Happy Birthday, Ice!! After reading this about the weight, I decided to go get Wunzie and weigh him. He's my oldest CL @ 14 months old (Nov 3, 2012).Thanks Laingcroft--
My 2-years old (todya's his birthday) CL rooster weighs 5 1/2 pounds. And my hens hover on the below side of 4#.
Once I had a 4 pound Golden Comet that produced Jumbo or Extra Large eggs daily for 200-days in a row, took a day off and then started laying again. Quite the clutch, I would say. Small chickens can lay big eggs on less feed. There are a lot of benefits to smaller birds. They take less space, they require less feed.
At the Bluebonnet Classic Poultry show last Saturday over 1/2 the exhibit hall was Bantam breeds I would guess, which kind of surprised me. The Standard chickens there were very large examples of their breeds - the size of small turkeys...IMO. I have also heard that bigger birds if there is a choice between two that are nearly identical win at the shows. GaryDean26-was there -- GaryDean- do you think that it was about 1/2 Bantams? -- If the trend is toward smaller breeds - maybe we are outsizing by going for the top end of the British SOP - besides being a mismatch to our existing chickens - I would be interested in what other peoples roosters and hens weigh and their ages. I have some 2-week olds that are weighing in a 4-5 ounces...which I think is huge. My weighing accuraacy diminished because they are too heavy for my egg scale now -in just two weeks. They were 1.2 and 1.4 ounces when take out of the incubator..... whMarans had a really good idea about tracking weights - and there is a form on the CL website where you can enter weights - I think it goes up to 2-years old. Trouble is, once entered on the form it requires going directly to the spreadsheet to add weights as they age...but we are managing that OK. If anyone has interest in accumulating data- there is a place where it can be shared and late when we have some amount we can analyze it.
It's interesting too, that people with concern of frostbite really need a smaller comb, and those with need for heat dispersion benefit from a larger comb. With our 115-degrees and strings of days over 100 here, the big comb is a benefit, but aesthetically, I prefer smaller combs. I guess that is one of the places that your chosen breed needs to match your environment. The neck hackle feathers were so thick at one time, I couldn't dig down to the skin with a clear path to put a pour on wormer on the back of the rooster's neck...
ETA looked at some older info and the GC was 4 pounds or 4 pounds 2 ounces or so....
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