[AnAmericanMother]

What do you think of the Buff Orpingtons?

When we move to the country when the kids are out of school (a lot of my sentences begin that way . . . ) I'm thinking about a few hens just for eggs and to have something eating the bugs. I'm most concerned about how they'd do in a hot humid climate like Georgia's (compared to England).

[2Jedismom]

From what I understand they are very tolerant of weather extremes. They are a good "dual purpose" chicken...meat and eggs. You could order straight run buff Orpis and butcher your cockerels. McMurray Hatchery has detailed descriptions of the chickens they offer. And Feathersite has a lot of good descriptions too...

I would think if you offered them a cool place to get out of the sun, they would be ok. They are rather puffy! (One of ours is actually named Puffy...the other is named Benny Hen LOL) They do lay well all winter long, supposedly. Many chickens molt in the fall and won't lay again till in the spring.

You should try to get a few Auracanas...they are the ones that lay the pretty green and blue eggs!

Backyard Chickens is a good site...has a great message board to answer your questions and it's nothing to have a dozen people in the chat in the evening, no kidding! Can you imagine, a dozen people chatting about chickens?? Ha!

[Ken H]

What do you think of the Buff Orpingtons?

I don't know much about chickens, but I'd think they would be preferable to out-of-shape, flabby Orpingtons :)

[2Jedismom]

Also, we keep out four in a "chicken tractor"...a portable type coop. They stay in it at night, they go to bed in it just before sundown and we just have to shut the door. Periodically, we move the coop and it never gets too gross under it.

You can see some pictures of my coop being built HERE.

(We live in a neighborhood, so we're kinda going under the radar...if we happened to have a rooster, we couldn't keep it...it would end up in the frying pan!)