Chicken Breeding Template

[MrsChicky55]

With all that to keep track perhaps something more than a #2 lead and big chief tablet would be more useful.

You can get toe punches from Amazon for cheap. I've read too many reviews and comments here about the punches not being clean holes and then healing over.

All my chicks go into the same brooder after they hatch. I use a single edge razor(I'm a barber so thats what I have available) and instead of toe punching I gently slice through the webbing where the punch would be. I then have a small bowl beside me full of powdered alum that I dip that foot in. The alum just draws the cut area up and stops any blood flow. I'm not worried about the blood loss. That's minimal but there always seem to be one litlle chick that becomes a pecker when he sees that blood and chases all the chicks going after that foot and keeps the cuts fresh and bleeding.

At their rate a growth if your not checking bands or zip ties every couple three days those first couple weeks they could get hurt.

I’m thinking maybe my little girls tiny plastic rubber hair bands.

 

[Fairview01]

I’m thinking maybe my little girls tiny plastic rubber hair bands.

Consider how small and delicate and how little pressure will be necessary to create a tourniquet and block blood flow.

 

[Rancher3535]

There are several things you can do to mark the chicks the first couple of weeks. A good friend in Australia uses permanent markers as the come out of the incubator/hatcher. And that seems to work really well for her. She toe punches them but the marker on top of the head is a quick ID that first two weeks or so. One day she goes through and checks all of her orange chicks, and other day the blue etc. As they lose their chick feathers they lose the marker color.

 

[MrsChicky55]

Consider how small and delicate and how little pressure will be necessary to create a tourniquet and block blood flow.

I used the rubber bands, they are just the right size for the moment. Loose, but not so loose as to fall off. I'm watching closely though to make sure they don't get snug. Like you said, not looking for a tourniquet.

 

[MrsChicky55]

So for right now I just documented everything about each bird on scratch paper. Still hoping someone has a document template they might share. In nursing we document all this info on what we call our "brains". Maybe I just need to develop my own chicken "brain" sheet. So far I documented:

Current color (for identification)
names, feathering (beard & muffs for now, next week sizzle, frizzle, silkie, frilkie)
skin color (blue, black, pink, holes, etc.)
beak color maybe shape once the egg tooth falls off
feet- (toes, nails, color, curled, feathering, etc.)

Later I'll need to add egg, sex, etc. Anything else I'm missing?

 

[MrsChicky55]

I'm thinking about using this spiral line breeding with my Marans, and Welsummers, for now I’m mostly going to focus on egg color and try to work on some really basic SOP with them. But recognizing I need to focus on 1 breed for the moment as a newbie, so my main focus will be with my silkies for now. I’m hoping to show them with my daughter in 4-H. The plan is to make a small business of it, just enough to cover my chicken expenses. That way I can hatch out a lot of chicks, grow out the best and sell the rest. (fingers crossed, the best laid plans)

You have a lot more experience with this spiral breeding program than I do. I’m a little concerned about how it would work for my silkie program. See we are raising Frizzles. The problem is I can’t breed a Frizzle to a Frizzle without causing genetic health issues. So I can’t just keep all my females from Hen A in with Hen A if the Rooster is a Frizzle and the daughter is a Frizzle. So I’d have to have at least 6 pens I think. But then too I want to try to separate out my silkie feathered stock from my barbed feather stock. Would that put it at 9 or 12 pens? I’d have to write it all out. Then too there are so many colors of silkies. Given the colors I hatched out I was planning on focusing on blues/lavenders, whites, and paints. I’d have to have a lot more stock and facilities I think to make the spiral breeding program work for me. Hopefully a few years down the line that would work. I’m planning on doing small chicken tractors as breeding pens. I think the spiral breeding program is something for me to work towards once I have more stock. I’m going to have to keep very good records on parentage until then and probably bring in new chicks as well. For now my hope is to group 2-3 hens/cock in the right groupings based on color and feather type. It will get more complicated after that so I really need to document parentage as best I can. If I can make the right color pairings, I might be able to identify which chicks came from each hen, but again, very good documentation needed. Am I over complicating this? Do you think there’s a way I could make the spiral breeding program work with that many variables?

I’m not too worried about the zoo easy program being too complicated. I’m a nurse and I worked in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. This program looks SO much like my favorite program we use to document in the hospital, that’s why I was drawn to it, it looks super easy even though it’s complex. However, in the hospital nurses also always carried around a version of that on paper in our pocket for quick reference, we call it our “brains”. I’m hoping to find a formatted document similar to that to keep the same type of records on as I really don’t need it to be all that fancy and high tech to document the necessary info. So far I’ve documented what info I can about each chick:

Down color/name for identification
Coloring traits
Feathers (Beard muffs, Frizzle/smooth, silkie vs. barbed, etc.)
Skin- (Black,Navy Blue, Pale Blue, pink holes, etc.)
Feet (# of toes, # of nails, feet coloring, feather coloring to which toe, etc.)
Beak - color & slope
Head (Vaulted, skull)


Things I’d like to record later:
Sex
Comb (type and color)
Body type (Angles for SOP)
Wings
Year born
Which pen
Which Rooster
Possible Mothers
colors thrown in offspring
I’m sure there will be others, that’s just off the top of my head.

I just need to find a good format or layout to document all that info.

I am curious about the toe punch system. It could be a great way for me to record which pen/year? But how do you toe punch? Is it painful? Is it better than the ankle clamps/zip ties?

 

[MrsChicky55]

So I was on Facebook today and there just happened to be a thread in one of the Silkie groups that I belong to. Most of the major breeders there seem to use zooeasy or a similar program, also a hatching App. Darn it, now I can't find the thread so I can't see what the names of the other program and App are! Bummer!

 

[AGeese]

I was just searching around for something similar, I'm a complete newb to breeding and have a very low level understanding of genetics, don't quiz me! Anyway I went to the main ZooEasy website and watched the video which wasn't very informative and they basically said so you can prevent inbreeding (not exact quote), but isn't that a big part of breeding poultry?

Edit: the standalone version is no more.