Breeding question

X2
In poultry, true inbreeding is a full brother to full sister. That is sometimes done but can be a real problem because every trait is compounded.
Many breeders use line breeding which is not inbreeding. That is father to daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter et. al. and mother to son, grandson, great grandson et. al.


Canoe, the math gets messy but if you run the numbers the amount of genetic diversity lost in breeding full siblings is exactly the same as a parent-offspring crossing. With half siblings it is less. I discussed this with one of the genetics experts on here a few years back. The reason they use line breeding instead of sibling breeding is that you better control which traits you are enhancing or suppressing. Is your math up to the challenge? As you are dealing with gene pairs instead of single genes it really stretched mine and I’m an engineer that dealt with math all my working career.

Breeders typically use line breeding to develop their flock, then use some type of breeding method like spiral breeding to maintain genetic diversity. This is the general way breeds have been developed and grand champion show chickens are created and those flocks maintained.

Debski, A standard model small farmers have used for thousands of years is to keep a small flock for eggs and meat that consists of one or two roosters and a flock of hens. They often save replacement roosters and hens from that flock for a few generations, maybe four to five. Then they bring in an outside rooster to renew the genetic diversity. The more roosters they keep and the more hens in the flock the longer they can go before they need to bring in fresh genetics.

There is something you need to do though. Do not allow your three eyed banjo players to breed. Do not feel sorry for a special needs chicken, do not allow it to breed. Otherwise you are breeding defects into your flock. Select your best chickens that meet your goals and breed them. If you do hatch out a bunch of three eyed banjo players that means your basic stock is flawed, get rid of them and start from fresh. Generally hatchery chickens are not that inbred, they typically use the pen breeding system to maintain genetic diversity. It’s a serious topic but people have been managing it for a long long time.
 

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