Leghorns - An egg-laying legend

Leghorns have become my favorite chicken. They're not particularly cuddly -- in fact, they're a little flighty and panicky -- but for egg-laying capacity, they can not be beaten. I keep a mixed flock of leghorns and several other breeds, and so it's pretty easy to compare the leghorn against the barred Plymouth rock or the Rhode island red, so here's the rundown of the breed as I see it.

The first thing you should probably know about the white leghorn is that this is the smartest chicken in your flock. You can see the wheels turning in their heads, and if there's a way to get out of the coop, or get into the food sooner, or get into a place that a chicken shouldn't be, that's where you'll find the leghorn.

Now that's not to say that chickens can be compared to other animals in intelligence - it is a chicken after all - but the leghorn is the mental giant of the flock.

I had a sack of feed in my parking area; I unloaded it from my trailer, but had to go pick up some other stuff before I could put it away. So the supersack of feed sat for a few hours one afternoon. Coming back, I found it FILLED with leghorns. Stuffed so completely with leghorns that the bottom ones were getting killed by the weight of leghorns above. All of the other chickens were still trying to figure out what was going on, but the leghorns had it nailed... well, as far as leghorns think. They're not really good on future tense. "How can I eat food this instant" is pretty much a leghorn thought. "I might die in 5 minutes if I get into the bag with 55 other leghorns" is too much of a leap for a leghorn.

Leghorns come in a variety of colors, but they all have that upright stance and general body shape and weight. Here's a pearl white leghorn hen and a red leghorn rooster. The red leghorn is also a pretty smart bird; I keep him mainly for decoration. Leghorns really don't have much meat on them, so they're not really worth eating.
Here's a white leghorn hen next to an meat chicken of the same age. the meat chicken weighs in at 6lbs live weight. the leghorn is around 2lbs.

Leghorns do great on forage, but given their lack of foresight I have to watch that they don't put themselves in harms way. Running after the tractor and scratching in the plowed dirt behind it is great. Figuring out which way the tractor is going and waiting in front of it, not so good.

A good white leghorn hen will produce 300 eggs a year. They'll lay a month sooner and a month after every other breed. Their lower body weight means that they don't have the calorie needs that larger breeds do, but produce eggs that are just as big. They're a very efficient way to turn feed into eggs.

The only drawback is convincing customers that white eggs can be free range, and organic. Most customers have been led to believe that free range eggs are brown, and that's that. Which is a pity. I'd like to see more farms adopt leghorns as part or all of their laying flock.