Best Chickens For Florida, Breeds For Hot Weather

Not all chickens are alike, especially when it comes to heat tolerance. Here in the Sunshine State, the breed of chicken makes a world of difference when it comes to the overall health of the bird. Here are our recommendations of the best chickens for Florida and other hot climates.

What are the Best Chickens for Florida?

The best chicken breeds will give you consistent egg production even through the hottest days of late summer. They won’t become lethargic through the heat waves that inevitably come, and they are less likely to succumb to heat-distress systems.

We’ve selected these breeds of chickens as the top contenders:

1. The White Leghorn

She’s small yet produces 300 eggs per year. The slim chickens mean they need less feed, and they convert energy to eggs more efficiently. They tend to be quite scrappy on the free range front, giving them an edge to survive predation. The white leghorn lays a large white egg.

The drawbacks of keeping the white leghorn are few, but they exist. They’re flighty. They seem to be able to easily escape their enclosures. Clip their wings to help keep them in place if you need. They aren’t usually broody birds, so if you want a hen to hatch a clutch of eggs, you probably won’t find it in the leghorn. They aren’t the friendliest birds either, existing simply to get the egg-laying job done.

2. ISA Brown / Production Reds or Rhode Island Reds

I suppose that technically these are three different breeds, but they’re so very similar, I’ve even seen farm stores mix them up.

These birds are bred for the sole purpose of dropping eggs. Laying up to 350 eggs annually is no small feat. They have large brown eggs, which adds that level of farm fresh charm to your egg basket. They also start laying at a young age, earning their keep.

Again, this bird has no personality and just prefers to be fed and left alone to live her life of producing eggs. Since they’re bred for production, we see reproductive issues arise in these birds, giving them shorter life spans. I recommend replacing these birds every three years if you go with production birds.

3. The Naked Neck Chicken

Also known as the Turken because she has a featherless neck like turkey fowl, the naked neck chicken is better able to keep cool with fewer feathers. The naked skin allows for heat to dissipate better than a fully feathered chicken. They also have that single comb and large wattles.

However, these funny looking creatures don’t lay as many eggs as the those already mentioned. You’re looking at getting a maximum of 150 eggs per year from the turken. 

They usually lay a light brown egg, but you could get a breed that lays a light green or blue egg. If this pleases your colored-egg-loving eyes, you could keep several of them to have enough eggs on your homestead.

4. Minorca

The Minorca chicken is from the Mediterranean island of Minorca, making it a naturally heat-tolerant bird. They’re beautiful chickens with very large wattles, and dark, straight feathers. 

Minorca hens will give their first egg earlier than many other breeds, but they only lay a meager 2-3 eggs per week. Like the leghorn, they aren’t particularly fond of being held, but they are excellent survivors to free range into feral chickens.

5. Plymouth Rocks

The Plymouth Rock chicken originates as a domestic breed from New England, but don’t that fool you. They are great foragers, and are able to keep laying just fine through the hottest part of our Florida summers.

If you’re looking for the bird that your children can spoil and cuddle, the Plymouth Rock could be known as the best breed for the job. They have great little personalities to add to your backyard flock, and they lay around 200 eggs per year.

Traits That Equal Heat Tolerance:

Finding the right breed for you may not even be listed here, but you can find the right chickens for your homestead by knowing what to look for. These are the characteristics that will help chickens tolerate hot climates and keep producing eggs for you.

• large wattles
• fewer downy feathers, the “fluff” that acts as insulation
• large earlobes
• large, single comb
• smaller bodies

Why Some Birds Are Not Heat-Tolerant Chickens

While larger-bodied chickens are good for meat production, they just don’t make good layers in hot climates. They have a higher risk of dying of heat stroke because they don’t cool off as efficiently as smaller birds. 

Double combs and small combs don’t fair very well either. The comb is a part of the chicken’s anatomy that helps them to dissipate heat. The same is true of the chicken’s wattles. Smaller wattles and combs mean less surface area to cool off.

Fluffier chickens will stay insulated. Those adorable, poofy-bottomed hens that we love will have a hard time cooling off when needed. It’s also harder for them to dust bathe appropriately, which helps them cool off faster.  For this reason, having feather feet, like the brahma, is another characteristic that makes some birds a poor choice for keeping in warm climates.

How to Choose the Best Backyard Chickens for Hot Climates

First, consider what you want in a bird. Do you need them to have sweet natured temperaments for handling? What about egg color? Or feather color? If these things are not important to you, and you’re just after egg production, then you have more options.

Next, think about those traits that we went over for the birds that can best withstand hot, muggy Florida in August. Lighter weight birds with large, single combs are your best bet.

Try a little bit of everything on your homestead to see what works best for you. You’ll quickly learn what you like and what you don’t.

Helping Your Chickens Keep Up Egg Production During Hot Spells

Always make sure that your chickens have access to fresh, clean water at free choice. If you keep them confined in a hen house or a chicken tractor, you’ll need to pay special attention to them during Florida’s hot summers. If you free range your chickens, they’ll find extra water somewhere, but always provide some water near their home base.

Support them with a healthy, high-protein diet. Provide them with a complete layer feed of at least 17% protein, and consider supplementing them with high protein treats. Meal worms, black soldier fly larvae, and soaked beans are all good ways to increase their protein. 

Probiotics help support a healthy digestive tract for your birds too. You can purchase some from your local farm store, or you can add some natural whey or yogurt to their feed. Chickens love raw dairy products too. Occasionally, we freeze a small bucket of clabbered milk or whey and then feed it to the chickens like a giant popsicle. 

More Than Just Diet

Check for parasites. The single most important thing you can do to keep healthy birds is to keep them parasite free. Whether internal or external, parasites will drain your chickens energy, leaving them needing more in order to just survive. If you want them to thrive and produce for you, make sure your hens don’t have mites or round worms.

Give them pans of water to stand in. I know this sounds silly, but we first discovered this with our turkeys. Yes, they are different, and their eggs require a higher amount of humidity to hatch than chicken eggs. However, we saw the hens routinely standing in their water, even when they didn’t have nests of eggs to sit on, so we added pans of water to our chicken coop. 

They loved it! Our chickens will stand in water on hot days if they have to remain in the coop for some reason.

Are Heat-Tolerant Chickens Okay During Cold Winters?

Yes. Generally speaking, even those small birds can withstand cold temperatures because chickens are incredibly adaptable.

Our Florida winters are pretty mild by temperate standards. If you are further north, with freezing temperatures including ice and snow, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind. This is especially true if those ice storms are not frequent to your area, but they do happen.

First, give them some shelter. Be sure that their shelter has good ventilation for proper air flow and lots of deep bedding.

Secondly, they don’t like to walk on snow. Or so I’m told (I personally have zero experience with snow). Throw some bedding down in their run to give them a place to keep their feet off of the ice and snow. Wood chips or hay would suffice in such circumstances. 

Additionally, those large combs are prone to frostbite. You can protect them by using vaseline or Bag Balm (for cows teats). Just rub a thin layer over the comb to protect the skin.

Conclusion to the Best Chickens For Florida

​Whether you’re in Florida or other hot, southern climates, raising chickens is an excellent choice to add to your homestead. Choose the breed with those specific heat-tolerant traits that you like best, and enjoy fresh eggs all year long.

If you’re new to keeping chickens, and you’re anywhere close to the NE Florida area, I highly recommend heading to Charley’s Chicks for their Chick Days. Ask all the questions, and hand pick which chickies will go home with you.

Lastly, check out our many helpful posts on keeping a healthy flock.

Happy Homesteading!

Donna and her family have been homesteading for most of their 20+  years together in some shape or fashion. She currently lives on their 20 acre farm where they grow as much food as possible. What started as a just a few laying hens, has grown into large gardens, pastured poultry, pork, and lamb. They are continuously evolving their small farm to not suit their family’s needs, but also providing to their local community. Donna’s favorite part of the family farm is her self-built micro-dairy, where she gets to love on dairy cows while serving her local community. Milking, cheesemaking, and processing dairy have become the soul of their homestead and the center of their farm.