Best Back Yard Chickens
for All Purposes: Faverolles!
Confused by the different breeds of chickens? What are the best back yard chickens? After much research we concluded that whether you are raising chickens for eggs or chickens for meat, the best backyard chickens are the Faverolles. 
Faverolles are very quiet chickens that not only lay well, but also mature rapidly to produce a plump, tasty, white-skinned table bird.
This is a salmon colored Faverolles trio.
Notice that even though they are genetically identical in color, the male bird expresses it differently than the hen. Indeed, they originated as a highly useful and productive dual-purpose breed first developed by French peasant farmers in the early 1800’s. To top it off they are really beautiful and, with their 5 toed feet, feathered legs and fluffy beard, of unique appearance. He shows extensive black coloring on beard, breast, belly and tail which is absent in the hen. This characteristic offers another advantage of the salmon colored Faverolles: sex-linked color. The distinctive male coloring is apparent from 2 weeks old in pure Faverolles, allowing you to separate the sexes from a relatively early age. Best Back Yard Chickens
if Raising Chickens for Eggs Despite being sourced from years of inbreeding, my purebred Faverolles lay very well, right through winter too - nearly as well as the modern commercial hybrids. To be honest though, the very best backyard chickens for home egg production would have to be the modern commercial hybrids. Here I’m talking about the ISA Brown, Hyline and Golden Comet chickens. However, most people I know, including myself, are bored at the prospect of a pen of identical looking birds. For a start, how would you know who-was-who if they all looked the same?  Some of our young
Faverolles X Hyline Pullets.So we hit on the idea of crossing the Faverolles with the Hyline - resulting in color variety you can see from the photo opposite. The resulting hybrid exhibits many of the characteristics of the Faverolles, including the cute fluffy beard (both hens and roosters have this), leg and foot feathering, and having 5-toes on each foot. Let’s take a closer look at what we got out of 8 hens hatched: As you can see, the cross produces a mixture of interesting colors that are also truly useful back yard chickens. 
1 striking red and black-flecked pullet.
1 very pretty red penciled pullet.
1 classic salmon colored pullet.
She is in the foreground.
A pure Faverolles salmon hen is behind her.
If you are in Australia you can contact other Faverolles enthusiasts and source stock by joining Faverolles Australia.
Hatching eggs? Get your incubator here.
5 pullets that were white with varying amounts of red flecking.
Since we also got a pure white cockerol in the bunch, then it is likely this cross would produce the odd pure white pullet too.Best Back Yard Chickens for Meat Faverolles mature rapidly into a good quality meat bird. This puts them ahead of most other popular so-called “dual purpose” breeds such as the slow-to-mature Rhode Island Red and moderate-maturing Australorp. In our opinion only the Plymouth Rock potentially beats them for dual purpose, and even that would depend on the strain of Plymouth Rock. And if you want sex-linking at hatching, then Plymouth Rock hens crossed with Rhode Island Red roosters would produce really useful back yard chickens, but they’d be boring to look at!!! Faverolles are such superior table birds that some of the first Faverolles to enter Australia were specially imported by a French chef who raised them to supply top quality chicken for his restaurant. They reach a decent size too. Roosters are around 10 lb (4.5 kg), and hens around 8.5 lb (3.8 kg). Our Faverolles X Hyline cockerels matured rapidly and by 15 weeks old all but one were big enough to go in the freezer. I can tell you they were delicious! So if you are looking for beautiful, interesting and really useful back yard chickens we highly recommend the Faverolles or, for more variety and even better egg-laying, the Faverolles X Hyline hybrid.
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