thoughts on hatchery white leghorns

[kfacres]

Quote:
That's what I have been thinking... We're getting ready to move to a new place, and I would like some low input, high output type birds for eggs and eggs to sell. I've always thought the leghorn to be far superior to the playing field in this category... Then come on here, listen to person after person bash the hatchery route/ hatchery quality for the quality of bird being produced, on a mass scale... and it makes you wonder... In this situation, wouldn't the hatchery route, actually be the better option? Wouldn't that type of bird, actually be a better choice for the targeted goal?

Really the only thing stopping me from going all hog crazy and buying a bunch of w.l. pullets in the spring- is the consumer desired for 'farm fresh BROWN eggs'. I don't know what it really matters, but for some reason egg buyers ask for brown eggs...

Now, from the way I'm thinking-- If a guy could get a bunch of WL hens, and get a few red sex links or production reds for brown eggs to sell, then a person could mix eggs for the buyer, and hopefully keep them happy.

Now, another thought that I have- is that white eggs get dominated by both brown and blue... I've got a pair of Ameraucanas that would be super easy to intergrate into a flock of leghorn, or brown egg laying birds-- and still keep there eggs seperate. With this intention, I could be able to hatch out F1 Leghorn offspring, that wouldn't lay white eggs.

I'd like to be able to reproduce my own egg layers, gradually as I feel is needed- so I'd obviously need a white leghorn male to run in the mix... since my leghorns would lay white, and the browns would lay brown, hatching out pure leghorns would be a cake walk, in order to keep them straight.

My question is, anyone out there doing something like this?

 

[al6517]

I too feel that in your case with your specific well thought out goal that the hatchery route is the way to go, if folks want egg's and lots of them and then wants more and more eggs then yes hatchery all the way, that is their thing and they are good at the egg end of the biz, not so much when it comes to a standard or the looks they don't really care about that, it's all about the eggs.

I am telling ya .............. you got to try these 365's they may be just the ticket for you, and the feed conversion ratio's are very attractive. But like you said folks like brown egg's and for them it's all about the color as they don't know the in's and out's of real chickens and eggs. LOL Brown is the new black for the egg fad LOL.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Most of my White Leghorns came from Murray McMurray and they are commercial working birds. Hylines I believe. They're as identical to each other as if they were cloned. They lay consistently and they don't give me any problems so long as I feed them right.

For brown eggs if the economics of it are important then I highly recommend the ISA Browns from Townline Hatchery. Shell color is quite good. Better than most of my "heritage" breeds in fact but for a few and very consistent. Of course those are hybrids so you're not going to be able to breed them and retain their sex-link characteristics.

Ridgerunner makes some very good points. First decide what characteristics are important to you then find a breeder who matches yours.

If the economics of them are high on your list then it's going to be the commercial hatcheries who sell for-real commercial birds. I have my heritage breeds that I like and I'm going to keep right on with them. But dollars and cents bottom line they cannot pay for themselves in the eggs that they lay. In fact it's the commercial White Leghorn and ISA Brown girls who are carrying them in that regard because they far and away outlay them in total number of eggs that have better shell characteristics. This is not a hobby to the folks who are doing it professionally. It's their living and they put a lot of effort into it. I am delighted to be able to buy the same chicks they're using.

I would never go to a commercial hatchery for a bird that I wanted to enter into a poultry show. I look for show breeders for that. It's what they do and what I want. But those birds only constitute a small part of my flock. The rest of the girls have to pay their way in table egg sales and for that only a well-bred commercial bird will do. Feed is too expensive to keep anything else.

 

[colby318]

A.T. Hagan :

Most of my White Leghorns came from Murray McMurray and they are commercial working birds. Hylines I believe. They're as identical to each other as if they were cloned. They lay consistently and they don't give me any problems so long as I feed them right.

For brown eggs if the economics of it are important then I highly recommend the ISA Browns from Townline Hatchery. Shell color is quite good. Better than most of my "heritage" breeds in fact but for a few and very consistent. Of course those are hybrids so you're not going to be able to breed them and retain their sex-link characteristics.

Ridgerunner makes some very good points. First decide what characteristics are important to you then find a breeder who matches yours.

If the economics of them are high on your list then it's going to be the commercial hatcheries who sell for-real commercial birds. I have my heritage breeds that I like and I'm going to keep right on with them. But dollars and cents bottom line they cannot pay for themselves in the eggs that they lay. In fact it's the commercial White Leghorn and ISA Brown girls who are carrying them in that regard because they far and away outlay them in total number of eggs that have better shell characteristics. This is not a hobby to the folks who are doing it professionally. It's their living and they put a lot of effort into it. I am delighted to be able to buy the same chicks they're using.

I would never go to a commercial hatchery for a bird that I wanted to enter into a poultry show. I look for show breeders for that. It's what they do and what I want. But those birds only constitute a small part of my flock. The rest of the girls have to pay their way in table egg sales and for that only a well-bred commercial bird will do. Feed is too expensive to keep anything else.

x2
I have my beloved wyandottes. And then I have my working girls, who pay for the wyandottes by churning out "freshies" for my egg customers. Mostly production reds and EEs. I have a couple of hatchery leghorns who are dedicated to earning their pay. The egg customers don't mind the occasional white mixed with the brown and blues.​

 

[kfacres]

I have my cornish birds, and a pair of SQ Ameraucanas to tink around with, in terms of making meat birds, and show birds, or just pure birds-- that's not what this goal is aimed at. This goal, is to make eggs, plenty of them, on very little feed... sounds to me like everybody has just confirmed my thoughts as the bird of choice in this situation.

No, the brown egg laying, hybrid birds won't reproduce themselves- but like I tried to (unsuccessfully) get across in my previous post-- was they really won't be needed to reproduce. In terms of replacing my original birds, I could do one of two things- mate them to some kind of red sexlink male-- and get a hodge podge of egg layers, which in theory should lay brown eggs, being brown is dominate- but yet plenty of brown eggs... or mate them to my Amer male-- and get blue eggs, or greens. Either way, more desireable than white- but still with the leghorn body style and genetics; atleast in half.

To remain my leghorn body type- and charactoristics, I'm guessing that I could run a Leghorn hatch mate roo on them, and be able to reproduce them successfully.

I don't really care what color the bird is, or what it's body style looks like.. I want eggs cheaply and efficiently.

 

[kfacres]

Quote:

x2
I have my beloved wyandottes. And then I have my working girls, who pay for the wyandottes by churning out "freshies" for my egg customers. Mostly production reds and EEs. I have a couple of hatchery leghorns who are dedicated to earning their pay. The egg customers don't mind the occasional white mixed with the brown and blues.

mine usually don't either, but having browns sure makes it easier to garner up new customers, and make believers out of them... after they're hooked, you could give them black eggs, and they wouldn't care.

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
There is often not much hatchery support so to say on here because I would guess 90-95% of our members or more are in the "pet business" or "breeding business" so to say, not the pure production business, and don't care if their bird does not lay.

Personally... for my own production birds, and for the number of years I sold eggs in highschool/college to pay for the birds themselves, I used hatchery leghorns or sexlinks for maximum production. Every year I got replacements to raise, and then when the birds reached 2-3 years of age and started to slow in production, I'd cull them out and have the next generation ready to go. I mixed white and brown eggs, but brown often got better support so would primarily sell those till winter. The leghorns almost always, believe it or not, layed eggs through winter so customers often got more white eggs in the winter than brown. We tended to eat our own white eggs. The "saving grace" of white egg populatirty was often the white eggs from the 2 year old layers that were often HUGE. Also, but mixing brown and white, customers often learned that shell color was simply shell deep, as the golden yolk was still inside regardless.

Leghorns are so identical we call them eves, like the Eve's from the x files episode.

 

[kfacres]

can anyone give some insight on the hyline 57 line that mcmurray sells?

 

[A.T. Hagan]

It is the brown eggs that folks mostly look for so when I'm packing eggs it's mostly what I give them. But I wanted to distinguish my product from all the others so I put in at least one blue/green egg in every dozen. Also, since you just can't beat the feed conversion of a commercial White Leghorn I wanted to include some white eggs as well. This I gradually ramped up to give my customers a chance to become accustomed to them since some are prejudiced against le blanc hen fruit.

This is what I've worked them up to now:

There are a handful of Maran eggs in there (the darkest shells) but the rest are mostly ISA Browns. I've got a lot more brown egg layers so the number of white eggs can vary from week to week depending on how many dozens I have to spread them across so they can vary from as few as two per carton to a maximum of five. Considering what my store account retails them for it must be working because those folks pay more for eggs than I ever would!

I do keep some ISA Brown and White Leghorn boys for breeding. In fact come December I'm going to use them to breed all of my EE girls so that I can get started on a production Easter Egger. There's too much variability in their lay rate and shell quality and I think it can be improved by crossing in some professional birds. That's the theory anyway. We'll see how well that worked come next summer when their offspring begin to lay.

 

[kfacres]

back in the day, when I was selling eggs, we'd get a few people frown upon the green ones... too much rotten green eggs and ham...

your eggs are very uniform, how many layers is that from? I'm guessing that's one day's picking.