CREATE YOUR OWN BREED OF CHICKEN

[keesmom]

Large fowl Cochins should be a good start. Even the hatchery ones we have are annoyingly broody and can cover a good number of eggs. They won't follow a predictable schedule though.

 

[CacklebrryHound]

How are wyandottes as far as brooding goes? I was thinking Jersey Giants but was kinda concerned about the heavier body contributing to breakage.

 

[Beer can]

How are wyandottes as far as brooding goes? I was thinking Jersey Giants but was kinda concerned about the heavier body contributing to breakage.

Two of my pure giant's went broody and never broke eggs. They didn't want to stop setting after the eggs hatched though, and ended up crushing a couple chicks so I took them away and added them to the one's I hatched out with a incubator. Every hen is different though and it was they're first time. I don't think I'll encourage them again, have the two giant/silkie crosses if I end up needing a broody. I was kicking one off the nest all winter so far, over a month maybe two before she gave up.

 

[CacklebrryHound]

Which other breeds make good broodys? We only had Road Island Reds, Plymouth Barred Rocks, and Cornish crosses when I was growing up. I always liked the first two, but the Cornish were disgusting birds. I'm finally starting my flock and I'm encountering breed choice overload right now. There are so many breeds that I want and the possibilities of crossing them are even more exciting. We never breed our chickens, if we needed more we ordered more and it always used to bug me. I'm really looking forward to running the show.

 

[Beer can]

Which other breeds make good broodys? We only had Road Island Reds, Plymouth Barred Rocks, and Cornish crosses when I was growing up. I always liked the first two, but the Cornish were disgusting birds. I'm finally starting my flock and I'm encountering breed choice overload right now. There are so many breeds that I want and the possibilities of crossing them are even more exciting. We never breed our chickens, if we needed more we ordered more and it always used to bug me. I'm really looking forward to running the show.

Welcome to "chicken math" Lol! Sounds like your encountering the same I did. Grew up with RIR, real one's not today's hatchery birds, they always hatched their own. Only breed I knew of besides barred rocks. Dad also acquired one time a japanese black bantam that probably hatched out a majority of his birds for many yrs. I'll never forget the time she hatched out a large clutch of RIR and dad threw them in with another fresh hatch mama red, and then put turkey eggs under her and she hatched them out too. Super funny watching them turkey poults twice her size following mamma banty around learning how to free range Lol!
Fast forward to my own bought fifteen 'RIR' from our local feed mill, was definitely hatchery production reds, laid non-stop for over a yr and then took turns molting so had way too many eggs but that's better than too few. Second yr not bad, third not worth having. Had bought a rooster also from a local farm so eggs were fertile. Had one go broody and set. Month later (keep in mind this was pre-BYC days, pre-internet for us actually anyway Lol) I checked the eggs, first one I cracked exploded like a bomb!, actually hurt like a firecracker between the fingers, all were rotten. Had a chicken guy at work tell me, they might set but they will not do it right, lost the instinct.
You say "breed choice overload" yup, encountered that about five yrs ago when I started looking for 'something else' and saw how many breeds were out there, and discovered BYC. WOW! so many choices. Went with hatchery mix batch of different colored egg layers and such. Really wish I had got focused early on on what I wanted to do, wasted time IMHO. Takes time to grow them out. Then you decide to breed and realize those hatchery birds are not so good. There is so many here on BYC that have awesome stock and also some breeders, websites that also have good quality birds. Really love the white jersey giants I have now and will likely keep a line going of them. Newest addition, never wanted the ugly things before but now am super excited on them and they are awesome, naked necks. Have two groups of them right now, culled down to small groups, one colored and one white birds. Plan on adding some (I don't like them either) cornishX to the white naked necks and start some crosses for sustainable broiler birds.
You should check out the https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/845018/breeding-for-production-eggs-and-or-meat
thread, skip to the end to say 'hello' and then read, lots of crossing breeds for better performance info there.

 

[CacklebrryHound]

Welcome to "chicken math" Lol! Sounds like your encountering the same I did. Grew up with RIR, real one's not today's hatchery birds, they always hatched their own. Only breed I knew of besides barred rocks. Dad also acquired one time a japanese black bantam that probably hatched out a majority of his birds for many yrs. I'll never forget the time she hatched out a large clutch of RIR and dad threw them in with another fresh hatch mama red, and then put turkey eggs under her and she hatched them out too. Super funny watching them turkey poults twice her size following mamma banty around learning how to free range Lol!
Fast forward to my own bought fifteen 'RIR' from our local feed mill, was definitely hatchery production reds, laid non-stop for over a yr and then took turns molting so had way too many eggs but that's better than too few. Second yr not bad, third not worth having. Had bought a rooster also from a local farm so eggs were fertile. Had one go broody and set. Month later (keep in mind this was pre-BYC days, pre-internet for us actually anyway Lol) I checked the eggs, first one I cracked exploded like a bomb!, actually hurt like a firecracker between the fingers, all were rotten. Had a chicken guy at work tell me, they might set but they will not do it right, lost the instinct.
You say "breed choice overload" yup, encountered that about five yrs ago when I started looking for 'something else' and saw how many breeds were out there, and discovered BYC. WOW! so many choices. Went with hatchery mix batch of different colored egg layers and such. Really wish I had got focused early on on what I wanted to do, wasted time IMHO. Takes time to grow them out. Then you decide to breed and realize those hatchery birds are not so good. There is so many here on BYC that have awesome stock and also some breeders, websites that also have good quality birds. Really love the white jersey giants I have now and will likely keep a line going of them. Newest addition, never wanted the ugly things before but now am super excited on them and they are awesome, naked necks. Have two groups of them right now, culled down to small groups, one colored and one white birds. Plan on adding some (I don't like them either) cornishX to the white naked necks and start some crosses for sustainable broiler birds.
You should check out the https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/845018/breeding-for-production-eggs-and-or-meat 
thread, skip to the end to say 'hello' and then read, lots of crossing breeds for better performance  info there.

.
Lol yes on the chicken math, it's bitten me hard. luckily I have some people that are good at reigning me in, but I'm stubborn. I'm still getting all the breeds I want but I'm going to get them in two to three batches. This year I'm getting 8 white silkies, 3 Easter egger bantams, & 2 silver &2 gold sebrights from purely poultry this spring. I'm thinking about swapping out the EEs in favor of more of the other three. I my goal is to end up with 4-5 hens and 1-2 roos out of the silkies, and I'm going to keep any of the sebrights that aren't mean to either me or the silkies. Next year I want to get my full sized birds. Black Copper Maran, Amerucaunas (I'm pretty sure I spelled that wrong) GL Wyandottes, BLR Wyandottes, Crevours (and again with the spelling), and now Cochins are on my list. So many things I want to do! If things work out correctly I've been thinking about breeding the BC Marans, Amerucaunas, and Crevours to the SOP and start my own hatchery but the focus will be on quality over quantity. There are no breeders that keep these breeds anywhere near my area that I know of and with how popular the first two breeds are I might be able to help fill that nich market. Plus I can use some of the "better" culls in my cross breeding experiments.

 

[Violetsfeathers]

I have managed the chicken math pretty well I think. In 2011 we got our first chicks from Murray McMurray 10 females and an extra breed that we knew would probably turn out a boy. When we got home and counted we had twelve chicks, they had given us two extras!
2013 we got six bantams and gave three away and some of the original batch had died off.
2015 we had three from original batch (then one died) and the three bantams. I got a Cochin hen from a friend and we ordered 15 chicks from mypetchicken. We kept five of those. So we had about eleven chickens.
2016 my Cochin hen from a friend hatched out four chicks and we ordered 15 chicks from Purely poultry (30 chickens total) we sold some chicks and chickens and now I have 15 chickens.
2017- this year I hope to hatch my own chicks and end up with 20 chickens at the end of the year. I still have two from the original flock and they are almost six years old.

So from 2011- 2016 I've gone from 12 to 15 chickens. Not bad, but I'd have a lot more if it weren't for my parents

 

[CacklebrryHound]

Yeah, my stepmother is good at reigning me in. My dad tries to keep me humble, but it is backfireing this time. He jokingly picks on me about "those dumb birds", but I got him pretty good the other day. My stepmother went to make supper and realized that we were out of eggs. My dad starts mildly grumbling about making a store run, to which I respoded with,"you see? This time next year we won't be having these issues." He only had two words for me, and they weren't merry Christmas. Lol priceless

 

[chickengr]

I wanted 5-6 chickens and ended up with almost 50 + 3 muscovy ducks (had 14).

I want to breed marans and create naked necks who will lay green and red eggs I use marans and rumpless araucana boys for that. hope to get some NN olive eggers some time in the future.

 

[Aziara]

There are 2 I'd love to see, and I'd probably work on if I had the room:

A silkie with millie fleur pattern. Unfortunately, both silkie feathers and the millie fleur pattern are recessive (from what I can tell from the chicken color calculator), so I wouldn't have any speckled silkie-feathered chicks until 3rd or even 4th generation (and that's if I got lucky). Then crossing back to get silkie 'type' again... crossing to get the pattern back...It would be a long project, with a lot of silkie/d'uccle crosses that wouldn't fit what I'm looking for but I wouldn't have the heart to cull (and I don't know that anyone would want to buy)... I think I would end up with a million chickens if I tried this.

A crele (autosexing) silkie would be amazing as well. I believe that would take 3-4 generations of specific crossing of partridge to cuckoo, if the autosexing chart is correct. (of course, some of those F3 roosters aren't going to be throwing all crele...it would take breeding them to find out which is which)

Can you tell I like silkies??