SC - egg sizes

[RANDALL DIAMOND]

In a message dated 12/14/99 2:01:52 AM Eastern Standard Time,
stefan at texas.net writes:

<< I certainly think that if the chickens grew in size then the eggs would
also grow in size but you seem to be arguing for the opposite, >>

Various comments followed.

Among other projects in my chequered career, I have designed and built
both a major chicken farm and processing plant for Belcher Farms in
central Alabama.  You haven't lived until you are standing ankle deep
in chicken heads measuring an eviserating machine.  I also spent
a summer working in a slaughterhouse packing plant in Nashville,
Tennessee when I was a college student.  Shades of THE EGG AND I.
Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Leo Francowski gives a very good account of principles of animal breeding
concerning chickens in his medieval Science Fiction book THE CROSS-TIME
ENGINEER.  The size of the hen is not so important as the size of the egg
that she regularly lays.  By selecting hens for breeding which laid more
eggs or
larger eggs, the current standard of 1 large egg per day has been attained
and
surpassed in modern birds.   It is not the size of the bird, nor the breed
which
sets egg size, but the long selective process toward the size and frequency
of egg targeted by the breeder.  Bantams are still producers of small eggs
because they were not the main breeds selected for egg laying needs.
However,
I will venture that the number of eggs a Bantam hen lays per week is
significantly
more than Bantams 400 years ago.

Of course even with excellent breeding processes, we are not going to get
hens
laying ostrich eggs or square ones for better packaging either.  I don't
know
though, those gene designers have some funny ideas.

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain"

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