Breeding Questions

[protodon]

I have 2 general breeding questions:

1. How long must one wait to certain traits to show once a chicken hatches. Do some traits take longer than others? I am asking because if I want to cull the ones that don't go along with what I am looking for I;d rather not wait until I have 50 full grown chickens.

2. Within a breed of chicken, does a larger egg produce a larger chicken?

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Different traits develop at different ages; larger eggs do not necessarily produce larger chicks. Now I will stipulate that this is talking about eggs from the same breed--there can be a bit of variation in egg size, especially if you are talking older bird versus young one, but chicks will be pretty uniform in size.

Now if you were instead talking about different breeds, say dutch or OEGB (two of the smallest bantam breeds)versus large fowl brahmas (very large birds), the eggs of the first two will be considerably smaller as will the chicks.