applestar wrote:WOW so are you saying they tend not to lay as many eggs as the egg layers? I'm supposing they might be BIG chickens -- are their eggs bigger? How many chickens do you have?
When you are breeding them, do you sell the fertilized eggs, chicks, or older chickens? How do you know which eggs to keep for raising?
At present, I have 21 hens laying. Dual purpose chickens bred to
be dual purpose chickens (not just layers) don't lay as prolifically as chickens bred to be layers. All hens will, over the course of their lives, lay about the same number of eggs. If a breeder skews the breeding program towards layers, those hens will lay more eggs per week, for example, than a chicken that has been bred for meat, but she'll shoot her load faster, perhaps laying only for two or three years; whereas a bird bred for meat lays less frequently, but will lay longer, maybe for five or six years. Meat birds are bigger; they have a bigger frame to carry more meat. That's part of the breeding process, to put chickens in the breeding pool that have big frames. Layers are smaller; they're more petite and instead of putting energy into making meat, they put their energy into producing eggs. The size of the bird is not an indicator of the size of the egg. Most people want layers for their backyard flocks, so the breeders of most of what
were dual-purpose chickens now produce chickens that lay like layers, having bred the size out of the strain.
There is a book published by the American Poultry Association,
The Standard of Perfection, that describes in minute detail every characteristic a chicken of the particular breed should have: eye color, the shape and color of the comb, weight, feather color and color pattern on each part of the body, leg color, stance, temperament, body shape, and more. It's the chicken breeder's bible. This is very over-simplified, but in a nutshell, you take your hens that are the closest to 'the Standard' and put them with the rooster that is closest to 'the Standard'. You collect the resulting eggs and hatch them, then see what you've got. Genetic winners go into the breeding circle; duds and extra cockerels get eaten. Hens that are no longer productive are eaten. I don't sell fertilized eggs or chicks yet because I am still developing my breeding strain. I have a breeding flock of Delaware chickens. It is a Heritage breed that was almost extinct a few years ago.