Back to Breeding:
There are a number of good resources on breeding techniques including the one posted by the ALBC. The best written summary of some of the major techniques was written years ago by Craig Russell and appeared in one of the old SPPA Breeders Directories. His article on Grading is still considered one of the best on that particular subject.
Though Breeding is not rocket-science it does take time to accomplish: particularly the artistic part of breeding. Indeed, if it were easy then everyone would do it and the same folks wouldn't be the only ones winning in the showroom year after year after year; but they are.
I am convinced that to maintain and improve a breed of fowl the 'secret' it in: selection, enormous hatches, and culling.
1. There is great artistry in the selection of brood stock.
2. Improvement can only be maintained in hatching lots and lots of chicks. People will argue all day about how many to hatch, but ask any real breeder and the answer is going to be in the hundreds!
3. The harder you cull the more improvement you'll see. I try to keep 10% of the chicks hatched. It doesn't always work that way. In 2010 I hatched around 300 Cubalaya chicks. I kept about 15. That's because those 15 were the only ones that I felt showed improvement over the parent stock.
If your chicks are the same as the parent stock then you are going backward.
