Vote for the best HYBRID layer!!!

[MissChick@dee]

I have both leghorn and sex link (red). The RSL started laying @16weeks and hasn’t missed a day yet (she’s 7 months now). My leghorn is 2 yrs old and she lays about 26 eggs a month. The LH eggs are huge bigger than RSL’s (which are lg. Size)
The RSL eats more than the LH. If I had to go with a bird for a homestead I’d vote for the LH. Personal preference.
But if you want brown eggs I’d vote RSL. not very helpful I like both for different reasons. Best wishes

 

[Mitsos Lamprogiorgos]

A hybrid means crossing 2 or more separate breeds together when it comes to chickens. Crossing different strains of the same breed does not create a hybrid. When different strains of Leghorns are bred together for the purpose of increasing production, and some other breed characteristics are ignored, then those birds are production Leghorns, not hybrid Leghorns. Red sex links, California grays, California whites, Austrawhites, etc. are examples of hybrids with Leghorns as one parents.

As far the best producers among the hybrid layers goes, it really depends on what you want. Here, brown eggs fetch a better price than white eggs. If I was interested in shear quantity, as well as feed to lay ratio, then red sex links would be the best choice. And they are all similar, in my opinion-- the hatcheries do a good job of maintaining productivity in their red sex links, regardless of the brand name used.

Personally, I prefer black sex links to red. They are calmer, prettier, and lay larger eggs even if they don't lay quite so many. And they seem to have less problems with blowout and other reproductive disorders that are prevalent in the layer hybrids.

Sapphire Gems look like a good option, too.

White leghorns are considered to be hybrids, they hybridized themselves, and if you check the leaflets of the companies you will understand that their feed to egg conversion rate is much better than this of the RSL.

 

[Mitsos Lamprogiorgos]

The "Tetra L Superb" could be a hybrid. There is no way to know whether or not it is a hybrid because at no point do they claim it to be a White Leghorn. Since they are not claiming it to be a White Leghorn, it cannot be used as an example to claim that White Leghorns are a hybrid. It is possible that one of their A, B, C, or D is something other than a White Leghorn line but we will never know because they are not going to release that proprietary information.

Hy-line whites, dominant d229, ISA whites, dekalb whites, shaver whites, bovans whites, babcock whites, hisex whites are all leghorns coming from a 4 line systems.
The terminal cross is called hybrid for more than 200 years, neither it is or not.
Understand it.

 

[Mitsos Lamprogiorgos]

The words red sex link & red shaver are trade marked names that are only used by the hatchery that produces them.

If you are in full blown "Homestead" mode the thing to consider is whether the increased foraging ability of Leghorn chickens, their ability to evade predators, and the extra eggs are worth your hens not hatching off their own chicks. Every time a hen turns to setting you will lose up to 2 months or 60 days worth of egg production.

FYI, a Leghorn hen (regardless of color) will outperform almost every hen on Earth in the nest box department. 300 to 350 eggs per year is not uncommon and is in fact quite normal. This a hen needs a rest business is hokum. Leghorns lay eggs in direct proportion to the care that you give them. You treat your hens like crap they will treat you like crap when it comes time to gather the eggs.

Regardless of color? Hahaha. I am crying. The duckwing leghorn colors are mostly for the show field.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Always a debate eh?...White Leghorns are hybrid layers. Great layers with early burn out.

When it comes down to it there is no debate. White Leghorns are not hybrid layers. They have been around in the same form you see today for WELL over 100 years without any or at least many out crosses. And those out crosses were to other White Leghorn lines.

 

[chickens really]

Here from Rochester Hatchery Alberta, Canada...

Oops double posted picture...

 

[chickengeorgeto]

You can have the maximum production of a white leghorn only if you keep terminal crosses coming from this system. Hatching from the terminal crosses has not any sense.
White leghorn is a hybridized breed for more than 200 years, it breeds true only in the appearence and if you hatch from the terminal crosses, you will not have the same laying abilities. It doesn't even have the name of its breed, it receives the brand name of the company that makes it a money maker.
They are outbred in a specific way, so to the heterosis level that guide to the maximum vigor and production of the terminal cross we buy can be shown ONLY by the terminal crosses coming extracted from this system.
And Tetra is not the only company who applies this system.
All big companies do so.
The lines of the leghorns the last 200 years are not just a breed, but sth you can't even imagine.
They have N U M B E R S, not names, there are many strains in every company to choose for (for bigger eggs, for bigger egg mass, for a more robust size, for minimum appetites, for indoors systems, for free range systems).
The terminal crosses of white leghorns a hobby farmer buys don't breed true in production.
That's why they are called "terminal" crosses.

No one is denying that you can change the physical attributes of a chicken by selective breeding. All the mumbo jumbo about numbers and not names is to help ensure that other companies don't get their hands on a hatchery's offspring and start undercutting the first hatchery. It would be helpful if we knew how many genes in each "verity" of White Leghorns were the same and how many genes were different. I am betting that you could put the difference in a "Hollow" Chickens' tooth with room left over.

 

[JedJackson]

View attachment 1577788 Here from Rochester Hatchery Alberta, Canada...View attachment 1577788
Oops double posted picture...

So you're basing it off of a hatchery? But hatcheries are often either ignorant or untruthful. They will sell Easter eggers as Ameraucanas, as one example.

I fail to see how breeding different strains of white Leghorns is any different from breeding different stains of light Brahmas, for example. If a breeder adds new, unrelated light Brahma stock from an outside source to a breeding program, that breeder will not be breeding hybrids, but simply light Brahmas with greater genetic diversity. The same goes if you cross different strains of any breed, including white Leghorns.

 

[Pyxis]

White leghorns aren't hybrids. They aren't the result of two breeds crossed together to create a mixed breed bird.

The leghorn breed originated in Italy. It comes in several colors. It's accepted by the APA and has a breed standard. Maybe hatcheries are selling hybrid birds under the name of leghorn, but as was said they also sell easter eggers under the name ameraucana, and that's also not true. And really anything you get from a hatchery is going to be a poor representation of its breed.

Or maybe they have their own lines or strains of leghorn and are, for some reason, calling those hybrids, but those aren't hybrids unless they crossed another breed in at some point. And if that happened, then those birds aren't actually leghorns. There's a hatchery here that's done that - and they sell the resulting hybrids under the name Ideal 236, because they're not leghorns.

As was said, if you have actual white leghorns and you cross them to another strain of white leghorns, you haven't made a mixed breed hybrid, you've only made a flock of leghorns with more genetic diversity than before.

Info on the breed:

https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/leghorn

As to the original question, none of the high production breeds or hybrids are really what I would consider sustainable, since broodiness has been bred out of them to increase egg production. You'd need to keep either a second breed that does go broody or an incubator to continue to propagate them on your farm. Short of that, you'd have to keep buying new birds to replace the old as they stop laying.

If I was shooting for sustainable on a homestead, I wouldn't be looking at any of these breeds. Rather, I would be looking at a breed that both lays decently and will hatch its own chicks.

 

[Aceoky]

I would be looking at a breed that both lays decently and will hatch its own chicks.

Eggzactly! There are several breeds that do this quite well & what we plan to focus on in the future.