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Everything Chicken
Finding Inspiration in Every Coop
London's Priorities was est in January of 2022 with the goal of bringing backyard flock owners together through shared experiences of raising chickens/waterfowl, breeding, incubating, hatching eggs & most importantly animal husbandry. Located in Hotsprings, Arkansas, NPIP & AI clean breeder specializing in rare & heritage breeds of poultry.
From the Coops
Everything
Chicken
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A little bit of everything about our flocks and how we raise our chickens from health to animal husbandry. We take great pride in our birds and their care. Through this blog, we hope to share our experiences whether failures or successes.
Meet The Flock
Blue Andalusian PROJECT
Our Blue Andalusian project coop has become a passion of mine. This breed is rare, however as you can see pictured above with my rooster, I still have quite a bit of work to do. I am now working on my 3rd generation of this breed on my homstead and have been consistently soft culling out all hens that present the gold or splash plumage traits, as well as any cockerels that display the same. This will help me better establish an all blue male without any leakage or splash traits. At the same time I am diligently practicing selective breeding by breeding only blue to blue which produces 50% blue, 25% black & 25% splash offspring. That is also the ratio you should expect from my hatching eggs. Chicks will be sold in all colors from this coop as well. These birds are docile, however they do prefer space and are some of my best foragers. They also seem to be more alert of predators than any other breed I currently own. This project breed is laying a variety of white and very pale cream eggs currently, but my goal is to achieve all white eggs as true pure Andalusians lay. They usually start to lay around 5-6 months old and lay roughly 160 eggs per year.
Araucana
Araucanas are truly a rare breed. Here at London's Priorities, we feel we add to that rareness by offering Araucanas in one of their most trueest origin forms. This breed lays pale blue to turquoise-ish blue-green eggs, about 3-4 times per week.
My focus on this breed is to maintain it's origins which means I do not breed them by APA SOP. The stock I own came directly from a breeder I highly respect from Awesome Araucana Hatchery out of California. Edd over at Awesome Araucana has been breeding this breed for over 47 continuous years where his focus was to maintain origins from the Kollonkas (collonkas) & Ketros (quetros) strains, to which the colllonkas originate from the Mapuche tribe from Chile in South America. My goal is to not only preserve these origins within my line, but to also continue breeding tailless/rumpless, double tuft Araucanas. With this, I must bring awareness to the lethal genetic trait that rumpless tufted Araucanas carry. If double, single, or no tuft parents pass a copy of each of the double tuft genes (all parent stock can carry at least one copy of this gene), to their offspring, often these embryos will pass in the shell between days 17-21, or sometimes shortly after hatch. For this reason, I mostly only keep un-tuft hens to breed with double-tuft males. Another gene these two strains carries is the occasional tailed Araucana. Often when you breed rumpless to rumpless fertility rates are a bit lower due to bodily structure.....they simply can't balance themselves as well as tailed birds to do the deed. For this I also have chosen to keep a rumpless un tuft hens to breed with a tailed rooster.
I am working diligently with this flock this year and plan to add updates since hatching season has kicked off for me as well as update with pictures of more offsprings. I have a VERY limited breeding stock of these birds so it may be a few more months before I have any to offer.
My focus on this breed is to maintain it's origins which means I do not breed them by APA SOP. The stock I own came directly from a breeder I highly respect from Awesome Araucana Hatchery out of California. Edd over at Awesome Araucana has been breeding this breed for over 47 continuous years where his focus was to maintain origins from the Kollonkas (collonkas) & Ketros (quetros) strains, to which the colllonkas originate from the Mapuche tribe from Chile in South America. My goal is to not only preserve these origins within my line, but to also continue breeding tailless/rumpless, double tuft Araucanas. With this, I must bring awareness to the lethal genetic trait that rumpless tufted Araucanas carry. If double, single, or no tuft parents pass a copy of each of the double tuft genes (all parent stock can carry at least one copy of this gene), to their offspring, often these embryos will pass in the shell between days 17-21, or sometimes shortly after hatch. For this reason, I mostly only keep un-tuft hens to breed with double-tuft males. Another gene these two strains carries is the occasional tailed Araucana. Often when you breed rumpless to rumpless fertility rates are a bit lower due to bodily structure.....they simply can't balance themselves as well as tailed birds to do the deed. For this I also have chosen to keep a rumpless un tuft hens to breed with a tailed rooster.
I am working diligently with this flock this year and plan to add updates since hatching season has kicked off for me as well as update with pictures of more offsprings. I have a VERY limited breeding stock of these birds so it may be a few more months before I have any to offer.
Blue Laced Red Wyandotte
Our Blue Laced Red Wyandotte coop is one of our favorite breeds! This coop is headed by a Blue Rooster. This breeds does not breed true blue, however the genetics on plumage with using a blue rooster to blue hens provides us with 50% blue, 25% black laced red Wyandotte, & 25% splash red Wyandotte chicks. These birds are rather large and very friendly. They are considered a heritage breed. Heritage breed birds tend to lay a bit less frequently however I do tend to collect roughly 3-5 eggs per week per hen from this coop. This breed usually lays at around age 6-9 months old with some taking a bit longer. Although they do not lay as frequently as other breeds they do lay longer in years than that of a production or hybrid breed, coming in at a total of 200 or more per year.
Rainbow Layers/ Easter Eggers
Our Easter Egger Breeding coop is full of diversity in plumage & egg colors. I have created these rainbow layers to not only provide beautiful colored eggs and chickens, but also hens that produce eggs daily, laying around 200-280 eggs per year & some layers from this coop produce even more. They typically start to lay at around 5-6 months of age. This coop is headed by a Legbar rooster who is homozygous for the blue egg gene. Hens in this coop are a mix of BC1 olive eggers, Brown speckled layers, Pink layers, and Blue layers. Since most of these are first generation, their offspring are guaranteed to produce a variety of colors like the rainbow. The homozygous rooster will pass off one copy of his blue egg gene, when crossed with a brown layer this provides a hen that will lay a variety of shades of green. When this rooster is crossed with another blue layer, those offspring are guaranteed to lay blue. When this rooster is crossed with any hen producing green eggs, those offspring will either lay a variety of shades of green, or blue.
Black Copper Marans
Our Black Copper Marans are one of our most docile breeds! This coop has provided us with dark Maran eggs ranging from 5-8 on darkness using the Maran egg coloring scale chart. This coop has given us beautiful coppering in both sexes, however from time to time I have seen a slight halo (yellowing) in cockerels and have proceeded with soft culling cockerels that display this trait in plumage to better help improve this line as well as removing the rooster who carried that trait that was used in breeding in late 2023. My goal for this breed is to breed per APA SOP, as well as focus on selective breeding to continue improving the darkness of egg colors. Black Copper Marans are a French heritage breed that is a bit on the large side. They do not lay as regularly as hybrid or production breeds of birds however they do lay longer in total number of years usually up to year 5 and sometimes beyond. They typically start to lay at around age 6-8 months and lay roughly 150-200 eggs per year which usually averages to about 3-4 eggs per week.
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