Wing feathers may be trimmed to protect chickens from predators or keep them from getting run over on the road, to protect vegetable and flower beds, or to keep the birds from getting into the wrong breeding pen.

I polled a large number of veteran chicken keepers as to what they believed were the best egg-laying chicken breeds. For a breed to even be considered, one stipulation was that the breed had to lay at least three or four eggs per week and had to keep laying fairly consistently for at least three or four years. Most breeds chosen were brown-egg-layers.