what type of breeds do they use on commercial farms

[bahamas]

What specialty breed do they have laying for them at yonder commercial farms . are they special genetically alter chickens or leg hors and others that we have. ?? any1 know ??

 

[BarredBuff]

Quote:
For white eggs Pearl White Leghorns
For brown eggs Red Sexlinks

 

[walkswithdog]

What breeds depends on the egg producer. Some use PWL but some use Javas, some use Red sex link varieties produced specially for them, some use black sex link varieties - again majorly tweaked and developed only for them for egg laying. Most of the MAJOR commercial egg producers have their own "privately developed" lines of sex links for production and they don't tend to share.

For meat it's a cornish/rock mix.

None of them are "normal" breeds for the most part. Selected for generations for rate of lay and egg size over longevity, health, broodiness, etc.

And the meaties - well they're designed to be butchered before they hit six months, or their legs usually break under their own weight unless reared on a carefully restricted diet with lots of exercise.

You can raise pure bred pearl white leghorns, javas etc for your own yard from those available from hatcheries. They'll lay lots of purty eggs. They might be a few percent off the best commercial layers but not by a lot.

I prefer birds that free range, brood and forage like proper demons. So I've used Rocks and Delawares, and am looking at Marans. But then I'm not all about huge amounts of huge eggs. Most of mine lay at least five days a week, the Dels lay a really large egg and I settle for that. I have a black australorp that in general lays daily pretty much 357. But howdy she's mean.

Dels come closer to dual purpose than the Rocks do. As do the Marans. My six month old marans hen is every bit as big as my 1.5 year old BA and her egg is already nearly as large, and a nice dark terra cotta color with speckles. Nifty.

 

[karabbitry]

There are only a handfull of lines of commercial birds for either layers, broilers or turkeys. Every Commercial hatchery that I have studied in college or worked with uses only a version of a red sexlink for brown eggs or a version of a white leghorn for white eggs. This is because these two groups of birds have been developed to be the best at feed conversion as compared to egg production. The blacks and others are not economical in large settings as their conversion is not as great.

The broilers are pretty much all decendents from crosses done in the 30's. There is no more rock X cornish happening these days. That is just what the initial start was. These birds are designed in commercial settings to be processed between 42 and 47 days. If the terminal broilers were left to be 6 months they would be dead from either legs failing or heart failure.

There are birds available from hatcheries that are very similar to what industry uses. However I know from experience that when I was working on my research projects getting certain lines from industry cost considerable amounts of money.

 

[Illia]

White Eggs - White Leghorns
Brown Eggs - Golden/Red Sexlinks

Meat - Broilers/Cornish X crosses, although from my understanding their "recipes" of breeding have changed over the years. Regardless, it is still cruelly unnatural.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
They are not genetically-altered. They are "made" by normal conventional processes of selection and (always, for the meaties and brown layers; I dunno 'bout for the white-egg laying leghorns) by crossing two or four separately-selected parent lines.

But there is nothing funky going on genetically, just a lot of generations of intense selection for the chickens with particular exaggerated traits.

I don't know about other commercial lines (and I thoroughly 100% disapprove of the way any of them are raised commercially) but I can tell you that ISA Browns, which are a commonly-used commercial brown egg layer, are actually really nice calm friendly personable chickens when raised in a backyard setting, if you were not *told* they were an industrial F1 hybrid you would not know.

Pat

 

[mcqueen420]

Other members here have found out that Trader Joe's Grocery Stores' eggs(at least some of them) come from a White leghorn strain known as Hy-Line W-36. This company Hy-Line produces several breeds of leghorns and reds of some sort all bred for specific traits. I imagine these breeds are fairly common in the commercial egg industry. Several members here have hatched their fertile eggs which are from the W-36's, if you want to get your hands on those. I just hatched one chick out of a dozen eggs from there that were over two weeks old. Here's the link to their site if you want more info they have everything about every breed they have in their management guides.

http://www.hy-line.com/aspx/products/products.aspx?navid=3