will "broilers" lay eggs?

[Autumn D]

they wil lay eggs, but if you want them to live a healthy life your going to have to take special care of them as they are breed soley to produce meat. They are prone to leg problems and becume so heavy they cannot lift themselves. also they are more sensitive to heat then other chickens. They will need a speciasl and limited diet (as meet birds will eat themselves to death if they can) and exercise, if you start while there still young it will pervent them from developing problems due to there weight and will help build up the musles needed in order to support there bulky frame. your going to have to do some reasearch in order to find out what you need to know about taking care of them.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Commercial broilers IMHO will not make good back yard pet chickens.

The "X" in the name Cornish x is my big concern. The broilers you see in the grocery are complex cross bred birds combining large size with fast growth. On unlimited feed some of their grand parents can reach 25 pounds or more. If they are just plain old Cornish I don't see any real health problem if kept on limited feed. If they are the result of a final cross used to make grocery store broilers then they may have health problems related to their rate of growth. Because today's broiler chickens are 4 - 6 six weeks and rarely over 8 weeks old before they are processed, any health problems they have related to fast growth are not a concern. Anyway they are single purpose chickens and are going to make poor layers and the care and feeding of birds with the potential to grow this fast and large is likely beyond the the pay scale of preschool children. The odds are good that 2 to 3 of the 5 chicks are roosters. Therefor if all 5 chicks grow to adulthood you may get only one or two eggs every other day.

Broiler chicken breeding companies don't sell cross bred chicks to broiler farmers. The breeding companies instead sell day old final cross chicks to hatching egg concerns who raise use these final cross chicks then use them to produce the hatching eggs needed to produce broiler house replacement chickens. I doubt that the biddies in question came from a broiler breeding company in the above example because they guard their blood lines like they are Fort Knox. Your chicks are likely of the fast growing commercial broiler kind and without a special diet their laying potential may be even more limited than what I 'laid' out above.

President Colledge was elected in 1924 on the slogan of "Two chickens in every pot and a car in every garage." In 1924 it took the American farm woman 6-12 months and $4 - $5 in today's dollars to produce just one pound of New York dressed chicken. Today young and tender fully dressed broilers can still be purchased for under $1 per pound. Meanwhile the same government that once promised us two chickens in every pot are working on policies to again put chicken as well as the fuel the middle class needs to get their cars out of the garage completely beyond the reach of middle class Americans.

 

[NaturesX]

Yes the pullets will lay eggs. And even though they are raised for meat if fed lay pellets their growth is slowed down. The reason some broilers get crippled is because their joints can not support the growth rate that some have with high protein food 24 hours a day. We have had several broiler pullets that we have raised and they do just fine.

 

[NaturesX]

Our broiler eggs are probably fertile so we stuck a few under a broody hen we have. Have you ever hatched any? I've read not for meat, but they are laying a pretty good amount of eggs..