Seaslug
Songster
I was going to post the following comment on a thread regarding an Olive Egger Hen that lays brown eggs:
"I think that, if you are going to sell your chicks based on the trait of laying "olive" colored eggs (i.e. combining a blue egg layer w/ a dark brown egg layer), then you should be doing everything in your power to make sure that the blue egg layers in your breeding program have 2 blue genes. Certainly there are enough quality birds out there w/ 2 blue genes to maintain a 2 blue gene line and cross for olives?"
But then I realized that I know next to nothing about how breeders and hatcheries work. Do hatcheries keep a select number of grown out birds of different types and decide which to mate or are chickens artificially inseminated? Are breeding birds kept for multiple years? Are they given any sort of life?
Thanks for any insight you can give me on this.
"I think that, if you are going to sell your chicks based on the trait of laying "olive" colored eggs (i.e. combining a blue egg layer w/ a dark brown egg layer), then you should be doing everything in your power to make sure that the blue egg layers in your breeding program have 2 blue genes. Certainly there are enough quality birds out there w/ 2 blue genes to maintain a 2 blue gene line and cross for olives?"
But then I realized that I know next to nothing about how breeders and hatcheries work. Do hatcheries keep a select number of grown out birds of different types and decide which to mate or are chickens artificially inseminated? Are breeding birds kept for multiple years? Are they given any sort of life?
Thanks for any insight you can give me on this.
