What would happen...

[Bananas]

Ok everybody, here's a random question that I've been puzzling over:

What happens if you breed a large fowl rooster to a bantam hen? She still lays a bantam-sized egg, but won't the half-breed chick be too big to fit in the egg by the time he is fully developed? Will he hatch early or die?

I am thinking sort of like in horses how you don't usually breed a large stallion with, say, a pony, because the resulting foal can damage the mother by being too large...

Just a really random question but it's been bugging me!

Any thoughts?

 

[new-roo]

I think the chick only grows as big as the space it has. Never had a problem with bantams in large eggs not being able to break out because they couldnt reach the edge, they grow to whatever size they are gonna be after they leave the egg.

 

[flora]

We bred our ponies to full size horses all the time. The mare controls the size of the fetus and the foal starts out small but grows into a small horse or extra large pony. We would get Quarter Ponies, Welaras, and POAs from our Shetland and Welsh pony mares.
Hens do the same thing, when the chick hatches it grows into a medium size bird. That's how a lot of these beautiful mutt chickens come to be.

 

[Bananas]

Wow, they always told us in 4-H that you couldn't do that! (The horse thing I mean...). They said you could bread pony stallions to horse mares but not vice versa.

Well, you learn something new...
Anyway thanks for the info, I'd been puzzling over the chicken question for a long time! Lol