breeding different lines???

[tigercreek]

I have read in several places that you should not cross different lines of birds. Can anyone tell me why? I would think that the added diversity would be a good thing if the two lines were of equal quality. I can understand if you have a very strong line with a large number of birds, and don't want to dilute it's quality, or lose the best points, but if you have a chance to breed your line to another line of equal quality, and you don't have a very large flock, what is the harm done?? Thanks. .......stan

 

[Msbear]

Hi Stan, I am sure someone with more experience will chime in but, what I have learned is that breeding different lines together may throw abnormal results.. AT FIRST. THEN, you can line breed the resulting quality birds to improve your existing stock and diversify your gene pool.

I breed black rosecombs and have bloodlines that are 40+ years old and acquired a bloodline that is a mix of some of the best bloodlines to add to mine. The mixed roo was of extremely high quality and I did get some super nice stuff from him. I also got things I didn't expect like double spiked combs, side spurs, odd shaped lobes, etc. So.. I think what happens is, you will mess up what took 40 years to create and that is the predictability. You know you are going to get mostly nice and a few excellent birds with that old line. BUT, if you cull hard and breed a lot of offspring the first year.. take a few of those super nice offspring and cross back to your older line as the years go by,

you will notice less and less odd results and will get higher percentages of quality.

 

[sjarvis00]

Quote:
Stan,
if the two lines are already related it is seldom a problem. When you have two "closed" un-related lines that have both had decades of selection practices and breeding practices that differ to create each line seperately the results of crossing the two lines often very high in cull rates. this is especially true in parti-colored birds such as duckwing varieties, or wheaton varieties.
Now if you talking about crossing a male line with a female line that is an even bigger story. With Parti-colored birds such as Duckwings, you also mae sacrifices in color quality and some type to get a better result in teh opposing sex color and or type. Bringing male and female lines together in a mating will have a nearly 100% cull rate as teh selection on one side was for the males appearance and the selection on the other side was for female appearance. the results will not be good in either sex.

Hope that helps but to get a better answer you may want to expand on your question.