advantages of hatching eggs vs buying chicks

[CLou]

I purchased my third incubator this year. So far we have had three hatchings of Sebrights and Easter Eggers from our own eggs. These all were sold. To add chicks to our flock we bought Sebrights from another chicken lover in our area, hoping to avoid inbreeding in our small flock.
For the first time I bought hatching eggs from a local friend. In light of the diseases I want to avoid introducing new birds to our flock, hatching eggs seems more safe than buying chicks. We also traded our Game rooster for another game rooster, since most of the existing hens in our flock were his get.
Fortunately we have two broody hens repopulating the flock as well. Our goal is to have a good selection of breeds for egg color and egg abundance. We free range our chickens, providing them with a solid predator proof coop at night. I'd like to know how much of a problem inbreeding presents with a mixed flock only introducing 6 to 12 new chicks to the flock each year. Is inbreeding a concern at all?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'd like to know how much of a problem inbreeding presents with a mixed flock only introducing 6 to 12 new chicks to the flock each year. Is inbreeding a concern at all?

I think your question is about adding 6 to 12 chicks each year from eggs laid by the flock, not about adding totally unrelated chicks each year. I assume you have some knowledge of genetics and genes.

If your flock has some bad recessive genes and you inbreed they are going to start showing up. How big of a problem that is depends on how many you start with and how bad they are. Bad dominant genes would be a problem too but you should already be seeing those. For many of us this isn't a problem but that depends on what genetics you start with. You can often control this by only keeping the chickens that don't show this trait, whatever it is. Recessive genes are hard to eliminate, dominant genes are pretty easy.

Another problem with inbreeding is that eventually you lose enough genetic diversity that your flock starts becoming poor producers, are infertile, or can be prone to disease or body deformities/weaknesses. How fast this becomes a problem depends on how many breeding birds you have and how many you keep. Commercial operations and breeders have techniques to handle this. One technique used for thousands of years on small farms is to bring in a new totally unrelated rooster every few generations to reset genetic diversity. Dad did that every 4 to 5 generations.

This should be obvious but you need to be ruthless about not breeding substandard chickens. Only select as your breeders the good ones.

 

[CLou]

I think your question is about adding 6 to 12 chicks each year from eggs laid by the flock, not about adding totally unrelated chicks each year. I assume you have some knowledge of genetics and genes.

If your flock has some bad recessive genes and you inbreed they are going to start showing up. How big of a problem that is depends on how many you start with and how bad they are. Bad dominant genes would be a problem too but you should already be seeing those. For many of us this isn't a problem but that depends on what genetics you start with. You can often control this by only keeping the chickens that don't show this trait, whatever it is. Recessive genes are hard to eliminate, dominant genes are pretty easy.

Another problem with inbreeding is that eventually you lose enough genetic diversity that your flock starts becoming poor producers, are infertile, or can be prone to disease or body deformities/weaknesses. How fast this becomes a problem depends on how many breeding birds you have and how many you keep. Commercial operations and breeders have techniques to handle this. One technique used for thousands of years on small farms is to bring in a new totally unrelated rooster every few generations to reset genetic diversity. Dad did that every 4 to 5 generations.

This should be obvious but you need to be ruthless about not breeding substandard chickens. Only select as your breeders the good ones.

Actually I am talking about adding chicks from outside the flock. Yes I let my hens hatch their own eggs if they will but I also added 6 sebright chicks from a friend's flock and am buying a dozen mixed eggs to incubate tomorrow.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If you are adding outside chicks regularly then you should not have an inbreeding problem.