The dumbest question you will read today.

[Trollkiller]

If you have a large male and breed it with a small female does the hen lay larger eggs?

Will the eggs the hen lays be big enough to accommodate the larger offspring?

 

[chickenma]

Thanks, fo asking. I would like to know the answer too.

 

[KellyHM]

The eggs will be adequate size to hatch. I hatched a bunch of my Silkie's eggs that were crossed to my EE roo. I don't know how big of eggs those will lay though.

 

[onthespot]

The hen will lay the same size egg she always laid. The chick will hatch and grow to the genetic potential it inherited, whatever size that averages out to. The next generation of hens will likely be bigger and lay bigger eggs, and if you bred them to a smaller roo, the opposite would happen.

 

[Trollkiller]

So if you are not doing something silly like mating a Jersey Giant with a Serama you will be ok.

 

[silkiechicken]

Yeah, egg size is determined by the size of the hen's insides. Can't change that. But egg will hatch a chick, and chick will grow to it's potential.

As for mixing a cochin with serama, you'd probably have a dead serama without eggs IF the cochin even took the serama as a bird of his type.

My cochin ignores even my silkie girls and doesn't try anything with them. However, he's a gentleman all around.

 

[SGM]

Just as onthespot said. The hen is genetically programmed to lay a certain size. Doesn't matter what you breed her to, her eggs will be the same size. As for the chick, the chick is genetically programmed to grow a certain size, but just like a fish in a tiny bowl it will limit how much growth they can do. Some do fine and hatch. Others won't so I would "think" you'd have a slightly limited percentage of successful hatches. But yes its possible.

I often have talks like this with goat people asking about litter size genetics. If a doe comes from a single and her dam always had singles and her sire was from a single litter, then she's probably going to have singles. If you breed her from a buck who is from quadruplets then he can give the genes for larger litter sizes to his kids, but he can't make the doe have more than 1. All he can do is introduce sperm to fertilize her eggs. If she's programmed to only release one egg then she can only get pregnant with a single. Actual real identical twins in goats is extremely rare. I've never even heard of it. Goats tend to ovulate more than one egg therefore settling with more than one fetus when fertilized. Sorry for the book.

 

[Jenlyn9483]

Thank you for the book SGM I love useful information in unexpected place..I will take all the goat info I can get. My friends doe just had trips and she only ever had twins before..With that same note I know that my ND doe was born of a triplet litter as the only doe and has had twins before...Just trying to gauge if she will most likely have twins. The other one is daughter to my friends doe I hope (fingers crossed) She is prego with her first litter.

 

[Blisschick]

Even if you could mate a larger bird to a Serama, like it's said, the chick will grow to it's potential provided it has enough space in the egg. Many Serama die in the egg because the hen will lay a tiny egg, but the chick grows too large and ends up dying because it runs out of room to grow. I have a batch hatching now that had a huge chick in a tiny egg that couldn't turn to pip in the air cell, so it died. That could be said to possibly happen with any large roo/small hen combo.