Breeding ISA to ISA will I get awesome layers?

[Spitman]

I love my Isa's what will happen if I mate my hens back to a ISA Roo if I can get one , will there offspring still give me great egg production. Or what will happen if I mate her back to her own offspring she had with my RIR.Will her egg qaulitys pass on to the next generation?

 

[briteday]

ISA's and other hybrids only work for the first generation. They are actually a cross between a Rhode Island white hen and a Rhode Island red roo. But the breeding stock are incredibly bred for egglaying for commercial production levels. These are not your typical hatchery stock. So even if you had an RIW x RIR and crossed them for your own offspring you won't get the same egglaying ability as buying the patented chicks from a commercial producer like Townline.

Breeding an ISA to another ISA will get you a variety of offspring. Some will be white, some will be red, and some will be red and white like the original ISA. But they will not be sexlinked, you will not be able to tell when they hatch which are females and which are males. That genetic trait only happens to the first generation. They will probably be good egglayers, but they will not be as great as the originals. And as the generations go on the egglaying trait will be diluted until you have the typical barnyard egglayer.

 

[Erica]

Keep selecting for egg laying and you keep the egg laying.

Better still, cross them to a slightly less productive (e.g. leghorn) but hardy and self-perpetuating breed, and sell spares as great layers with a slightly longer laying life than the basic hybrid.
You won't make money of course... But who does?

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Quote:
You'll still get mostly good egg layers but they won't be sex-linked so you won't be able to sex them at hatch. Cull out the ones that are slow to mature and lay late and the succeeding generations will be good layers as well.

An ISA Brown and RIR cross will still create good layers, but likely not quite as good as straight ISA would unless the RIR was from a good egg laying strain.

 

[Spitman]

Thanks a lot guys great info .