Hatching Golden Comet/Golden Comet eggs

[Pooh Bear 32]

Hi I'm interested in knowing how your hatch came out with the Golden Comet Hen & Rooster, I to am
planning on doing this. I was curious how it will come out. Thanks a bunch!

 

[TurtlePowerTrav]

They will be Golden Comets, but will not have the ability to sex them according to down color. That only works with the original generation. Don't quite know if this was the answer you were looking for, but it is how I read it.

 

[Pooh Bear 32]

Do they still lay as well, lots of big brown eggs?

 

[TurtlePowerTrav]

As far as I know. They just loose the sexing trait. Hopefully someone with more experience will chime in. I have my first Golden Sex-link in the grow-out tractor, she is 8.5 weeks old.

 

[Pooh Bear 32]

Thanks, and good luck.

 

[Fred's Hens]

You may get white, streaks of gold, black, smutty black on white, and so on.

The golden comet isn't a breed, and doesn't produce after it's original "look". It was a hybrid, a mix/mutt intentionally created in the first place. Breed back a Golden Comet to a Golden Comet and you'll be quite surprised the various colors and mixed looks you'll get.

The chicks generally perform a click below the original as well.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It's a bit risky talking about the sex links because there is no real consistency in what different hatcheries use to make the crosses, yet they may call them the same thing. As far as I know, Golden Comets are usually crosses between two regular breeds, not the commercial red sex link crosses. If we knew for sure what breeds went into making them, we might be able to predict some of the colors and patterns you'll see. But as Fred said you are liable to see about any color or pattern. Once you start crossing crosses, the genetics get really messed up. By crossing red sex links like these red and white should predominate the colors but you cannot sex the offspring by color and you can get some really interesting patterns.

Fred, what was your thinking about them performing a click below the parents? If the Golden Comets are the commercial egg layers I agree with you totally. There will be a drop-off though they should still perform really well. But if they are crosses of regular hatchery quality breeds, would you really expect any noticeable drop-off in performance between the original hybrids and their offspring? I have not noticed any real drop-off when I crossed the offspring of hatchery stock though I try to be careful in selecting my best layers to breed. Are you talking about a drop in hybrid vigor maybe?

 

[Fred's Hens]

RR, we've bred back two different kinds of RSLs. It is a crap shoot what you'll get. The under lying genetics get exposed and uncovered. Or, the underlying colors get covered in white or black. It is impossible to say. We've gotten lots of variants. I'd assume the OP will as well.

As for performing a click below, this, again, is just our experience. Most "makers" of these RSLs, first generation, are double breeding. In other words, they are breeding the cock line and the hen line. When mated for the chicks they are going to sell as RSL (whatever made up, cutesy marketing name they apply) there is what the race horse breeders call "a nick". That vigor, that unique feature is mostly gone in subsequent generations. It's a one time deal.

Again, in our experience, they'll take longer to POL, be all over the map in terms of size/weight, and just be far less uniform in virtually all aspects. Egg color will now vary, as will egg size and quality. Just our experience. Behind the typical RSL is 4 grandparent birds. So breeding RSLs is a crap shoot, or a Forrest Gump box of chocolates thing. "You never know what you're gonna get"

 

[Fred's Hens]

One more point, then, I'm off for the morning.

The RSL had a red parent bird on the cock side. But, that red parent bird is quite likely something of a mix itself. Red and black are associated. Green sheens are somehow in that genetic soup as well.

What also isn't known is this. What is under that white of the white/silver parent bird? This is why when one breeds RSL to RSL all kinds of happy things sometimes pop out.

For certain? The OP will get chickens!!

And that ain't all bad.

 

[Ridgerunner]

For the commercial sex links, yes definitely. They have four distinct lines making each grandparent. But the ones I'm talking about are where the hatchery takes their New Hampshire roosters and put them with their White Rock hens and call the offspring Golden Comets. Or take a RIR rooster over a Delaware hen and call that a Red Comet or Red Star. They do not keep four distinct lines for the grandparents of these crosses. They just keep some of the chickens from their regular breeding pens. Some hatcheries have people that do a better job than others at selecting their breeders, so you can get differences between hatcheries. But being hatchery quality, they are practically always pretty good layers, though not in the class of the commercial breeds. One if the biggest differences is in size. Being smaller, the commercial ones are much more efficient in feed to egg conversion.

When you cross crosses, you get a total mix of the genetics, not just color and patterns but in the other traits too. But since both lines are hatchery quality that make the sex links in the first place, those genes generally produce really good egg layers in the offspring. Anyway, that has been my experience crossing hatchery quality breeds, not the commercial sex link laying breeds.

The OP will get chickens and probably pretty good egg layers regardless of the parentage of the original crosses. That ain't bad at all.

Enjoy your time off duty and get ready for this weather sytem. It should hit here in a couple of hours and it looks like it will bring winter.