Breeders - How do you choose which chicks to keep?

[Madie'sOddFlock]

So, I think it's a simple question, but I'm pretty sure it comes with a complicated answer... Also, do you decide which ones to keep when they're young, or do you grow them out first?

Thank you,
Madie

 

[CluckerFamily]

I only purchase or hatch enough to keep them all. I would think that if I did hatch way more than I can keep, I would sell them young: people want to bond with chicks, they will be cheaper to sell than an older pullet/cockerel, they won’t be in the brooder long before someone buys them.

 

[Coops Dad]

My wife chooses the ones we keep based on color. Our main rooster is black over gray and nearly all his progeny are black, gray or black and gray. Any chick that hatches out any other color is placed on the "keep" pile. If it turns out to be a rooster, it goes to the freezer when it gets big enough to feed three people.

Our only keepers so far have been the offspring of our lone white leghorn hen, all white with black spots and all with big floppy combs.

 

[sdm111]

Any weak looking chicks get culled immediately then the rest are let to grow out. Its more complicated than that but thats the gist of it

 

[3KillerBs]

I am an absolute beginner at this and want to learn, but I have a few thoughts,

First, if I were interested in purebreds I'd get active on the appropriate forum and learn how to interpret the Standard of Perfection.

Second, since I'm not currently interested in purebreds, I'm going to focus on the following, not necessarily in this order:

Health -- The chick with the persistent pasty-butt will be sold rather than bred. I don't *know* that a tendency to pasty butt is genetic, but I intentionally bought more chicks than I needed so as to be able to select the best.

Suitability for My Climate and Management Style -- Birds that can't thrive in the 95-95 summer weather here in central NC without a lot of special attention will be sold. I placed the coop to get good summer airflow and offer shade, water, weekly electrolytes, and access to ground for dust-bathing. If that's not enough I will add more Mediterranean blood to my flock.

Egg Quality and Size -- As much as I love the bird in my avatar for her beauty, her eggs are weirdly-round and smaller than I remember getting from my previous Brahmas. She doesn't deserve to be bred.

Maturity -- Other things being equal, I'd like earlier-maturing birds rather than late-maturing birds.

 

[Mtnboomer]

I cannot sell any of our live birds due to the fact that we have Mareks in our flock (long unfortunate story). A bird was confirmed positive years ago. I could sell the eggs if I wanted.

I grow our birds for both meat and eggs. Chicks are selected purely on health. Any injured or sick chick is quickly dispatched. Pullets are grown to 4 mos. At which time they are selected based upon health, size, and color for either harvest or to replace members of my flock as layers.
My current rooster is particularly large (over 10lbs live wt. At less than 1 yr old) so large robust hens hold up to breeding better than smaller hens. Healthy hens usually = happy layers. Bigger hens yeild more meat.

As for color, our friend utilizes our flock for gene expression experiments. If a bird expresses a specific color he is interested in, we keep it for breeding. My wife is partial to buff. I like the "pheasant" patterns whatever the name is for that.
Taking all of this into consideration decides which go and which stay.

When determining which older birds are replaced by the younger ones, egg production and personality come into play. A friendly hen may be just enough to edge her out over a scaredy cat. I have zero tolerance for aggressive birds so all roosters are freezer bound at 4 mos or after the 1st attempt to attack me

 

[Madie'sOddFlock]

So, this year I've managed to pretty much only hatch chicks who've seemed extremely robust and healthy, or at least those that have made it out of the incubator... Most years I've struggled with sick chicks(pasty butt, what I'm pretty sure was coccidiosis, etc.), formed chicks, and excessive picking... This year, I've had no problems. Of my mixed breeds
I hatched earlier in the year I kept only 4 hens and sent all the rest to auction(I trust mine) especially since almost all of them were roosters. Well, then I finally got into breeding my blue-laced red wyandottes. Now, I've looked into the breed quite a bit and know now that I should keep a couple of black and blue chicks to keep my splash looking good and not white(I prefer the splash coloring over everything else at least in my roosters). I also bought 2 dozen eggs off eBay to help diversify my flock(since right now it's one rooster and 6 hens so I needed more blood). I plan to keep roosters from my birds and hens from the other eggs... I could also keep hens from mine but I am most definitely not keeping roosters out of the other blood. Basically, I'm breeding these guys to keep the lines of my rooster going and I'll just keep going with his male descendants and making them better and better over the years, I'm not so worried about the hens except for where they help me make the boys look better... It's strange and totally complicated, but I'm just not sure where I go from here about selling them although I definitely need to because I am not set up to keep all 17 that I hatched from my birds and however many hatch from the eBay eggs... I'd rather get rid of them when they're young, but I think I'll have to grow them and decide from there. At least they should make me money whether they are hen or rooster because they're such a sought-after breed, at least around here.

 

[Ridgerunner]

So, I think it's a simple question, but I'm pretty sure it comes with a complicated answer...

I can help make an answer complicated. Glad to be of service. First you need to decide what your goals are. Some of us breed for improved egg production or improved meat production. Some are interested more in feather colors, egg shell colors, or maybe temperament. We have all kinds of different goals. So your first step is to determine what your actual goals are. It sounds like breeding to the SOP may be a part of yours but you may have a few more than that.

Then the part that sounds simple but can get really complicated. Breed the ones that meet your goals and don't breed the others. If you are breeding to the SOP you obviously need a copy of the SOP and you need to study it. Going to chicken shows and talking to other breeders can help you understand what those SOP requirements look like on a real chicken. If you are looking at egg shell color, check out the genetics behind that. One question you need to ask yourself is how serious you want to get about it.

Also, do you decide which ones to keep when they're young, or do you grow them out first?

This depends on your goals. People serious about breeding to the SOP tend to hatch out a lot of chicks, especially when they are developing their flock. The more chicks you have to choose from the better the quality you see. That can get expensive to feed and house them. So as soon as they can identify that one does not meet their goals they eliminate them. Some don't decide the final cut until they are a couple of years old.

My goals are totally different. I decide on which cockerel to keep for breeding at 23 weeks, since that's when I butcher them for meat. I select the pullets to keep around 8 months since I want to see what eggs they lay.

Another thing to consider is genetic diversity. Line breeding is often used when establishing your flock. That's intense inbreeding to enhance the traits you want. But once you get to where you want, you want to stop intense inbreeding and maintain what genetic diversity you can. There are different techniques for that, one you might want to read about is spiral breeding. Another is to bring in fresh genetics every few generations but you take the risk of losing what you have gained.

I told you I could make it complicated. I have a lot of respect for people that actually breed to the SOP, that is not easy. I chose much simpler goals and just have fun with it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

So, first I'm going to link my Breed Project, so you can follow along, if desired. Its an embarrassing at times, but accurate, and hopefully instructive (in a round about sort of way) record of my efforts to date.

ONE - Decide what your goals are. The more goals you have, the harder it will be to be satisfied - but decide on your goals, and perhaps solicit opinions about whether such a thing is even possible.

If you plan is to breed high quality "breed", you need to start with quality birds, you need to know the standard of perfection, you need a way to keep them isolated from others, and you need to give real consideration to your minimum flock sizes and "rooster ratio". Then invest in an appropriate incubator.

If you plan to create your own bird, all of the above is true, except it won't be a breed, at best, a landrace as some time long in the future. Again, quality birds help, but high quality isn't necessarily worth it - you are playing the genetic lottery, and you are in it for the long game.

and stepping off theory, and into (brief experience) - I want a patterned (penciled or laced) red toned bird with clean legs, prominent comb (note I didn't specify what type, only "prominent") producing a cream to light tan colored medium large to large egg with moderate frequency (260-300/yr +/-) at relatively early age (18-20 wks), whose males hit 5.5# by the same age. Basically, I set a pretty low bar - but I'm starting with a mix of hatchery birds, most of which have some of the traits I want.

Now, because I'm looking for pattern, color, weight gain, AND early production, I can cull pretty young. A male/female ratio of 1:10 is the common recommend, but I find a young bird can successfully cover more birds than that with good fertility. Meaning extra boys get the cull first.

Last time, I had two boys reaching sexual maturity at roughly the same time, and was without a Roo (long story), so one was staying as the core of future breeding, the other was going to be culled. Both birds had clean legs, both had prominent combs, both were early to mature, and revealing adult plumage. Bird one outweighed bird two by a few ounces at the age (one of the things I'm looking for), and had muddy gold markings on black. Bird two was a few ounces lighter, but had a clean crele pattern with deep oranges, reds, and golds.

So even though he was lighter, I took bird two - has the intense reds I'm looking for, and a clean pattern that will help me in future breeding by revealing some of the genetics under my mixes. I'll get the weight back (and there wasn't a huge difference) by selective culling later.

I'm a little more tolerant on my hens, as I'm trying to grow my flock size to provide more options - but one of my breeders is a CornishX hen, one year in age. Trying to get some size off of her, since some of my other mixes have similar backgrounds on half their line. Half of her offspring show rapid growth/weight gain, all of them show the Dominant White gene - so any bird she throws which doesn't get the growth gets culled, because getting dominant white out is hard, there's no reason to keep a bird with it, unless it has remarkable size. Dom White large growth male? Gone, too - again, I don't want generations of getting that gene back out while i can't see the other colors underneath. But I'd tolerate it in a female, particularly as I now know better what my Rooster is contributing.

The December and January hatches - those I didn't sell off or eat already - are coming into start of lay. I'll be looking at egg color on those and weight gain to start sorting out otherwise visually similar birds. Selective culling is nibbling at the margins. Takes time.

and because I'm focused on early maturing birds, I can mostly "turn over" my breed project quickly and cull very early. I want the Brahma pattern, and some of the eventual size would be nice, but Brahma are late to start laying (7 months+ on the original hens) so I'm forced to keep the very best of the "Brahma mama" hens for at least six months to gauge size, coloration, egg laying - if they aren't laying by then, after crossing with a much earlier maturing bird? That's another reason to cull.

If I had to give it the time Ridgerunner does (different breed goals, obviously, and different starting conditions), it would easily triple the time horizon of my project.

In a month, we'll have the first pictures of the new pairings - the P1 Cockerel over both original hens and some of his siblings of the P1 hatchings. I think F#s are used normally to track the generations, but like so much else, i'm not doing it quite right.

 

[Madie'sOddFlock]

I can help make an answer complicated. Glad to be of service. First you need to decide what your goals are. Some of us breed for improved egg production or improved meat production. Some are interested more in feather colors, egg shell colors, or maybe temperament. We have all kinds of different goals. So your first step is to determine what your actual goals are. It sounds like breeding to the SOP may be a part of yours but you may have a few more than that.

Then the part that sounds simple but can get really complicated. Breed the ones that meet your goals and don't breed the others. If you are breeding to the SOP you obviously need a copy of the SOP and you need to study it. Going to chicken shows and talking to other breeders can help you understand what those SOP requirements look like on a real chicken. If you are looking at egg shell color, check out the genetics behind that. One question you need to ask yourself is how serious you want to get about it.


This depends on your goals. People serious about breeding to the SOP tend to hatch out a lot of chicks, especially when they are developing their flock. The more chicks you have to choose from the better the quality you see. That can get expensive to feed and house them. So as soon as they can identify that one does not meet their goals they eliminate them. Some don't decide the final cut until they are a couple of years old.

My goals are totally different. I decide on which cockerel to keep for breeding at 23 weeks, since that's when I butcher them for meat. I select the pullets to keep around 8 months since I want to see what eggs they lay.

Another thing to consider is genetic diversity. Line breeding is often used when establishing your flock. That's intense inbreeding to enhance the traits you want. But once you get to where you want, you want to stop intense inbreeding and maintain what genetic diversity you can. There are different techniques for that, one you might want to read about is spiral breeding. Another is to bring in fresh genetics every few generations but you take the risk of losing what you have gained.

I told you I could make it complicated. I have a lot of respect for people that actually breed to the SOP, that is not easy. I chose much simpler goals and just have fun with it.

First of all, thank you for putting all of the random ideas that have floated through my head over the last few years all in one place... Pretty much all of that is why I waited so long to start actually breeding my birds although I've been hatching for a few years. I'm glad to have a name to finally put to the idea since I've been trying to figure out a set up for me to use spiral breeding... I think it should be a perfect setup for what I've already started this year.
So, again, thank you!