breeding

[minister man]

so, saladain did my application arrive to you alright? I'm the one frome NB Canda.

 

[saladin]

It did. I'll be sending it out by the weekend. With Customs you should get it in 2 to 3 weeks.

 

[minister man]

That's Good. I was just wondering because I ordered a memebership in one group from someone elses wedsite. I never quite know if I did it right. There are alot of buttons on a computor, and sometimes my fingers don't co operate with my Brain!

 

[Craig'sHens]

Breeding strategy is a topic I find interesting. I've seen it brought up so frequently but rarely discussed much.

I'd like to see if anyone has any suggestions for my situation.

I'm just starting out and have a young flock of 18 SLW that I'd like to show one day. I'm not in a big rush to get to the show floor but need to create and then maintain consistent high quality In my small flock.

I only have 2 breeding pens and live just outside the city limits where chickens are banned. That just means I can't maintain too many roosters and still maintain relations with the neighbors.

I'm a bit concerned about maintaining sufficient diversity with such a small breeding program but think I have a fairly good start with what I have since they came from a reputable breeder.

Any suggestions on strategy are welcome.

P.S. What is the SPPA?

 

[minister man]

The S.P.P.A. can be found at this link http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/SPPA/SPPA.html It stands for "Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities"

To be perfectly Clear, I don't have any chicken breeding experience yet, But I have researched for a couple of years now to learn what I can.

I have learned that the two "code words" for chicken breeding are "selection" and "elimination". Select for the qualities I want, and eliminate the ones I don't want.

I have learned that there are two differn't kinds of matings. "compenstation Type"- Where one bird excells where the other falls short Which improves points, and "complimentary Matings" Which is the mating of birds that are very strong in the same points, to lock those points more into the strain.

I have obsessed for 2 years over picking the perfect " plan" but from what I now understand from talking to people, and reading books any plan is destined to fail if we don't observe the things that I listed above.

Check out this article

http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/issues/6/6-2/breeding_the_home_flock.html

Saladine Recommended to me a "rolling mating" which is a two pen system that uses very litttle record keeping and few males.

basicly it works like this.


Year 1 start with the best females you have and a male.

year 2 work with two pens. put last years hens and a young male in one pen, and the pullets you hatched in the other with thier father.

from there on it just keeps rolling. Alway culling down the old hens and retiring pullets to make one pen and the pullets hatched that year ( form both pens) in the pullet pen. Use the best old male you have on the pullet pen and the best young male you have on the old hen pen. Keep spare males. Craig russell recomends keeping 10 females and 2 males in each pen.


So that is what I think, Saladine might have to "mark" my little essay here to make sure that I am correct, but that is the way I understand from my research.

Hope this is helpful

 

[becky3086]

This was a very good thread. I have read all about the different methods of breeding before but this was nicely put and easy to understand.

 

[Craig'sHens]

minister man,

Thanks for your input. I've been studying for close to a year but it has included lots of basics as well as a bit of breeding strategies and genetics. I only started my flock about 7 weeks ago with the 18 SLW. I was thinking the rolling mating was a good option as well. From what I have been told, Wyandottes take 18+ months to to reach their full potential. So breeding over 2 seasons has serious advantages. Not only do they need to survive for 2 years, but we won't really know what we have until the second season.

Since this first year determines the gene pool, does it make sense to use a 2nd (reserve) cockerel in the second pen along with 1 or 2 complimentary pullets? I realize this may maintain a fault or 2 but maybe it also keeps me from "painting myself into the corner" by eliminating good attributes from the flock. Since I am trying to breed to a standard and there are so very many attributes that have to be achieved, I think the gene pool needs to be a bit broader.

 

[minister man]

I'm probably not the best person to answer your questions since I really don't have any experience! But In this same Thread, we talked about Saladine's article in the back yard poultry, where he combines the rolling mating and the Clan mating and calls it a family mating. If you look back through the thread he said it was because he didn't want to breed with poults and it might work better for you.


I am sure he can explian it better than I, but he started by dividing his females into two groups. Year one he mated one pen to an unrelated male, and the best females joined the best mothers. The next year he used a cockeral from pen 1 on the females from pen two, and did the same thing. From there he just used a cockeral from one pen on the old hens from the other family.



One of the people that I talked to about rolling matings, suggested that as a "variation" he sometimes likes to pick out a certain pair/ trio to mate to produce the males. Then those parents are not put in the old hen pen, and the cockeral's siblings never go to the pullet pen. He suggested it broadened the gentics a little, by reducing some of the inbreeding of the rolling mating.
I haven't really figured out how that part would work for me, but what do those who use rolling matings think about that variation?


The other option that I came up with is instead of keeping 10 olkd hens in a pen, divide that same pen in half, so that you actually have a pullet pen, and two differn't old hen pens each with a differn't young male. That would add more diversity I think.

 

[Craig'sHens]

It seems like things are pretty slow here. However, I have read over what I learned here and also looked at the below referenced article.

http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/issues/1/1-2/Craig_Russell.html

I still like rolling matings but think I would like to broaden my genetic base to include more of the hens and possibly more of the roosters in the first season breeding program. According to the comments about Bruce Lentz, more genetic diversity in the first season may be important. I appear to have about 11 pullets and 7 cockerels (a rather unlikely but fortunate ratio), so if I keep 6 to 10 pullets, and 3 to 4 cockerels, I can create quite the package of offspring to select from in the first season. If the cockerals look promising, I may even use all 3-4 cockerals in the first season or save some for when they get older & see If I want to try the reserve roosters. It also gives me a lot of options for matching them up in the breeding pens and it gives me some experience learning what to cull and what to keep in subsequent seasons.

 

[minister man]

There was another fellow on the internet, although I don't remember where, that said he micro managed a rolling mating more than suggested. He said that instead of just gathering the eggs and hatching them all together as young birds, he marked them if they came from the pullet pen or the old hen pen, and tried to keep 5 young females from each mating for the Pullet pen< and a male from each to mate with the old hens. He did it to keep up diversity. Then there was another fellow who said that he would pick out the very best laying female and put her with the best looking males as a single mating and have the males selected from that mating, so there was no chance of brother sisters, or mother son, ending up in the same breeding pen. I really don't know if those ideas would help much, but might be something to think about.


If there was a way to roll the mating and still single mate, then it would add more diverstiy still, but then it is no longer a "simple" plan.