Super chickens developing too early!

[MutantMaster]

Hi there. Long time reader, first time poster.
There have been many occasions that have encouraged me to sign up, but this one gave me the final nudge.

We've been having some "problems" with our recent chickens being super advanced. Yesterday a 5 day old Pekin roo who already has some really nice feathering started to crow. But that's not it.
We have some Silkies and a few Pekins which are about eight weeks old with a couple of slightly younger ones and an Indian Runner in a dedicated hutch.
They have all been maturing too soon. There's been a lot going on recently so I haven't opened the actual coop part in roughly a week. When I opened it there was an unexpected surprise. Three tiny eggs and two large ones.
The large eggs I'm on the fence on whether they are duck eggs or from another chicken who may have decided to start laying in there. The hutch is open all day so it's possible. The little eggs though, they are way too small to even be from our young adult Silkies.
The only two likely contenders are a Pekin that started to act broody at maybe 3 weeks old, and the unusually large Silkie hen that we thought was a rooster until recently.

So I guess what I'm asking here is what's going on???

I should add that we have a coop around the front of the house too. These chickens seem to develop normally. Two of the Silkies from the same batch were raised by a broody hen from that coop. They are noticeably smaller and further behind in development. Nothing is really different. They eat the same food too.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

All your birds are too young to be sexually mature and laying. It's not unusual for very young roosters to try to crow so that's normal. The eggs are either from other chickens or even from wild birds. The youngest I have read of chickens laying is 16-18 weeks, mostly from sex links. You can lower their protein a bit in the feed by beginning to feed scratch after eight weeks to slow down sexual maturity. I do this to give them time to develop more slowly and avoid egg laying problems.

 

[MutantMaster]

Hi. Sorry it took me so long to get back. It took days of careful observation to work out where the eggs were coming from. One of our older Silkies had started laying and the eggs are tiny for some reason. As a bonus we put them in the incubator and some were fertile!

The large eggs were from our bitzer chicken.

I'll have to check at the supply place to see if they have anything suitable as scratch. These chickens need to be slowed down. I swear each batch is developing faster than the last!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

For my scratch I mix 50 pounds each of cracked corn and oats, than add in black oil sunflower seeds raising or lowering the amounts of it based on season, they can be fattening and are my birds favorite so a bit less of them during summer.