Best cross breeds

[TJAnonymous]

What can I say? I love chickens.... I have several different breeds currently -

Buff Orpingtons
Rhode Island Reds
Ameracaunas
Black Australorps
Blue Andalusians

Currently, I have 3 roosters who are Easter Eggers.

I tend to like the larger dual-purpose birds because we go through a lot of eggs and sell eggs but I like a bird that could be a decent meal, if desperate times came to desperate measures.

I just spent nearly an hour on various hatchery sites looking at different breeds. I know myself well enough to know that I will be itching to buy a few new chicks in the spring. I may even consider some new Roos if any of my current ones are killed by a predator or need to be culled because of aggressive behavior. So I was wondering what breeds might be a good cross to make some pretty or interesting babies but also remain functional?

Tell me about some of your cross breeding experiences! I'd love to hear them!

 

[Butterscotchbitesfinger]

I had a silkie x pekin bantam. Her name was Alice and she was a stunner:

 

[RainbowHen]

One of my favorite crosses was an Easter Egger/Buff Orpington. He was a big, beautiful, buff colored roo with muffs. Handsome boy and very well behaved. Grew to be much larger than his EE dad.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I have done a lot of mixed breeding over the last 10 years. Here's what I've learned from my experiences.

First be clear in your goals. If you change them you will muddy up your line.

To start a project like this, I find it easier to choose a variety of pure hens and have a standard purebred rooster. It alleviates a lot of the unknown at the beginning you would get breeding mixes to mixes. You can control your variety with the pure mixes through choosing the hen's eggs you want to set. I've controlled my line so that I can look at the hen's plummage and know her heritage for blue, green, or brown eggs.

If you have two roosters, you will only want those hens available to the rooster you want to improve that hen's line.

In my experience, typically the rooster and hen combine to create a body size that averages the two. Egg laying is also an average between the two. If you want to increase body size, choose a heavier breed to place over a good layer. You will get decent layer with decent body size. If you want better laying, place a prolific layer over a heavier decent layer. Again, you will average the size and the egg laying between the parents with the prolific genes bolstering the overall laying quite a bit. Depending on the variance of the parents, you will scale up or down in your desired direction.

Since you stated you are wanting to go with a good mix of eggs and meat, I would skip the Cochin Bantam/Pekin and Silkie. They scale the whole line down for both egg and body for numerous generations. If you want to instill some good brooding hens in your flock, with 3/4 size eggs and body, that aren't very good for eating, then that could be a choice to add plummage variety, a larger broody body that can sit more eggs, and install a broody pen (which I have personally done)....but not your original stated goals for decent egg and body.

Your EE roosters are already mixed, so that will definitely add some unknown results (see first paragraph that starting with purebreds saves a lot of breeding headache). They will keep blue shells 50% of the time (if they are really EE's and have at least 1 blue shell gene...not always true in hatchery stock). They should be pretty middle of the road for gene in laying and meat, though they aren't typically very heavy meat birds. Place them over the Orp to increase body size of the EE line. You will likely stay middle laying. Place them over Leghorn types, or your Australorp, and you will get good layers, but not particularly good eating carcass with the Leghorn. The Australorp ( I think you said blue?) will likely produce 50% black and 50% blue depending upon the EE colors. You'll probably get some secondary bleed through depending on the EE secondary pattern.

Plummage is a bit trickier. Red base works wonderfully well as a pallet when adding lacing and patterning from the other parent. Buff can create some interesting secondary colors. You will want to get familiar with the genetics calculator and spend time making color comparisons. (See link below). Stay away from dominant white (White Leghorns) and black solids as those tend to be very hard to breed out. They tend to dominant all patterns and colors. (In my experience).

Barring can create sex links if your male is barred and your female is not. I've worked with California Grey, Rhodebar and Cream Legbar lines to success, with some interesting hybrids.

I really love my Barnevelders which are good tempered and produce very lovely gold lacing. The lacing breeds through with different secondary patterns by 2nd Gen...you get incomplete lacing with one laced/one not first gen. Again, spend time on the genetic calculator and work with pure breeds to set your pallets.

If you are serious about raising birds that are truly dual purpose, look at Buckeyes. Breed them back to RIR and you increase their laying and keep the body type.

Just some random thoughts from my experiences.
LofMc

Genetic Calculator
https://www.breedbook.org/?action=geneticscalculator&tab=CHICKEN

 

[Pullet Press]

I won't buy any new chicks until the spring but I thought about getting some Silkies and maybe a few Cochins. Pretty birds but not very functional for eggs. I wondered if they cross bred with my EE roos who are quite big, if that might produce a bird who lays larger eggs. My husband isn't fond of small eggs... He complains that my little EE pullet who is barely 6 months old lays "tiny" eggs. They are more medium sized than bantam size. Hoping they get a little bigger as she matures more but if not, oh well....

The silkies and cochins would help brood the eggs for your mixes!

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I should also add how to line breed back to your pure sire (which I find produces the easiest and best results).

Start with a really good quality, of type, purebred rooster that gives the base qualities you want. Then choose the hen lines you desire to develop. Keep those hens with that rooster.

1st generation (f1), choose your best types of the 1st progeny. Cull or eat or give away those who do not meet your goals. Breed the daughters of that f1 to your standard rooster. With f2 you will see closer to type about 50/50. Choose the best of f2 to breed back to your standard rooster. By f3 you are seeing your line set. At that point I was seeing some really nice Barnevelders.

If you are trying to keep a mixed type, then you may need to keep two separate lines to allow cross breeding periodically (unless your mix sets a particular type...but mixed breeds tend to breed out qualities especially if you crossbreed lines too early).

Some traits breed out pretty quickly. I find crests to carry forward 50% of the time as well as feathered/booted feet. Lacing seems to be partial f1 but with careful breedback to type cleaner f2. Blue seems to breed out pretty quickly while black is hard to get rid of. With enough mixing, you end up with wild type a lot of the time as genes are mixed.

The blue shell and brown shell genes can be tricky to manipulate. If you want to keep EE blue, you have to pay close attention to what you are doing and breed only desired egg color back to the EE rooster that produced a blue-green laying daughter. Blue shell gene produces blue shells (it's actually bile tossed into the calcium gland and the shell is actually blue). Brown shell is produced by a hemoglobin wash over either white shell (brown tone eggs) or blue shell (green tone eggs). However, your EE likely has only 1 blue shell gene. That means 50% of his daughters will have no blue shell gene and either white or brown tone layers depending on if they have any brown wash genes (remember there are 13). Choose his blue-green laying daughters and breed back to a proven EE blue shell rooster, you will produce 25% 2 blue shell gene line (hard to tell but often blue is deeper), 50% 1 blue shell gene, and 25% no blue shell gene. Choose daughters that lay the best colors for breed back, and you've set blue-green. If you want olive, you will need periodic breed backs of your blue layers to a dark brown wash rooster to refresh the brown genes as that brown wash is easy to breed out.

I breed for olive eggs. I have developed f3 and f4 daughters of my olive line. I keep a seperate brown line for proper breedback. I am now to the point I have a really nice f3 rooster that is nearly everything I want and have cross bred to f3 and f4 daughters. I'm waiting outcomes as you can't check egg color genetics with a rooster until you breed daughters.

So the trick is to work with pure breeds to start, then line breed back to the parent stock (easiest with the rooster as you can manipulate a variety of hens with eggs easily). If you choose to breed a f1 rooster back to the mother, you then have to set up a separate breeding pen or cull the parent rooster (which you likely don't want to do if you want him for other lines).

You can line breed back to the parent for about 5 generations, then choose best type from f3 and f4 or f5. Your line should be set at this point.

If you are continuing to simply want variety, then you would be smart to rotate hens out with a standard nice tempered rooster. You could rotate roosters out, but it can be hard to find a good rooster. The jerks are easy to obtain free. Once you have a healthy, well tempered boy, keep him! The good ones will take care of the hens, watch over the babies, and not be human aggressive.

Always, always breed for health and temperament....then to your standard or goals. Cull anything unhealthy or bad tempered. You don't want to breed that forward no matter how pretty they look.

Just some more thoughts as I think of them.

 

[LittleBigBantam]

My best cross breeds are my silkie mixes. They are GORGEOUS.

 

[Isyovi]

I have brahma's and leghorn / leghorn mixes. I think they would make a good mixed breed for meat and eggs, brahma's are big chickens and leghorns are great egg layers. But leghorns almost never go broody.

 

[Butterscotchbitesfinger]

Is the Pekin an Australian equivelant of an American Cochin?

(Cochin bantam yes)

 

[LittleBigBantam]

All my silkie crosses are roosters and they'll be good for genetics and meat