breeding ?

[malcom]

can some one explaine to me *** is goin on here so i can understand it better it seams to me that all the middle crosses are just wastefull unless there is a reason that i am missing?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

It's a line breeding chart to maintain genetic diversity.

The chart has the original parents along outside so they can be mated back to offspring, this is helpful when they are exceptional examples of the breed to improve quality of the flock. The center of chart shows how best to mate offspring of each paring to offspring of another paring to maintain diversity. Also breeding brothers and sisters is not recommended as recessive traits are more likely to present in their offspring. To best use line breeding you set up two breeding pens in spring and tag all the birds you own to know lineage.

 

[malcom]

Ok so for the first mateing the offspring are split into two groups cocks and hens. Hens stay with father cock while cockerels go with the mother hen. Now how do you chuse which ones to breed back to the original parents? And after that mateing how do you decide which ones to x with in the center and which one gets x with the original. At the end you will have 16 pairs the far left cock and far right hen are brot back together to start it all over again ? I have a natural eye for picking things out and I think I could be an exceptional breeder if I could only better understand what is going on within this system. I am not trying to be a retard here I really beleave that I can help preserve and most likely improve which ever bird I chuse to go with. Any other information would be nice hell just a kick in the right direction I know how to read so that is a plus.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Not that you'd end with 16 breeding pens but rather many options to breed. Having two breeding pens is usually enough and you'd be breeding the fathers line and mothers line each spring. You select the breeders by what ever method is important to you. Say you don't care about show quality birds or breed standard of perfection and only want to move your flock forward in faster maturity, size and early egg laying. Well, those are the things you'd keep notes about by tag number or tag color of bird and choose those to breed forward. You have your notes on bird lineage so would choose the most logical rooster with the best traits your looking for. If you want to aid in maintaining endangered breeds then you'd keep track of what's important in the standard of perfection for that breed and color. Close study of the written, and ideal form of that breed illustrations.

All said and done, after so many generations you can select a cockerel from either line and pullets form the opposite line and start all over. Line breeding maintains enough diversity that flocks don't need outsourcing of genetics at all. There are 50 year old closed flocks being bred to standard of perfection. Closed meaning they are not bringing in new blood, they are line breeding. Of course a small backyard flock couldn't maintain diversity that long but larger farm flocks can.

Things that start to happen with closed flocks if there is not enough diversity, needing to bring in a few new breeders, is vitality/vigor of the birds and poorer and poorer hatching rates. Besides undesirable visual traits that may pop up these are important signs of inbreeding and need for a new rooster or quality pullets to infuse into the line.