I've been reading up on it but have never found out how to get started.
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So what should my parent stock be? A bro sis pair or non related pair?
So what should my parent stock be? A bro sis pair or non related pair?
Hi !I've been reading up on it but have never found out how to get started.
So what should my parent stock be? A bro sis pair or non related pair?
The other two repliers gave some good answers but generally if you want to begin linebreeding you should secure multiples from the same family, ideally, removing the worst individuals and keeping the best, because the less chooks you start with the more inbred they get, and faster too. Ideally you'd get two great parent birds, minimum, and breed multiple generations from those to work from, but it all depends on the desired outcome and so forth. You can also get multiple parent pairs/trios (with pairs it's easier to trace genetics exactly though) and work with that. You could start with multiple unrelated parent pairs and linebreed mixed lines, like many horse breeders do.
Those are generalizations though, some people are wizards at taking terrible stock like severely inbred and dilapidated stock and restoring them to greatness despite having to inbreed to maintain the genetics.
A bit of research on how rare breeds are maintained, restored, etc should help there, as well as any information on breeding out bad traits and breeding in good ones. Often the only solution with badly inbred stock is to cross other breeds back into them to reintroduce vigor etc, and then carefully breed from there to get the breed's appearance and production characteristics/other back as per standard.
Excessive inbreeding causes infertility in most cases or becomes terminal in other ways i.e. via severe deformities, lethal genes, etc.
Personally I would not start a breeding project as a beginner breeder with traits that are lethal or carry severe faults, so no ear-tuft genes, no very short legged genes, no frizzle genes, etc as those are all linked to some very serious and often fatal health issues.
Here is a site with a good store of info on genes... You should check all the links on the site if you're not already familiar with it, it's all good info:
[quote url="[URL]http://www.edelras.nl/chickengenetics/default.html[/URL]"]
http://www.edelras.nl/chickengenetics/default.html