Earlier this spring while I was waiting for it to warm up enough for the peahens to start laying a friend of mine posted a photo comparing an IB egg to a Green egg with the Green egg being visibly larger. It got me thinking how regular india blue eggs compare with their mutations' eggs. So here's what I did
Every egg that was laid by either mutation birds or IB's got it's own number written on it along with the color and the date (Indigo 5/30 #6) the last number being the order in which it was laid from that color. Each egg was weighed before being put in the incubator then weighed again after candling on day 7. If an egg was infertile it was discarded without any further measurements being taken and previous measurements were removed from the data pool.
Chicks were weighed as soon as they dried off then again at a week. If a chick ended up passing before a week it's data was removed from the pool. Assisted hatch chicks were weighed separately and not compared to the general population whether or not they survived.
Here's what I found. out of around 275 eggs 25 were either infertile or did not hatch. 14 chicks passed with 10 of them being younger than a week at time of death, India blue eggs were almost universally heavier/bigger than mutation eggs on average by 5-7% with outliers being as close as 2% and as far as 10% (smaller).
It got really interesting with the chicks. IB chicks were bigger at birth than mutation chicks which is no surprise with the eggs being different however they had another advantage. IB chicks were more likely to have a visible "yolk bump" at hatching than mutation chicks. Mutation chicks also began searching for food in earnest sooner after hatching than the IB chicks. Basically when the IB chicks had finished absorbing their yolk remnants and were starting to eat the mutation chicks were busy playing catchup weight wise and had already been eating for a day or two. Mutation chicks were also more likely to not come out of an assisted hatch well.
This data was gathered from 200 chicks and is still being collected as the last few chicks hatch. The IB chicks came out of a colony breeding pen with 4 mature males, 15 mature hens, and a couple odds and ends juveniles. None of the IB breeders are related to each other and the males all came from different sources. Color mutation birds were paired with unrelated birds from different sources.
Every egg that was laid by either mutation birds or IB's got it's own number written on it along with the color and the date (Indigo 5/30 #6) the last number being the order in which it was laid from that color. Each egg was weighed before being put in the incubator then weighed again after candling on day 7. If an egg was infertile it was discarded without any further measurements being taken and previous measurements were removed from the data pool.
Chicks were weighed as soon as they dried off then again at a week. If a chick ended up passing before a week it's data was removed from the pool. Assisted hatch chicks were weighed separately and not compared to the general population whether or not they survived.
Here's what I found. out of around 275 eggs 25 were either infertile or did not hatch. 14 chicks passed with 10 of them being younger than a week at time of death, India blue eggs were almost universally heavier/bigger than mutation eggs on average by 5-7% with outliers being as close as 2% and as far as 10% (smaller).
It got really interesting with the chicks. IB chicks were bigger at birth than mutation chicks which is no surprise with the eggs being different however they had another advantage. IB chicks were more likely to have a visible "yolk bump" at hatching than mutation chicks. Mutation chicks also began searching for food in earnest sooner after hatching than the IB chicks. Basically when the IB chicks had finished absorbing their yolk remnants and were starting to eat the mutation chicks were busy playing catchup weight wise and had already been eating for a day or two. Mutation chicks were also more likely to not come out of an assisted hatch well.
This data was gathered from 200 chicks and is still being collected as the last few chicks hatch. The IB chicks came out of a colony breeding pen with 4 mature males, 15 mature hens, and a couple odds and ends juveniles. None of the IB breeders are related to each other and the males all came from different sources. Color mutation birds were paired with unrelated birds from different sources.
