What are the rarest breeds of poultry? How many are there? And how can we save them?

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

All breeds were mutts at some point, and the notion of keeping the mutts we now call breeds pure to themselves for centuries with no outcrossing is a relatively new concept in animal breeding that hasn’t yet passed the test of time. In fact, every time we see animals both wild and domestic forced to remain pure to tight lines for more than a few decades, bad things happen.

The bulldog is an excellent example. They evolved a lot between the Renaissance and the end of the 1700s, starting out like a large mastiff and ending up small but healthy and tough by the early 1800s. We know from records they were outcrossed at various times to other breeds, constantly changing some traits but keeping them healthy.

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By the mid and late 1800s they were bred pure to themselves for many decades and for a long time they were athletic and healthy.

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Then they got too inbred and unhealthy, with breeders being unwilling to add new blood into the second century of keeping them “pure.”

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Ok but breeds literally would not exist without inbreeding and line breeding. If you're not getting consistency, which only happens from narrowing the gene pool to the point that they "breed true" it simply isn't a breed. Wild animals do this too. Many species including feral chickens breed copiously within tight family groups until there's a loss of vigor or they run over the proverbial genetic cliff on some defect or another or outside blood takes advantage of the fact that the male (usually) is weak and can be usurped.

Good breeding of purebred stock just mimics this, except if you're good you make sure you never even come close to the genetic bottleneck from where there is no return.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Ok but breeds literally would not exist without inbreeding and line breeding. If you're not getting consistency, which only happens from narrowing the gene pool to the point that they "breed true" it simply isn't a breed. Wild animals do this too. Many species including feral chickens breed copiously within tight family groups until there's a loss of vigor or they run over the proverbial genetic cliff on some defect or another or outside blood takes advantage of the fact that the male (usually) is weak and can be usurped.

Good breeding of purebred stock just mimics this, except if you're good you make sure you never even come close to the genetic bottleneck from where there is no return.

I completely agree that inbreeding and line breeding are necessary tools to create and maintain a breed. I am only decrying the notion that breeds don’t need outcrossing to other breeds within the same species every so often. Failure to outcross every several years, or even every several decades, begins to warp a pure breed and it ends up substantially different than what it was.

A breed of animal is like a sculpture made of silly puddy. Its constantly wanting to lose its form and collapse on itself. The sculptor (ie breeder) has to keep reshaping the puddy to make it match the desired form. Inbreeding is an important part of that shaping. But so is freshening up the genetics from an outside source.

Going back to bulldogs as an example (because they’re a family of dogs I know a lot about), there is a famous breeder named David Leavitt who started to improve upon English bulldogs in the 1970s by outcrossing English bulldogs to similar breeds that were previously created from the extinct Old English bulldogs from the 1700s and early 1800s, such as bull mastiffs and American bulldogs. He then tightly line bred them and normalized the more healthy, atheltic traits that bulldogs used to have. They’re now their own breed of bulldog. However, every several years, Mr. Leavitt selects a fine specimen of an outside bulldog breed such as American bulldog and mandates that dog be bred to all of his Leavitt bulldog lines to freshen them up so that they stay functional and healthy. This is what dog breeders commonly did 200 years ago before the modern dog show era when dogs were still more functional than showy. By following this method, he’s protecting his breed from genetic drift. Its ironic that by outcrossing, he’s doing more to keep the breed traits locked in than by keeping the dogs pure to themselves for decades.

I suspect the oriental gamefowl varieties would have some very different traits if they were outcrossed more often and then line bred back to themselves, not just because the outside birds are adding something new, but because many of the defining oriental traits such as patchy feathers or non functional wings are actually defects from constant inbreeding, not mere selected traits.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I can think of another way to put it relating to rare breeds and balancing inbreeding vs outcrossing; preservation and improvement of a breed should have an end goal of being able to spam thousands upon thousands of descendants that meet the positive traits of the breed so that the breed can be distributed world-wide. Improving individuals through careful line-breeding and massive culling is a primary tool to do this. But there should be a point where the line-bred individuals, brought to an ideal state, should stop spawning mostly culls and instead start making mostly keepers. If line-breeding is doing nothing but making good individuals once in a while and large amounts of culls most of the time over the course of many years, that breeding program is heading towards a dead end.

And that may be where the show system hurts us. Showing encourages the creation of [superficially] fine individuals, but does it allow for those fine individuals to spam themselves on mass for the benefit of the breed (which is what showing was originally intended for), or does it instead encourage a never ending cycle of inbreeding to make one show quality individual at the expense of every 100 or 1,000 produced?

It seems to me that the end goal of selective breeding should be to find a set of individuals that constantly produce good specimens of the breed on mass, and an inability for show-quality specimens to be actual productive members of the race through making many healthy offspring is a failure. Thoughts?

 

[LTAY1946]

No hurry at all but I would definitely be curious to check that out

I'm on my old computer now and Sandhill is the place I have book marked for White Minorcas. I had one other but tossed it when you had to pay and no shipping date would be confirmed. They just wanted to ship at their convenience.

 

[Amer]

I completely agree that inbreeding and line breeding are necessary tools to create and maintain a breed. I am only decrying the notion that breeds don’t need outcrossing to other breeds within the same species every so often. Failure to outcross every several years, or even every several decades, begins to warp a pure breed and it ends up substantially different than what it was.

A breed of animal is like a sculpture made of silly puddy. Its constantly wanting to lose its form and collapse on itself. The sculptor (ie breeder) has to keep reshaping the puddy to make it match the desired form. Inbreeding is an important part of that shaping. But so is freshening up the genetics from an outside source.

Going back to bulldogs as an example (because they’re a family of dogs I know a lot about), there is a famous breeder named David Leavitt who started to improve upon English bulldogs in the 1970s by outcrossing English bulldogs to similar breeds that were previously created from the extinct Old English bulldogs from the 1700s and early 1800s, such as bull mastiffs and American bulldogs. He then tightly line bred them and normalized the more healthy, atheltic traits that bulldogs used to have. They’re now their own breed of bulldog. However, every several years, Mr. Leavitt selects a fine specimen of an outside bulldog breed such as American bulldog and mandates that dog be bred to all of his Leavitt bulldog lines to freshen them up so that they stay functional and healthy. This is what dog breeders commonly did 200 years ago before the modern dog show era when dogs were still more functional than showy. By following this method, he’s protecting his breed from genetic drift. Its ironic that by outcrossing, he’s doing more to keep the breed traits locked in than by keeping the dogs pure to themselves for decades.

I suspect the oriental gamefowl varieties would have some very different traits if they were outcrossed more often and then line bred back to themselves, not just because the outside birds are adding something new, but because many of the defining oriental traits such as patchy feathers or non functional wings are actually defects from constant inbreeding, not mere selected traits.

People think I’m nuts using Dominiques to introduce silver into my d’Anvers project.
I guess I am though, the cuckoo d’Anvers hen hasn’t laid an egg since I got her. Worthless. Cute though.

I had to outcross my quail d’Anvers because my male was producing low fertility, crossbeak, early chick death, ect. So far, I’m still seeing instances of cross beak, so it hasn’t helped with that. Actually, inbreeding breeds out issues like crossbeak and crooked beak.

Kristen Garrison said
“And in the beginning my flock of d'Anvers did suffer from a higher incidence of crooked and scissor beaks than my other breeds. Interestingly enough - scissor beaks and cross beaks were more common in my chicks from out crosses, rather than the more strictly linebred birds. This suggests that lines will develop genetic profiles that confer genetic immunity to cross or scissor beak if consistently selected against it over time - but if you are constantly introducing new blood, it can disrupt those profiles on both sides and actually cause a higher incidence of scissor beak (this is counter to the idea that scissor beak is more likely with highly inbred birds). In truth, either is possible. Just know that scissor beak is not necessarily a sign of inbreeding, especially in rose combed breeds where the gene for the rose comb interferes with skull development unless counteractive genes for a protective genetic profile have been selected for.”

So it looks like to get undeformed skulls despite the shortened skull of a rosecombed breed, I have to select for birds that have “good skull” genetics.
Also, I feel like I’m falling into a bottleneck already. D’Anvers are highly seasonal in laying and fertility and the females begin laying again long before the males are fertile again.
After only blank eggs with the new cock, Fireball (that I had hatched some chicks from that fall, just fine) and the hens, I decided to put his son in instead, who was just beginning to feel his oats.
He did a fine job fertilizing eggs, but I’m worried. Will I only ever be using cockerels to breed from?
I’m worried I will shorten the longevity cock fertility even more if I only use cockerels, but to hatch chicks in early spring, it seems like cockerels just coming into sexual maturity are my only option.
I stuck Fireball with the cockerel’s sister and waited until her eggs were big enough to collect. I really need to mark them to see if Fireball is doing his job.

I'm on my old computer now and Sandhill is the place I have book marked for White Minorcas. I had one other but tossed it when you had to pay and no shipping date would be confirmed. They just wanted to ship at their convenience.

Sandhill is kinda bogus.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063472093461&mibextid=LQQJ4d
Tinsley and Harp are really putting the work into white Minorcas. Since they used blacks to improve them, color needs work, but nice birds.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

I can think of another way to put it relating to rare breeds and balancing inbreeding vs outcrossing; preservation and improvement of a breed should have an end goal of being able to spam thousands upon thousands of descendants that meet the positive traits of the breed so that the breed can be distributed world-wide. Improving individuals through careful line-breeding and massive culling is a primary tool to do this. But there should be a point where the line-bred individuals, brought to an ideal state, should stop spawning mostly culls and instead start making mostly keepers. If line-breeding is doing nothing but making good individuals once in a while and large amounts of culls most of the time over the course of many years, that breeding program is heading towards a dead end.

And that may be where the show system hurts us. Showing encourages the creation of [superficially] fine individuals, but does it allow for those fine individuals to spam themselves on mass for the benefit of the breed (which is what showing was originally intended for), or does it instead encourage a never ending cycle of inbreeding to make one show quality individual at the expense of every 100 or 1,000 produced?

It seems to me that the end goal of selective breeding should be to find a set of individuals that constantly produce good specimens of the breed on mass, and an inability for show-quality specimens to be actual productive members of the race through making many healthy offspring is a failure. Thoughts?

I'm glad you brought this up. Your entire argument using the bulldog as example has ignored the omnipresent influence of the show ring and fad breeding and popular sires etc. These are problems, but they are NOT intrinsic to linebreeding or closed breeding groups. It's also worth mentioning that chickens are known to have genomes that are much more resilient to inbreeding than canines and other larger mammals.

Evidence is abundant that with careful maintenance a line can be maintained for decades without outside influence. If there were more instances of bloodlines being treasured and passed from generation to generation, I think we'd see that the possibilities were endless within a closed flock of reasonable size with careful management. Is it a good idea to set up others with breeding stock so you have backup if you get wiped out or hit a bottleneck? HECK YES. But outcrossing to a flock that's several years removed from your own is generally as effective as outcrossing to another breed entirely. No need to start from scratch in most cases.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

This re-post also seems pertinent. I don't know if Kerby is on BYC, but this was a great post on FB that's worth sharing:

Great post from Kerby Jackson.

Outcrossing Bloodlines -

There is really PRECISELY ZERO advantage to mixing lines unless one line can benefit from the genetic contribution of the other line to overcome something that particular line may be lacking.

Many people believe that crossing lines instantly results in hybrid vigor, but in truth, true heterosis or hybrid vigor as it is more commonly known by lay people, is in no way an automatic and it only takes place as a result of a so-called dominance model. This dominance model is generally believed to be a result of a complementation of deleterious recessive alleles that occupy the same loci, a phenomenon which is not only still not well understand, but is in fact, quite rare. More often, what takes place is what has often been termed a "genome clash" which results in completely unexpected and unpredictable phenotypes as a result of genetic incompatibility between traits which are not alleles. That's the common general theory on this subject, at least.

Outbreeding Depression is a common side effect of genome clashing, though it tends to result more from two different extremes being mated together. One example of Outbreeding Depression occurs when a line adapted to a cold climate is mated to a line adapted to a hot climate and the resulting offspring are not suited for either type of climate. Even where true heterosis exists (a situation where the F1 types are so substantially superior to both parental types that it can be scientifically measured), when the hybrids are mated together, the resulting F2 generation tends to revert back to one or both ancestral types due to homozygosity. In this manner, the gains made from those rare cases of heterosis are lost in the majority, if not all of the F2 generation.

As a working example, when Gregor Mendel made his famous dihybrid cross-breeding experiment between round yellow peas and wrinkled green peas, the resulting F1 generation were all round yellow peas. However, the breeding results of his second generation (F2) resulted in four different phenotypes and nine different genotypes. This is the standard outcome involving only two pairs of alleles. When we consider that we are working with a much greater number of sought after traits in a flock of poultry, it is easy to understand that the resulting F2 generation of any cross involving poultry can literally result in dozens of basic phenotypes and HUNDREDS of different genotypes even if we work from the standpoint of simple Mendelian type genes.

Nobody has ever really become successful breeding any animal to standard by haphazardly outcrossing one generation after the next simply because the outcome suffers from excessive variation. And IF you do find someone who claims that it works for them, generally speaking their measure of "success" is quite low. In exhibition breeds, this type of "success" generally involves a breed or variety where the owner has no genuine competition and is competing against themselves or against a few hatchery bred birds down at the county fair every year. This type of variation is perfectly acceptable if you just want a bunch of chickens in your backyard, but it's a completely different matter if you have some actual goals intended for those chickens.

Outcrossing can be a very powerful breeding tool to improve a breed, variety or an individual line, but only when it's used properly. In general, it is used properly to add traits that don't exist in a line by making a judicious outcross and then selecting the F1 offspring that possess the trait we seek to add to our line and then back-crossing those offspring back to the parental line that we desire to add the trait to, resulting in a BC1 generation that hopefully possesses the desired added trait. That process is then repeated with the BC1 generation mated back again to the line that we are working with and so on. In the end, we wind up with birds that possess the same desirable genetics as our main line (simply because they mostly are of that line), but with the added addition of the desired trait we added from the other line. This is most commonly done to add new color varieties or different comb types to existing breeds, but it can be done just the same to add traits like wider girth, more depth of keel, longer backs, more size or what have you that you feel your line might lack. These types of genetic additions are best done only one or two traits at a time. Attempting to do more than that at a single time is extremely challenging and might take a lifetime to achieve. Here at my place, I have a little breeding project that involves combining together eight different genetic traits that originated from crossing four different genepools (breeds, in this case). I originally predicted that it might have been achievable inside five years, but after seven years into the project it still sometimes feels like it has not progressed much beyond where I expected it to be in three years. To the best of my knowledge, the genetic combination of structural features I am seeking to create in a single genepool has never been historically created and now I am starting to understand why it doesn't exist yet! To put it simply, adding too many traits into the genetic puzzle at one time severely complicates what you often think should be a pretty straight forward process.

The best advice I can give you, if you are just starting out breeding, is to set some breeding goals and to then obtain birds from a source that comes closest to meeting your goals. After you breed them awhile, you will figure out their strengths and weaknesses. All lines possess faults and have room to be improved upon. Once you figure out what needs improvement, you will need to figure out the best way to make that improvement. That improvement may be possible inside the line itself simply by building strictly on the handful of birds that best suit your goals, or you may need to get those desired traits to improve them from another line. Until you get to that point, I would refrain from outcrossing.

After 45 years at this, my personal observation is that most people rush to outcross long before they even understand what traits they have in their coop. Many, many years ago I knew an old timer who was a Master and he had nearly 80 years of skin into his breed of choice. He lived in England, was something of a legend and he was known for having some of the best in his breed's entire history. I once asked him, "What do you think when people cross your line?" and he simply replied, "Well, they really don't know what they're made of, do they?"

 

[Dinoroar]

I'm on my old computer now and Sandhill is the place I have book marked for White Minorcas. I had one other but tossed it when you had to pay and no shipping date would be confirmed. They just wanted to ship at their convenience.

Thanks for checking. Maybe someday I’ll get brave and order chicks again if I don’t come across anyone selling eggs.

 

[Dinoroar]

Sandhill is kinda bogus.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063472093461&mibextid=LQQJ4d
Tinsley and Harp are really putting the work into white Minorcas. Since they used blacks to improve them, color needs work, but nice birds.

Why do you think they’re ‘bogus?’

 

[Chicken Heel]

I find this thread to be very informative as I am interested in preserving a threatened breed as a retirement project in a few years. And the discussion on bulldogs is very interesting as well. Thanks to all for sharing your knowledge.