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.
