Old Fashioned Broody Hen Hatch A Long and Informational Thread

[Lady of McCamley]

Good thoughts, Sydney. Obviously, if the parents (and in sex links you have no idea what they are) are complete opposites, you could end up with heaven only knows what. I find it interesting to see what I get, but like I said, I don't keep them. Of course, I don't have any sex links left now, so the issue is moot for me. The whole reason that I hatched them was simple curiosity. Some things I did notice (I usually gave them away at 6 weeks old)....they were the biggest chicks, they feathered out very quickly, they were the leaders in the chick brigade, and all of the ones that I hatched were cockerels (probably a coincidence but 6/6?). Anyway, good post!

I think Sydney gave an excellent description of the genetic theory, I just wanted to chime in that I had hybrids/hybrids (mixed Leghorn over RSL) and also got really fast maturing and hardy chicks...mine amazingly were all hens, so it is just the luck of the draw...if we kept doing this it would even out 50/50.

I think the key to breeding hybrids to obtain vigor vs. disaster is removing the factor of inbreeding. That is the problem for both purebreeds and closed "mutt" societies...if you get too many breedings back within the group, problems crop up.

But I enjoy the diversity of my mutts, and they are hardy...they add some of those genes that get lost along the way with too much selective breeding...it is sort of like starting at ground zero again.

If you want to keep at it, you could become a "Nettie Metcalf" and develop a breed like the Buckeyes...I love reading about her and the story of how she bred for the Buckeyes...talk about hybrid vigor and oddities! ...until she got the fine Buckeye and everyone stopped laughing then...(Really good read...see link below)

Quoted from Nettie's memoirs:
I penned up two pairs in these small enclosures. Had I to do this over again, I would have started with one pair, but I was afraid of in-breeding in those days, so I doubled my troubles by starting with two pairs, thus getting the defects of four progenitors instead of two.
My! What a flock I raised that year! No wonder my friends laughed! Green legs and feathered legs, buff chicks, black chicks and even red-and-black barred chicks; single combs and pea combs, and no combs at all, but fighters from way back.

http://www.americanbuckeyeclub.org/About_Us.html

 

[OHfarmerswife]

You can try, especially if the hens are familiar and friendly, but be ready to intervene and have a plan in place to quickly separate them (Just a simple wood frame with wire fencing will work, just make sure the mesh is small enough that chicks can't get through it)
Some hens will tolerate other hens around, some absolutely won't, and there isn't too much that gets uglier than an all out hen fight... and baby chicks can get injured in the scuffle.  If the hens are placed close to each other while brooding your odds are a bit better... but just approach the introduction with extreme caution!   And have a box or small cage handy to use as a safe place to quickly place babies if something happens. 

Thanks fisherlady.....I think I am going to give it a try.
I will have an alternate set up.
Appreciate the advice

 

[bumpercarr]

They were all cockerels?? That's quite a coincidence. Where all the eggs from the same hen? Maybe she only throws males, but it is a feature of that individual hen and not typical of the breed. Were both parents sex link hybrids? Which hybrid were they? If it was a common hybrid, it's easy to look up what two different purebreds were used to create the hybrid. Perhaps there's some weird thing in their genome where the F2 generation has a lethal gene on the Y chromosome (in birds, females are XY and males are XX, which is the opposite of mammals, so in birds only females have a Y chromosome).

I thought it was weird as well to get all males, but I had a good hatch rate (75%), so if the females all died from some fatal chromosome, I'd have expected about a 50% hatch rate. It was just an experiment for me, so I only set out 8 eggs, 4 in two different hatches. All from the same female/male combination. Female, golden comet, male cuckoo marans. What I was really trying to see was if the egg color would pass from the cock bird to the chicks, I doubted it, but thought I'd give it a try. I knew pretty quickly that I only had cockerels, so the experiment was a failure. Anyway, possibly if I'd had more eggs to set I would have eventually gotten some pullets, I just really wasn't interested after I couldn't get what I was looking for. So, I moved on. I only have brahma chicks left after the coop attack.

 

[bumpercarr]

I think Sydney gave an excellent description of the genetic theory, I just wanted to chime in that I had hybrids/hybrids (mixed Leghorn over RSL) and also got really fast maturing and hardy chicks...mine amazingly were all hens, so it is just the luck of the draw...if we kept doing this it would even out 50/50.

I think the key to breeding hybrids to obtain vigor vs. disaster is removing the factor of inbreeding. That is the problem for both purebreeds and closed "mutt" societies...if you get too many breedings back within the group, problems crop up.

But I enjoy the diversity of my mutts, and they are hardy...they add some of those genes that get lost along the way with too much selective breeding...it is sort of like starting at ground zero again.

If you want to keep at it, you could become a "Nettie Metcalf" and develop a breed like the Buckeyes...I love reading about her and the story of how she bred for the Buckeyes...talk about hybrid vigor and oddities! ...until she got the fine Buckeye and everyone stopped laughing then...(Really good read...see link below)

Quoted from Nettie's memoirs:
I penned up two pairs in these small enclosures. Had I to do this over again, I would have started with one pair, but I was afraid of in-breeding in those days, so I doubled my troubles by starting with two pairs, thus getting the defects of four progenitors instead of two.
My! What a flock I raised that year! No wonder my friends laughed! Green legs and feathered legs, buff chicks, black chicks and even red-and-black barred chicks; single combs and pea combs, and no combs at all, but fighters from way back.

http://www.americanbuckeyeclub.org/About_Us.html

Wow. That was a good read. Thanks for posting it!

 

[Peach Mom]

The reason you don't want to breed the hybrids isn't so much negative traits, it's unpredictable traits, which to many people is negative. The main difference between breeding purebreds and breeding hybrids is predictability. If you have a well-managed flock of purebreds that you've properly selected for specific traits for generations, chances are the chicks are all going to have the same characteristics as their parents, because you've already eliminated all the variables that you don't want in their genetic line. On the other hand, if you breed hybrids, which are a mix of two purebreds, then anything can happen because the genes will be mixed in an unpredictable fashion. The original two purebred parents will create a predictable hybrid offspring (the Sex Linked Red for example), which is the F1 generation. But when you cross two F1s together you get some degree of unpredictability in their offspring (F2 generation), and when you cross two F2s together it's basically a genetic free-for-all.

Now that doesn't mean that the chicks will be horrible. They'll just be unpredictable. You may get some fabulous birds, or some really undesirable birds. Just like with any mixed breed dog of unknown parentage for several generations, there's the potential for hybrid vigor, or disaster. If you like predictability, you shouldn't breed hybrids (F1s). If you like surprises, then see what happens, as long as you're comfortable culling.

Sydney Acres, thanks for the fantastic reply! This makes a lot of sense. Interestingly, I am sitting next to two total mixed stray dogs I adopted. I have found that often the sum is greater than its parts, as is the case with my pups. I doubt I would have ever picked any one of the breeds that went into these two, but just adore them. Hopefully it will go as well with the chicks. I can not tolerate mean roosters, and thought I really do not have what it takes to cull on my own at this point, I live in farm country. I have already spoken to one family that is all too happy to take a pasture raised roo or two for the table (and do the deed) should the need arise;-) I will keep you all posted on the outcome of my little experiment.

 

[Peach Mom]

I think Sydney gave an excellent description of the genetic theory, I just wanted to chime in that I had hybrids/hybrids (mixed Leghorn over RSL) and also got really fast maturing and hardy chicks...mine amazingly were all hens, so it is just the luck of the draw...if we kept doing this it would even out 50/50.

I think the key to breeding hybrids to obtain vigor vs. disaster is removing the factor of inbreeding. That is the problem for both purebreeds and closed "mutt" societies...if you get too many breedings back within the group, problems crop up.

But I enjoy the diversity of my mutts, and they are hardy...they add some of those genes that get lost along the way with too much selective breeding...it is sort of like starting at ground zero again.

If you want to keep at it, you could become a "Nettie Metcalf" and develop a breed like the Buckeyes...I love reading about her and the story of how she bred for the Buckeyes...talk about hybrid vigor and oddities! ...until she got the fine Buckeye and everyone stopped laughing then...(Really good read...see link below)

Quoted from Nettie's memoirs:
I penned up two pairs in these small enclosures. Had I to do this over again, I would have started with one pair, but I was afraid of in-breeding in those days, so I doubled my troubles by starting with two pairs, thus getting the defects of four progenitors instead of two.
My! What a flock I raised that year! No wonder my friends laughed! Green legs and feathered legs, buff chicks, black chicks and even red-and-black barred chicks; single combs and pea combs, and no combs at all, but fighters from way back.

http://www.americanbuckeyeclub.org/About_Us.html

Great post!!! You hit on a lot of my thoughts! In my closed little flock of French Black Copper Marans I was worried about the in breeding. The Marans came with the house and had been bred here year after year under broodies, so I fear that gene pool got pretty small. Again, back to the dog breeding thoughts, I had a Golden Retriever that was the angel of the whole family. She was Everything a golden should be with regard to looks and personality, but had SO many in bred health problems. She was loved and spoiled every day of her life, but I hated all she had to deal with.

When I went about setting eggs I probably should have been more of a scientist/farmer in my genetic selection, now that I look back. I was simply thinking, I like your eggs (Marans) and your personalities and lay rate (Red Sex Links and White Rocks), and I feel the need to mix in some fresh DNA. Lets see what happens. Oh well, time will tell right? I do not have to breed the offspring and if I get some sweet, healthy hens out of it I could care less what they look like.

 

[Sydney Acres]

Quote: Being familiar with pedigree breeding in dogs and cats and horses, and the dangers of inbreeding, I originally set out to find very different genetic lines of Red Dorkings when I decided that I would like to raise that breed. But the breed is rare, and the quality of the bird that exists in this country is far below the Standard of Perfection (SOP) description of what the breed should be. As I looked further into breeding chickens I found that most people that actively breed purebred chickens, with the goal of attaining birds that meet the SOP (which of course, you never truly reach perfection, but try to come as close as possible) rarely bring new bloodlines into their stock. That totally shocked me, because it is completely the opposite of what is done in mammals. They do rotational breeding within the same line, which minimizes or eliminates the problems with inbreeding in birds. Apparently birds aren't as affected by inbreeding as mammals, which makes no sense to me on a genetic basis, but that's what the professional (i.e., successful) breeders say in the numerous articles I've read. The only explanation I can think of is that they're not seeing the problems with inbreeding only because they're highly managing their genetics with rotational breeding and good recordkeeping, instead of line-breeding or random breeding. Plus, to be successful, they need to hatch large numbers of chicks and cull aggressively, so in all likelihood they're getting more inbreeding problems than they realize, they're just culling them out early. Or perhaps they do realize they're getting inbreeding issues, but don't care because they're just culling those and keeping the ones that aren't obviously affected. There are some breeders out there that have show-winning birds, that are also full-on egg and meat utility birds (so not just pretty for the shows), that claim to have not added new blood to their line for over a hundred years (obviously, the flock has been passed down through the family). So if the claims are true, it's hard to argue with that type of success. Oh, so much to learn, so little time!!!

 

[Sydney Acres]

Quote: Wasn't Nettie just an amazing woman? She had an independent, defiant, and self-sufficient intelligence long before it was socially acceptable for women to act that way. Just love reading her memoirs and breeder notes. And the breed she created is FANTASTIC!!! Highly recommended if there's anyone out there who is thinking of a new breed but hasn't decided on which one. I only have one pullet (ordered 10, but the hatchery was short that week) but she's amazing. Quite different than other breeds. She's the total package of sweet bird, big enough to be a meat bird but not so big as to have heart or leg issues, very productive egg layer, and works her butt off foraging every minute she's outside. And no large comb or waddles, plus excellent tight plumage, so very cold tolerant. She's not gone broody yet, but I'm in northern WA so none of my birds have started brooding yet except the Dorkings, which are more fall/winter/spring layers than spring/summer/fall layers. And she's only hatchery-quality. I can only imagine how wonderful a true breeder-quality bird would be.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Being familiar with pedigree breeding in dogs and cats and horses, and the dangers of inbreeding, I originally set out to find very different genetic lines of Red Dorkings when I decided that I would like to raise that breed. But the breed is rare, and the quality of the bird that exists in this country is far below the Standard of Perfection (SOP) description of what the breed should be. As I looked further into breeding chickens I found that most people that actively breed purebred chickens, with the goal of attaining birds that meet the SOP (which of course, you never truly reach perfection, but try to come as close as possible) rarely bring new bloodlines into their stock. That totally shocked me, because it is completely the opposite of what is done in mammals. They do rotational breeding within the same line, which minimizes or eliminates the problems with inbreeding in birds. Apparently birds aren't as affected by inbreeding as mammals, which makes no sense to me on a genetic basis, but that's what the professional (i.e., successful) breeders say in the numerous articles I've read. The only explanation I can think of is that they're not seeing the problems with inbreeding only because they're highly managing their genetics with rotational breeding and good recordkeeping, instead of line-breeding or random breeding. Plus, to be successful, they need to hatch large numbers of chicks and cull aggressively, so in all likelihood they're getting more inbreeding problems than they realize, they're just culling them out early. Or perhaps they do realize they're getting inbreeding issues, but don't care because they're just culling those and keeping the ones that aren't obviously affected. There are some breeders out there that have show-winning birds, that are also full-on egg and meat utility birds (so not just pretty for the shows), that claim to have not added new blood to their line for over a hundred years (obviously, the flock has been passed down through the family). So if the claims are true, it's hard to argue with that type of success. Oh, so much to learn, so little time!!!

I find that really interesting about birds...and plausible...yes I come from a mammal breeding background so my bird genetics is limited...I wonder what the "big boys" do for commercial lines? They go through a lot of birds and a lot of generations.

I know in Rhodebars, since their genetic pool is so small being an endangered breed, to increase egg production it is recommended to breed a solid Rhodebar roo to a good productive RIR hen, then take that offspring and breed back to the roo in order to get a second generation of Rhodebars that breed true, autosex and have improved egg production.

Genetics is always more complicated than one first imagines, and I am at the beginning stages of getting my head wrapped around it....Nettie recognized she had created more troubles in her birds by selecting 2 pairs of the red generation rather than one...and I too wondered if the automatic culling that is done almost nonchalantly by bird breeders simply steps around the obvious in-breeding risks. But I do hear of breeders selecting other lines and shuffling lines to keep their flocks healthy.

All interesting stuff indeed.

Lady of McCamley

 

[TeaChick]

Well I decided to get a little day old Easter egger to give to my broody Poe... I just felt bad that she had been sitting on ceramic eggs for 4 weeks and didn't have a chick to show for it. I decided to keep the rest of the babies in a brooder this time, since I wasn't sure of her mothering capabilities. So far she has done wonderful with the little girl, she didn't bat a lash when I swapped out her eggs for the little chick <3

I would suggest you enter this pic in the Cutest Chick contest, but then I'd lose, so.....

Well... all is good with Rumples are the Littles. The 2 additions have grafted well with her and the other chicks. Today DH and I made a temporary broody pen and put them in. It was so much easier than I thought it would be. I only got bitten once.

Glad things went so well!!!

I'm so glad the grafting went well...whew...all that worrying for nothing...you never know with birds. (The darling little bird beaks).

Lady of McCamley

This is what I keep trying to impress upon my children!!!