Every homestead needs chickens!
Over the years, we have kept laying hens for eggs and have raised “meat chickens” for meat. A variety of layer breeds have come and gone with many of them becoming favorites. For meat, we've primarily raised the large, fast-growing Cornish Cross meat chickens. We've always kept separate flocks for meat and for eggs. Recently, we've made a big change in this area of our homestead.
After the shortage of chicks from hatcheries a couple years ago, we decided we didn't want to rely on the hatcheries for our meat chickens. We wanted to find a breed of chickens that would be Dual Purpose for our family. We would keep them for eggs, but also incubate and hatch some of the eggs to raise up as our meat chickens. After much research, we decided on the American Bresse chickens.
The American Bresse chicken has not been a popular or familiar breed of chicken in the United States until just a short time ago. This breed is actually a French breed that has been imported into the U.S. from the original French Bresse genetic lines. At one time in history, the French Bresse chickens were considered the best tasting chicken in the world.
We decided on the American Bresse chickens for several reasons. They are a nice-sized, large chicken that grow quickly to processing size in about 16 weeks versus 24+ weeks for most other large dual purpose chickens. They also begin laying eggs at around 16 weeks which is about 2 months sooner that other chicken breeds.
On occasion, we will be offering day-old American Bresse chicks and hatching eggs for sale. Keep a look out on our SHOP page and our Facebook page for when they will be available.
