Project Blue
Songster
- Apr 13, 2025
- 158
- 246
- 113
I have a theory, mind you just theory about unusually large eggs. Could it be they linger too long in the egg development tract? I had two Ameraucana pullets that became mature during the darkest days of Autumn and their coop is in the woods and it's extra dark because of dog proofing reinforcement. So...they didn't start laying forever, but when they did lay the eggs were huge. If that theory is correct than the egg would not indicate a genetically superior egg size for breeding purposes. But, like you, I tried to hatch those eggs, one rotted in the incubator the others eggs laid a little bit later hatched bigger chicks. These chicks hatched almost twice as big as my frosty legbar chicks hatched at the same time from smaller eggs than normal. The Legbar hens started laying extra earlier, 3 weeks before everybody else. They were in a sunny coop. Over time the Legbar hen's eggs got bigger and the Ameraucana eggs got much smaller. Gleaning from a small pool of chickens I didn't find much difference between the small eggs and big eggs in hatch rate, other than the first laid egg which was the rotten one. Like you I had read about the bigger /smaller eggs having more problems, however that didn't happen with me. I was just so anxious about the new eggs after having a long time without eggs I just had to put them in the bator! The one wrinkle in my theory is I've had time to collect and hatch a bunch of chicks, so it's been at least a month since the sunny Legbars started laying. My Barnvelders in the dark coop just started laying, and they are the typical pullet first smallish eggs. The days are longer though.
