Choose Your Chicken: Wyandotte

Wyandotte chickens are one of the prettiest, showiest looking breeds of the poultry world, originating in a town of the same name in Michigan, USA.

They are good for meat as well as for eggs, making them a useful dual-purpose breed.

It is a medium to large sized bird with a rose comb and clean, yellow legs. They have a classic rounded shape, sometimes described as ‘rotund’.

The chicken feathers are broad and loosely fitting. The area around the vent is very fluffy. Their feathering  is often laced, with a total of seventeen known colours, including golden laced, the original silver laced, silver pencilled, blue laced, lavender, buff, partridge, black and pure white.

The hen will lay around 200 eggs a year. An exceptional hen may lay around 240 eggs a year. The eggs are brown or tinted.

The hens are good setters, even incubating eggs from another hen and make good mothers.

The hens weigh around 2.7 kg and the cocks weigh around 3.8 kg. There is also a bantam version, weighing 850-960g (hen) and 1020g (cock).

Temperament

They tend to be quite friendly, healthy and are not flighty. Wyandotte fans will proudly assure you that they have strong personalities.

They can be reserved with humans, but will happily accept treats.

Wyandotte chickens are also vocal, uttering soft clucks on a regular basis and apparently are particularly eager to tell everyone that they are about to lay an egg.

they are an active breed. They’re good foragers who prefer to free range, although they can deal with having less land than most other large chicken breeds. They are helpful when it comes to pest control.

They are able to withstand cold weather well.

This is another in the Choose Your Chicken series. For more, click here.