Breeding Advice

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Tom_DarwinNT said:
Hi everyone and thank you to all the posters and experienced chicken keepers for the amazing threads i have been reading over the last 8 months. I moved rural and finally got to own my own chickens. This is going to be a bit of a story but i promise it gets to a question, and i think it would be a great discussion thread for all experienced breeders/keepers and genetics experts to chime in on.
So, i started with buying a whole heap of different breeds to start off, commercial layers, barred rocks, sussex, D'uccles, Pekin, Araucana etc i had 28 chickens to begin with. I love the idea of continuing on heritage breeds. I culled 5 roosters when they got to size and the rest were hens with 1 lovely but very dopey Araucana rooster.
I had them free range for a couple hours a day and penned in the run and coop the rest of the time. 1 day i went to the shop for the couple hours they were out and returned to absolute carnage, a couple dogs had wandered in and slaughtered majority of the chickens across a 20 acre block. As you can imagine i was livid, i had raised them from chicks and they had been laying for about 2 months.
I really enjoy keeping chickens and have been lucky enough to start hatching some of my own from the left over birds, a Pekin Roo made it through the cull undetected by my amateur eye and managed to get a few of the D'uccles and commercial sex link to accept him. The chicks are very cute with feathered feet. I dont plan on continuing this breeding of little mongrels but i do plan on stepping up and building some purpose made runs and coops to breed heritage birds and sex links with an assortment of colored eggs, so here is the question.

If i wanted to breed birds that would allow me to have the following outcomes;
White Eggs
Brown Eggs
Blue Eggs
Green/Olive Eggs
Sex Link (Red or Black)
Dual Purpose.

How many original breeds of chicken would i need to start with? I understand i would need to start with the Araucana for the blue eggs and for crossing with a white and a brown for different colors but i am unsure which breeds would be best to achieve all my goals with as little as 3 maybe 4 original breeds.
I would line breed for the pure bred heritage birds, cross breed for the sex links and easter/Olive eggers.

What breeds and genetics would work best and would it be possible to start with just 3 different breeds?

I live in Northern Australia in the tropics, so birds that are able to handle warmer temps and handy foragers would also be an advantage for the newly fenced areas.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far, you are all absolute legends.
Click to expand...
You’ll need 3 breeds to get your pure white (leghorn, Minorca, Ancona, Hamburg), pure blue (aracuana, ameracuana, whiting true blues, crested cream legbar) and pure brown eggs.
Green will be blue x brown.
The sex links would take 2 brown laying breeds (Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire red, barred Plymouth Rock, cuckoo marans, white Plymouth rocks, delawares etc…).
So you would have to maintain 4 foundation breeds to start, right?
 
DobieLover said:
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.
If you want everything on your list, you will need to start with more than three breeds. Try contacting a hatchery that will ship chicks.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the response! I know I can achieve most objectives with just 3 breeds but to have them all be dual purpose might be an issue.
I’ve done some research and found if I had Barred Plymouth Rocks, Araucana and White Leghorns I can do different crosses to achieve Brown, Blue, White, Green/Olive Eggs and I should be able to breed sex link chicks with the Barred Rock x Leghorn.
But if there is a better combination of Chickens I’d love to hear about it. I’m not real keen on the Leghorns and Anconas seem really hard to get ahold of and won’t help with the sex link aspect. I might have to skip on the white egg and maybe go with an Australorp for black sex links… If anyone knows of a cream coloured egg layer that would allow for a sex link with a barred rock would be awesome?
 
TexasBlues said:
You’ll need 3 breeds to get your pure white (leghorn, Minorca, Ancona, Hamburg), pure blue (aracuana, ameracuana, whiting true blues, crested cream legbar) and pure brown eggs.
Green will be blue x brown.
The sex links would take 2 brown laying breeds (Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire red, barred Plymouth Rock, cuckoo marans, white Plymouth rocks, delawares etc…).
So you would have to maintain 4 foundation breeds to start, right?
Click to expand...
I think the White leghorn cross barred rock would allow for sex link offspring, meaning I could achieve it all with 3 breeds? I’m just not overly keen on Leghorns, though they are supposed to be great layers…. I would settle for a cream coloured/ light brown layer for crossing with a barred rock for sex link, or I could replace the barred rock for a cuckoo maran? Would the cuckoo maran lay darker eggs than the Rocks?
 
Tom_DarwinNT said:
Hi everyone and thank you to all the posters and experienced chicken keepers for the amazing threads i have been reading over the last 8 months. I moved rural and finally got to own my own chickens. This is going to be a bit of a story but i promise it gets to a question, and i think it would be a great discussion thread for all experienced breeders/keepers and genetics experts to chime in on.
So, i started with buying a whole heap of different breeds to start off, commercial layers, barred rocks, sussex, D'uccles, Pekin, Araucana etc i had 28 chickens to begin with. I love the idea of continuing on heritage breeds. I culled 5 roosters when they got to size and the rest were hens with 1 lovely but very dopey Araucana rooster.
I had them free range for a couple hours a day and penned in the run and coop the rest of the time. 1 day i went to the shop for the couple hours they were out and returned to absolute carnage, a couple dogs had wandered in and slaughtered majority of the chickens across a 20 acre block. As you can imagine i was livid, i had raised them from chicks and they had been laying for about 2 months.
I really enjoy keeping chickens and have been lucky enough to start hatching some of my own from the left over birds, a Pekin Roo made it through the cull undetected by my amateur eye and managed to get a few of the D'uccles and commercial sex link to accept him. The chicks are very cute with feathered feet. I dont plan on continuing this breeding of little mongrels but i do plan on stepping up and building some purpose made runs and coops to breed heritage birds and sex links with an assortment of colored eggs, so here is the question.

If i wanted to breed birds that would allow me to have the following outcomes;
White Eggs
Brown Eggs
Blue Eggs
Green/Olive Eggs
Sex Link (Red or Black)
Dual Purpose.

How many original breeds of chicken would i need to start with? I understand i would need to start with the Araucana for the blue eggs and for crossing with a white and a brown for different colors but i am unsure which breeds would be best to achieve all my goals with as little as 3 maybe 4 original breeds.
I would line breed for the pure bred heritage birds, cross breed for the sex links and easter/Olive eggers.

What breeds and genetics would work best and would it be possible to start with just 3 different breeds?

I live in Northern Australia in the tropics, so birds that are able to handle warmer temps and handy foragers would also be an advantage for the newly fenced areas.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far, you are all absolute legends.
Click to expand...
Welcome. I hope you appreciate my opinion, because I do respect yours.

I love all chickens and have issue with culling roosters just because they are roosters. In a way, it makes us no better than the factory farms. I think if people hatch, they have an obligation to love and take care of the cockerels that hatch as well. All rooster bachelor coops/runs are very successful - this is how I have dealt with having "too many roosters". Also, roosters are the coolest pets ever. All of my roosters have so much more depth than my hens and they are some of my best friends. Again, this is how I think and feel, and I am not condemning yours;
 

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