U_Stormcrow
Crossing the Road
Here I had just finished commenteing "EE are Mutts" on another thread discussing Start of Lay expectations, hadn't considered the implications here.I did not pursue research science as a career, but my BS is Biology/Geology and I remember a lot about designing valid experiments.
White Leghorns are cheap, there's lots of literature on feeding them already which might be useful for planning, they aren't a hybrid like the {X}stars or a mutt like an EE, they put on better weight than some of the new hybrids, and they are moderately early layers - here, faster maturity increases the potential of getting results in the very short timeframe of the experiement [which I would push to 6 weeks, that being the more common recommend for how long to keep a bird on starter, as well as more time for differences to become evident}