eggs and a question regarding crosses

[JDH]

I've never had any interest in hatching my own eggs but I just recently lost my speckled sussex hen (Dot) to a hawk. She has been laying eggs now for about a month and well...the day she was killed she left me an egg. I have a mille fleur roo and did not know if it was frowned upon to potentially hatch "mutts". I am hoping that the egg is fertile but if this is uncouth, please let me know. I gave the egg to a friend who is hatching some other eggs to put in her incubator for me. The idea of having a "Dot" chick running around did make me feel better but again, not sure if this is a good thing or not to do. If it's okay, has anyone had a cross as this? I have yet to figure out how "Boots", my roo, actually accomplishes fertilizing an egg b/c frankly, it just looks like he's playing leap frog.

 

[Katy]

It's perfectly fine for you to hatch your "mutt" egg. Nothing wrong with mutt chickens....they lay good eggs too!

 

[Buster]

I don't see anything wrong with your idea. I plan on putting eggs under broody hens this spring.

 

[silkiechicken]

I have a total of 7 pure bred chickens. All the rest are mutts, 2 and 3 generation ones. Nothing wrong with crosses, often they are hardier than the pure bred ones. Some very popular chicken are mutts. Sexlinks and even your store cornish x is a mutt. Shoot, the entire chicken meat production in the us is based on that cornish x mutt! Hatch away!

 

[hcammack]

I want to hatch some of my mutt chickens once they start laying.

 

[Tuffoldhen]

"Mutt" Chickens can be the best layers ever!!...When I've decided no more pure pens anymore I'm hatchings mutts...lol..I have a cross between a RIR and a Buff Orp thats my best hen for laying.....

 

[Cuban Longtails]

It's certainly okay to hatch mutts.

I have eleven of them myself! I hope yours is fertile and hatches for you! It is possible for a bantam roo to cover a standard hen, I have a black star hen that hatched babies and the only roosters around were some bantam game birds.

 

[ginasmarans]

I have mutt chickens as well as pure bred. They do very well and in fact I think they make better layers. Here is another way to look at your question,though. Once when I was set up to sell eggs,I had a man ask me what kind of chickens I had. This did not surprize me because this was a common question and sometimes people wanted hatching eggs. At that time I had all of mine mixed but told him I would soon be separating my marans so I would have pure eggs. He was interested in the pure eggs because he believed it was Biblical not to mix the breeds of chickens. I do remember reading something in the Bible about mixing animals,but I always thought it meant more like unnatural pairings of species.

I am sorry you lost your hen and I know how you feel because several years ago my entire flock was killed by a neighbor's dog. I had 2 doz eggs of theirs and set them in my dad's incubater. I hatched out 17 babies and they were such a comfort to me. I felt like my flock was re-cycled rather than replaced.

 

[Critter Crazy]

Oh mutts are definitely ok in the chicken world!! I hae plenty of them, and tehy do lay nice eggs!! Tehyc an also be more gorgeous that pure bred chickens!! They come in such an amazing variety of colors!!

 

[Ang]

One of my only hens to survive the fox attacks last summer was a Australorp that happened to be setting on eggs in the weeds. She hatched out 3 little mutt babies. One survived and is an terrific egg layer. She is a EE/Australorp cross. I personally love her grey (blue?) color.