Poultry Profiles

Dual-purpose Breeds

In selecting heritage chickens for your own flock, consider first your purpose in keeping chickens. If your goal is to harvest lots of eggs, choose a breed known to lay well. If your goal is to produce tasty meat, select a heavy breed. For the best of both, choose a dual-purpose breed.

Dual-purpose Breeds

Dual-purpose breeds appeal to people interested in sustainability — keeping hens for eggs and roosters for fertility, hatching future replacement hens, and butchering young surplus roosters for meat. Dual-purpose breeds lack the blocky body of meat breeds, and they don’t lay quite as well as the layer breeds. Expect only about 15 dozen eggs per year from a dual-purpose hen.

The New Hampshire is a dual-purpose breed created through selective breeding of Rhode Island Reds to improve growth rate and meatiness. Like Rhode Island Reds, New Hamps come in a single color: a light reddish bay, more golden than the Rhode Island’s rich mahogany. The hens lay large eggs with brown shells.

The Plymouth Rock is another large, meaty dual-purpose breed. It comes in a few color varieties, the original and still most popular of which is black and white barred. The hens lay large brown-shelled eggs. Many people consider the Australorp as the best dual-purpose breed.

New Hampshire

This all-american breed was created in the early 20th century by farmers and researchers from the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station. This dual-purpose breed, selected more for meat production than egg production, dresses a nice, plump carcass as either a broiler or a roaster.

The breed can be quite competitive and aggressive, but it can be raised in confinement or free-ranged. The breed was admitted to the American Poultry Association’s Standard of Perfection in 1935.The New Hampshire breed also comes in a bantam size.

This fast-growing breed is so meaty and tasty that the Slow Food USA organization selected it as part of its U.S. Ark of Taste program.

Sometimes called the New Hampshire Red, it sports a bright-red, five-point single comb that stands upright in males and droops at the back in females. It also has long, bright-red earlobes and a medium to moderately large bright-red wattle.

Rhode Island Red

A classic American breed, the Rhode Island Red was first developed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the 1840s and is the official bird of Rhode Island. One of the most popular breeds of chickens with small-scale farmers, they come in standard and bantam sizes and are available in red and white colorations.

Rhode Island Reds are excellent layers, producing five eggs per week. They are also known for their meat and are hardy enough for cold climates.

Plymouth Rock

If your poultry plan is to raise birds to fill your — or someone else’s — freezer, you can’t go wrong with beautiful barred Plymouth Rocks. As a dual-purpose bird, the Plymouth Rock chicken excels at egg and meat production. Its deep, full breast, meaty body and ample market weight (an average of 7 to 8 pounds) make the Plymouth Rock a superlative table bird.

In fact, in the 1920s the Plymouth Rock served as the foundation breed for the American broiler industry. Today, it still serves an active role in the meat-bird industry, not only as itself but as one half of the popular Cornish Cross broiler.

Australorp

The Australorp is a dual-purpose breed known primarily for extremely prolific production of brown eggs. These birds were used extensively in the U.S. in 1930s and 1940s for crossbreeding with White Leghorns to produce the Austra White breed, which was a heavier, high-producing layer.

Although they have been surpassed for production by hybrid leghorns, Australorps are still very useful for economical egg production on small farms. Australorps were developed in Australia from imported Black Orpingtons. They were admitted into the American Standard of Perfection in 1929 as a member of the English Class.

The Australorp is a medium-sized breed. Black is the only variety. This active breed of moderate proportions has a single comb. Like the other dual-purpose breeds, Australorps forage well and are ideal for small farms.