Help. Do broiler (white) lay eggs?

[broilergirl]

I live on a nice farm and have about two acres. I know there meat chickens but I do not want to eat them. I also don't know that my parents will let me adopt more we have 6 of them. I really want eggs and my fault I thought all chickens laid eggs. I'm wrong. I also have two brown chickens. I don't know what they are or if they are make or female or if they eggs and also how do you make sure chickens lay there eggs in there coop. Thanks!!

 

[drumstick diva]

If they are truly meat chickens like Cornish x, they don't have time to mature and lay eggs, they are usually processed for food at a young age. If they aren't slaughtered they generally die young regardless. They were bred to mature fast and nearly eat themselves to death doing so. They usually advise leaving feed out for 12 hours a day, and taking it away for 12, so they can't eat constantly for 24 hrs.

 

[TwoCrows]

Hello and welcome to BYC!

Drumstick Diva X2 Meat birds must be processed or they will die on their own early in life. They are not meant to be kept as pets and are bred to grow fast and hard for butchering at around 2 months old. They will slowly get too heavy for their legs and die on you. So sorry. You need some standard breeds if you want them as pets and for eggs.

 

[Kelsie2290]

Hello and Welcome To BYC! The two brown chickens you have look like red sex links (Red Stars, Golden Comets etc) they are really good layers. Like TwoCrows and drumstick diva said above, the CornishX are meant to be processed at an early age and they will wind up with health problems sooner or later... if they live long enough, the girls will lay brown eggs. If you want to try and keep them as pets you need to make special arrangements for them, limit their feed to keep them from gaining too much weight etc, there are some threads where people have raised them as long as they were able to and what they did to help keep them going. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/476028/cornish-cross-meat-birds and https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/331273/cornishx-as-a-pet

 

[Michael OShay]

Welcome to BYC! Even if you do manage to get your Cornish x Rocks to laying age, not only will they have serious health problems, but they are very poor layers. On the other hand, the two brown chickens (as Kelsie2290 pointed out) are Red Sex Link hens. RSLs are produced by crossing a red gene rooster (RIR, New Hampshire, or Production Red) with a white/silver gene hen (White Rock, Rhode Island White, Delaware, or Light Sussex) and can be sexed by color at hatching (males are whitish, females are reddish). They are marketed by hatcheries under a lot of different names (Red Star, Brown Sex Link, Gold Sex Link, Gold Star, Cinnamon Queen, Bovans Brown, Golden Buff, Golden Comet, Hubbard Golden Comet, Isa Brown, Shaver Brown, Babcock Brown, Warrens, Bovans Goldline, etc.) but no matter what name they are marketed under, they are all egg laying machines (better than either parent breed). In addition to the Red Sex Link, there is also a Black Sex Link (Black Star), which is RIR rooster x Barred Rock hen, and is also an egg laying machine. In the case of BSLs, males are black with a white spot on their heads at hatching and females are solid black. My suggestion is to butcher or sell those Cornish x Rocks and get some more of the Sex Link hens (I personally prefer the Blacks as mine have been friendlier and layed slightly better in very cold, winter weather). But whatever you decide to do, good luck with your flock.

 

[gander007]

 

[Sylviaanne]

I live on a nice farm and have about two acres. I know there meat chickens but I do not want to eat them. I also don't know that my parents will let me adopt more we have 6 of them. I really want eggs and my fault I thought all chickens laid eggs. I'm wrong. I also have two brown chickens. I don't know what they are or if they are make or female or if they eggs and also how do you make sure chickens lay there eggs in there coop. Thanks!!

I bought 4 Cornish Cross hens last year. I didn't know they were meat chickens until this year. I have not had a problem with them laying eggs and yes they are huge (sorry, I meant the hens) but I didn't know they weren't supposed to look that way. I have one left as one died of mysterious reasons and 2 were recently gotten by a predator.

I think the best way to make them lay their eggs in a coop is to make sure you lock them up at night. Are any of them laying eggs yet? I don't let my chickens out until noon to try to get all the eggs laid in the coop. They have an attached run but I let them out to forage after noon. Some people use fake eggs to let the hens know where they want the eggs to be laid and you shouldn't let them sleep in the nesting boxes cause they will poop in them and then they either won't lay the eggs there or the eggs will get poop on them.