I hatched a few hens and a few roos. I don't know if they're related, but they may all have the same father. I gave the roos to a friend. She hatched some chicks from one of my roos and her hen. Can I take a cockerel from that for breeding to my hens or is that too close?
I'm a bit rushed for time to respond, but you might do a search on "line breeding", using the search feature in the blue band above. A quick answer is that breeders do this all the time. If you see traits you don't want, you need to bring in new blood. If you do not see anything bad, you can keep inbreeding. Hopefully someone will have time to give you a better answer.
You can breed brother to sister, parents to offspring. As long as you introduce some new blood every once in a whlie- like you did with your friends hen.... and what Ridgerunner said.
Usually brother to sister is not preferred. Good and bad characteristics are more likely to appear with that crossing. Also, many breeders have been successful with breeding father to daughter/mother to son for up to 5 generations without any problems. Hence how some breeders have closed flocks.
What you are most worried about with inbreeding is that recessive genes pair up, thus exhibiting bad traits. If you go through the genetics, the odds of recessive genes pairing up is the same whether it is a father-daughter match or a brother-sister. Really doesn't make any difference.
