frizzles
not a breed but a mutation

Ameraucana rooster
they have one as a store “mascot” at Sonora Feed where we get all our supplies and he is gorgeous

Golden Campine

Jersey Giant
I saw one at the feed store and it was unbelievably huge (the same height as Cami who is 2)… I want a whole flock of both white and black feathered Jerseys!

Spangled Sussex

Appenzeller

Houdan

Naked Neck Turken

Silver Sebright

Mille Fleur Bearded, d’Uccle rooster
I would just look at him all day…

These are the five eggs I collected this afternoon. Can you believe we are up to five a day already? I think there may be three or even four hens laying at this point and my clue is the color and pattern of each egg. I have heard that each hen lays the same patterned/colored egg each time… so it would stand to reason that if we have four different looking eggs; we have four different laying hens.

If you look closely at this picture you may be able to spot the differences, but it is much more obvious in person. The egg on the far left is very pale with a blue tint, the second is medium in color with a rose tint, the third has a handful of large dark brown speckles, and the last two on the far right are covered in tiny white speckles.

Let me know what you think. Have you heard of eggs being distinguishable between hens?