A bunch of chicken breeding questions.

Will two CX's make baby CX"s or does it not carry through?


I understand EE are mutts, when breeding EE hens does matter breed with to keep the colored eggs? If I breed the EE to a production red, Rainbow or Black Austrolorp still have colored eggs?

I want to carry 16-20 hens over winter, If I keep 4 roosters will I have to keep them away from the hens over winter?
I have 4 breeding pens for spring, but the shelters are not adequate for our miserable
winter

Cornish X are crosses of different strains of parent/grandparent birds specifically selected to give you the specific features (fast growing, weight gain etc) in the CX you buy ... crossing the CX will give you decent meat birds, but they won't be as good as the original ones.

It doesn't matter what breed you cross your EEs with, you'll get half or all colored egg layers depending if your EE carries one or two genes for color to pass on to the pullets, the exact color will depend on the brown genes. The gene for Blue egg shell is a dominant. Both genders can carry one or two blue egg shell genes, (blue color is actually in the egg shell, egg shells are either blue or white) and various genes for the brown shading (brown color is a "paint" on the egg shell itself, think there were like 13 different genes found that affect brown last time I checked). Blue egg shell + brown give you green, more/darker brown more olivey the green.

Four roos is a lot for that many hens, I'd expect problems with overmating and possibly fighting amongst the roos unless you have a lot of extra space...so I'd plan on having to separate at least some of them at some point.

Can you put the 4 roos in a bachelor pad for the winter? Re: EE egg color in a cross: I don't know how that dominant blue plays out. Not sure if statistically all of the female chicks would produce blue eggs, if the parent EE had good blue egg coloring, or if it might end up being 50% of the chicks. I can tell you that All of my Sex linked chicks from a EE roo x PBR hen produce beautiful blue/green eggs.

It's going to depend if the individual roos get along, do you run them together now? Some will, some may not... I keep some of my boys separated in the winter, the heavy calmer guys like Wyandottes are usually fine, sometimes you do just have a dominant roo who doesn't like others around even if there aren't any hens to fight over.
With the egg color %, a bird only needs 1 blue gene to have colored eggs since it is a dominant ... if the parent who has the colored egg gene(s) only has 1 color gene to pass on, then just half the female offspring will lay colored eggs, if the parent has 2 blue color genes then all will lay colored eggs since all offspring will get one... if you had a fair number of chicks the EE roo you used for the cross probably had 2 color genes since all the daughters laid color ... but since mom has none, all the offspring would only have 1 blue color gene, so if you breed those girls to a brown egg layer you would get half color and half brown egg layers.

Kelsie2290 said:

It's going to depend if the individual roos get along, do you run them together now? Some will, some may not... I keep some of my boys separated in the winter, the heavy calmer guys like Wyandottes are usually fine, sometimes you do just have a dominant roo who doesn't like others around even if there aren't any hens to fight over.
With the egg color %, a bird only needs 1 blue gene to have colored eggs since it is a dominant ... if the parent who has the colored egg gene(s) only has 1 color gene to pass on, then just half the female offspring will lay colored eggs, if the parent has 2 blue color genes then all will lay colored eggs since all offspring will get one... if you had a fair number of chicks the EE roo you used for the cross probably had 2 color genes since all the daughters laid color ... but since mom has none, all the offspring would only have 1 blue color gene, so if you breed those girls to a brown egg layer you would get half color and half brown egg layers.

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I plan to keep Brutus, He is the alpha rooster. He takes no crap from anyone, but he is actually mellow and likes peace around him. He is a huge production red.

I plan to keep "rick" he is mellow Dixie rainbow and Brutus's BFF. They hang out together all day.

I want to keep a Black Australorp that barely knows Brutus as he is in the other coop.

And I want to try to keep a CX rooster over winter...They are just now. Brutus looks after them.


I do not want to keep any EE roosters, they are pretty, but aggressive jerks.