BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[DesertChic]

It's funny, we're talking about inbreeding...... you know when they were casting characters for Deliverance, the guy with the banjo....... well they wanted a guy who looked inbred/ retarded, but wasn't.

How on earth do you advertise for someone like that? You'd have to be pretty happy in your own skin to think, hey, they are talking about me, I'll apply!
I bet you couldn't get away with that now. Can you imagine????????????

Ouch! Yeah....definitely an awkward casting call.

I always loved that movie, by the way.

 

[Turk Raphael]

Ouch! Yeah....definitely an awkward casting call.

I always loved that movie, by the way.

Makeup!

Done well, can take you in all directions at the same time.

 

[bnjrob]

It's funny, we're talking about inbreeding...... you know when they were casting characters for Deliverance, the guy with the banjo....... well they wanted a guy who looked inbred/ retarded, but wasn't.

How on earth do you advertise for someone like that? You'd have to be pretty happy in your own skin to think, hey, they are talking about me, I'll apply!
I bet you couldn't get away with that now. Can you imagine????????????

HAHAHAHA - I often think about what the casting call would be for certain characters and wonder who would have the nerve to show up to some of the ones that are looking for people for less than flattering roles. Glad to know I'm not the only one that has thought about that.

 

[lpatelski]

It's funny, we're talking about inbreeding...... you know when they were casting characters for Deliverance, the guy with the banjo....... well they wanted a guy who looked inbred/ retarded, but wasn't.  How on earth do you advertise for someone like that? You'd have to be pretty happy in your own skin to think, hey, they are talking about me, I'll apply!
I bet you couldn't get away with that now. Can you imagine????????????

The wonderful musician they cast had fetal alcohol syndrome. Not an inbred issue but mommy dearest can't wait 9 months for a drink.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

I'm hoping someone can give me some advice regarding pinched tails. I have dark cornish in my breeding, I can see that most of the offspring will have pinched tails. From what I've read this is something I need to breed out, but apparently it's tricky to do so. Now my question is, is a pinched tail really that bad on a production bird? apparently the red sex links and hatchery stock are prone to having badly pinched tails, and I would say that red sex links are pretty good layers. So is having a pinched tail really going to cause egg laying problems, or is it just an ugly cosmetic thing? (although it looks so right on a cornish......) The tail feathers are on the pope's nose thingy so how can that affect anything? I'd love to see a dressed pinched tailed bird compared to a dressed well spread tailed bird............ I find that the appearance with feathers on can be deceiving, feathers and wing carriage really affect how the bird looks superficially.
Have you seen any correlation between pinched tails and issues? I see it mentioned quite often that pinched tails affect production, but is this just an old wive's tale passed on as fact without really being true? I have not seen any data that compares the production of pinched tailed birds to well spread tailed birds. Any thoughts?

 

[Beekissed]

Most of the commercial production layers have both pinched and squirrel tails and I've often asked the same questions about this whole function following form thingy. Supposedly a wider, deeper carcass gives more room for egg production going on right next to food digestion, but I've seen many a wide load bird that didn't lay worth shucks and some skinny butted BAs that lay like machines for 6-7 yrs.

Personally, I think it's just a looks thing, as time and many flocks have shown me that the squirrel tailed and pinch butted gals can really crank out some eggs.

 

[bnjrob]

I'm hoping someone can give me some advice regarding pinched tails. I have dark cornish in my breeding, I can see that most of the offspring will have pinched tails. From what I've read this is something I need to breed out, but apparently it's tricky to do so. Now my question is, is a pinched tail really that bad on a production bird? apparently the red sex links and hatchery stock are prone to having badly pinched tails, and I would say that red sex links are pretty good layers. So is having a pinched tail really going to cause egg laying problems, or is it just an ugly cosmetic thing? (although it looks so right on a cornish......) The tail feathers are on the pope's nose thingy so how can that affect anything? I'd love to see a dressed pinched tailed bird compared to a dressed well spread tailed bird............ I find that the appearance with feathers on can be deceiving, feathers and wing carriage really affect how the bird looks superficially.
Have you seen any correlation between pinched tails and issues? I see it mentioned quite often that pinched tails affect production, but is this just an old wive's tale passed on as fact without really being true? I have not seen any data that compares the production of pinched tailed birds to well spread tailed birds. Any thoughts?

I had to kill a hen with a vent prolapse and she was pinch tailed and laid large/extra large sized eggs and did so early on. Unlike most of the other pinched tailed hens that laid medium/large eggs. For me, it isn't just looks, I don't want to run the risk of frequent vent prolapsing or egg binding by perpetuating a pinched tail, especially if a hen lays larger sized eggs. Our flock doesn't have a lot of the problem of vent prolapses and egg binding like I see so many folks wind up with in their small non-standard-bred birds. And yet we have a lot more birds than most normal chicken keepers. So I do think that since my flock is larger, yet has fewer issues than so many smaller flocks, I have to think that this is in part due to the care in breeding selection and the husbandry management of my flock that makes the difference.

 

[Beekissed]

Could it be that the prolapse was more due to her early laying and too large of eggs rather than the conformation of her body? I've had chickens for 40 yrs now and never once had a prolapse, many different breeds kept, some laid some seriously huge eggs(one even had 4 yolks) and all of them hatchery until recent years. Hatchery, meaning all of them were pinch tailed birds, except the WRs and even they were more pinch tailed than a standard bred WR.

 

[NanaKat]

I have had hatchery Australorp, RIR, Minorca, Black SL, and EE. Compared to the breeder Wyandotte, Cochin and Buckeye, no difference in egg laying ability or size of eggs.The difference was in the recurrence of knock knees, wry tail, and runted growth of the hatchery offspring. Have never had a prolapse.
Therefore, I don't hatch from the layer flock which includes second string hens from the breeder offspring.
Surprisingly, my Bantams are all breeder flocks and the egg size is big for bantam breeds...again no issues.

That being said, I select hens for the breed flocks that have a 4 finger width between legs and a hand length between tip of keel and vent to allow for plenty of adominal space. These hens are good large egg layers with very nicely weighted eggs that produce healthy chicks. I attribute that to ample room for eggs development and food digestion

 

[ejcrist]

I'll be making my first attempt at breeding for egg laying qualities this coming fall with Barred Rocks. I've been reading a lot about the subject and one of the things I know you have to be religious about is record keeping. That sounds easy enough and is when it comes to the father, but what the heck do you do when it comes to identifying the mother since it seems logical/more efficient to put a cock in with a couple of hens rather than breeding one hen at a time? I'm thinking I could list the possible mothers when breeding future cock offspring back to the mother but this wouldn't be exactly accurate. What do most breeders do? Breed one hen at a time maybe? Any info would be appreciated.