The current edition of Mother
Earth News has a
thought-provoking article about the best
chicken breeds for various purposes. Over 1,000 readers rated
chicken breeds on a variety of scales, then the editors compiled the
most popular breeds for egg production, meat, and more.
If you've been reading
about our forest pasture experiment, you know I flipped straight to the
section on free range ability. Mother
Earth News rated
Cubalayas and Jungle Fowl as the best foraging breeds, although they
also noted that neither chicken variety is particularly good for either
eggs or meat. Other good foragers included Catalana, Old English
Game, Hamburg, Minorca, and Malay, but the article didn't note
whether these varieties are good for other purposes. If our Dark
Cornish don't live up to expectations, I might have to give some of
these a try.
Meanwhile, none of you
have given me any data for my chicken
foraging poll.
Come on, guys! I know that at least a few of you must have raised
your chickens entirely or primarily on forage. Don't leave me
hanging here!
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Another breed to try is the Buckeye. They are excellent foragers, good layers and come in at 5.5 - 8 lbs. Plus they are listed as critical on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy list so you would be helping to preserve the breed too.
The American Buckeye Club has a list of breeders on its website. You could call some of the more experienced ones (in red or black type) to see if this breed will work for you. www.americanbuckeyeclub.org
You can also get a chicken breed comparison chart at www.albc-usa.org/documents/ALBCchicken_comparison_sheet.pdf. This may help you find some other interesting breeds.
I wish you the best of luck! We just bought a small farm and will soon be making our escape from the rat race as well.