Phenotypic measurements of chicken egg character and production traits arerestricted to mature females only. Marker assisted selection of immaturechickens using quantitative trait loci (QTL) has the potential to accelerate thegenetic improvement of these traits in the chicken population. The QTL for 12traits (i.e. body weight (BW), six for egg character, three for egg shell colourand two for egg production) of chickens were identified. An F2 populationcomprising 265 female chickens obtained by crossing White Leghorn and RhodeIsland Red breeds and genotyped for 123 microsatellite markers was used fordetecting QTL. Ninety-six markers were mapped on 25 autosomal linkage groups,and 13 markers were mapped on one Z chromosomal linkage group. Eight previousunmapped markers were assigned to their respective chromosomes in this study.Significant QTL were detected for BW on chromosomes 4 and 27, egg weight onchromosome 4, the short length of egg on chromosome 4, and redness of egg shellcolour (using the L*a*b* colour system) on chromosome 11. A significant QTL onthe Z chromosome was linked with age at first egg. Significant QTL could accountfor 6-19% of the phenotypic variance in the F2 population.