Developing My Own Breed Of Large Gamefowl For Free Range Survival (Junglefowl x Liege)

[MysteryChicken]

You're birds are looking good. I'm gonna be doing something similar next spring. I got two Throw back birds from my Wheaten Crele Orpington project, that have more of a Gamefowl type body instead of Orpington, so I'm gonna repurpose the project.

The breed I'm gonna create is gonna be called Rainbow Runners. They're gonna be any color, but are gonna have barring which will help with breaking up their pattern when in the woods.

They're gonna be a Large Heavyweight survivalist breed. Having the running, & jumping abilities of the Malay, Red JungleFowl hybrids, & Sumatra.

Egg color is gonna be light brown to pastel green.

Birds being used for the project are:

Father, & Daughter throw back birds.

Malays

Black Sumatra

My Cracker Hens

Easter Eggers

American Game cross

Heritage Plymouth Barred Rock to help produce better barring, & help keep large size.

They're gonna have walnut combs, & the goal is white skin, but I guess yellow skin would be fine too. And they're gonna be both bearded, & none bearded.

 

[BoogieWight]

So how do I keep the size of the F1s?

That is way beyond me man. I have searched and searched for anything useful on that front. I think it is just one of those things that we can't control yet. Unless things have changed broiler birds are still created using it to our advantage. That is one reason why you can't keep breeding broilers together and expect them to maintain size and growth rate.

 

[SunflowerKing]

That is way beyond me man. I have searched and searched for anything useful on that front. I think it is just one of those things that we can't control yet. Unless things have changed broiler birds are still created using it to our advantage. That is one reason why you can't keep breeding broilers together and expect them to maintain size and growth rate.

So the key is actually to have two seperate flocks that are repeatedly crossbred to create your monster size flock? Then, you grow the monster birds to full size and cull for meat. Methinks that can be done.

 

[SunflowerKing]

So the key is actually to have two seperate flocks that are repeatedly crossbred to create your monster size flock? Then, you grow the monster birds to full size and cull for meat. Methinks that can be done.

I was already thinking about keeping the Jersey giants and gamefowwl hybrids seperate so thats fine. Ill just take an extra rooster and extra hens from both breeds and breed the monster bird in isolation.

 

[BoogieWight]

I was already thinking about keeping the Jersey giants and gamefowwl hybrids seperate so thats fine. Ill just take an extra rooster and extra hens from both breeds and breed the monster bird in isolation.

I don't think it works with every breed. Like I was saying, I don't really understand the magic behind the curtain. I would say that you could ask it as a general question on here, but it is hit or miss on getting an answer to your questions if they go to deep. I have also seen "hybrid vigor" called into question on the basis that it is just a chance amalgamation of genetics. Though that does seem more like semantics of definition than a useful point being made.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

My guess is that you could keep subsequent generations large by making a bunch of F2s off of a breeding of the best F1 brother and sister and spamming as many of those F2s as possible. The odds are that in the F2s there will be enough generic variation to find a couple of individuals that have the traits you want, them line breed those best F2s back to your F1s and do that on down the line.

The key seems to be to make many, many, chicks and find what you want within those many individuals.

Here’s an update video that covers several of my projects:

 

[SunflowerKing]

My guess is that you could keep subsequent generations large by making a bunch of F2s off of a breeding of the best F1 brother and sister and spamming as many of those F2s as possible. The odds are that in the F2s there will be enough generic variation to find a couple of individuals that have the traits you want, them line breed those best F2s back to your F1s and do that on down the line.

The key seems to be to make many, many, chicks and find what you want within those many individuals.

Here’s an update video that covers several of my projects:

I watched this several times already to really soak up the things you said. I was very sorry to hear about the liege x aseel... but they aren't out of the game yet! I cant wait to see which project of yours would work best for me on my homestead.

I hope that you can "spam" those liege x aseel F2s. I have to think so are bound to survive. Is your plan to breed some of this project with your larger crackers?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I watched this several times already to really soak up the things you said. I was very sorry to hear about the liege x aseel... but they aren't out of the game yet! I cant wait to see which project of yours would work best for me on my homestead.

I hope that you can "spam" those liege x aseel F2s. I have to think so are bound to survive. Is your plan to breed some of this project with your larger crackers?

There were originally 3 pure Liege hens and I flock bred them to the aseel cock. Which means I don't know which chicks came from which Liege. However, there are some clues that indicate which chicks may have came from where based upon inherit traits. The relevance is that of my three pure Liege, two got sick during the summer rains as the chicks did. One died. The other recovered but is still a bit gaunt. The pure aseel hen also died, but the pure aseel cock survived fine (actually the pure aseel got sick during a hurricane, seemed to recover in the days to follow, then got penned under a door and was killed by a fireant swarm). The third Liege never got sick and is very thick, agile, and vigorous. The vigorous Liege has high tail carriage and gold hackles, the other two have/had low tail carriage. The aseel cock has low tail carriage. The two surviving and vigorous half-breed chicks from the first batch have high tail carriage and the young stag has gold hackles. I strongly suspect the vigorous Liege produced those two survivors.

This shows the drawback to flock breeding. I don't know which offspring came from where when I am presented with exceptional traits in offspring. The advantage to flock breeding is that I can make many birds quickly and get a wide array of genetics to evaluate next to each other. I will still flock breed but I will also do more individual pairings.

I am likely going to use the strong Liege as my primary breeding Liege from this point forward.

Although I have traded my aseel off the farm, my brother has aseel from the same general bloodline and breeder. If needbe I can tap into his stock to make more F1s.

I believe the orientals are struggling with botulism or a similar type poisoning that is accompanying the rains. I've noticed my Crackers and several of the Blueface won't touch certain groups of maggots in some compost areas when I expose the maggots. I also suspect some mud puddles that only fill during heavy rains could be sources of botulism out of the sand. It only seems to heavily effect the orientals. The symptoms are textbook botulism symptoms, but generally only happen after heavy downpours.

 

[SunflowerKing]

There were originally 3 pure Liege hens and I flock bred them to the aseel cock. Which means I don't know which chicks came from which Liege. However, there are some clues that indicate which chicks may have came from where based upon inherit traits. The relevance is that of my three pure Liege, two got sick during the summer rains as the chicks did. One died. The other recovered but is still a bit gaunt. The pure aseel hen also died, but the pure aseel cock survived fine (actually the pure aseel got sick during a hurricane, seemed to recover in the days to follow, then got penned under a door and was killed by a fireant swarm). The third Liege never got sick and is very thick, agile, and vigorous. The vigorous Liege has high tail carriage and gold hackles, the other two have/had low tail carriage. The aseel cock has low tail carriage. The two surviving and vigorous half-breed chicks from the first batch have high tail carriage and the young stag has gold hackles. I strongly suspect the vigorous Liege produced those two survivors.

This shows the drawback to flock breeding. I don't know which offspring came from where when I am presented with exceptional traits in offspring. The advantage to flock breeding is that I can make many birds quickly and get a wide array of genetics to evaluate next to each other. I will still flock breed but I will also do more individual pairings.

I am likely going to use the strong Liege as my primary breeding Liege from this point forward.

Although I have traded my aseel off the farm, my brother has aseel from the same general bloodline and breeder. If needbe I can tap into his stock to make more F1s.

I believe the orientals are struggling with botulism or a similar type poisoning that is accompanying the rains. I've noticed my Crackers and several of the Blueface won't touch certain groups of maggots in some compost areas when I expose the maggots. I also suspect some mud puddles that only fill during heavy rains could be sources of botulism out of the sand. It only seems to heavily effect the orientals. The symptoms are textbook botulism symptoms, but generally only happen after heavy downpours.

Amazing to think you are breeding a bird to survive predators and end up having most die from rainy conditions. God certainly can throw a curveball sometimes. Keep the videos coming! I am excited to see what this yields!

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

These are the two surviving aseel x Liege. All of their siblings have perished from the "rain sickness" (and a couple from hawks when chicks) but these two are resilient. To the extent that I was unable to quickly spam a flock of crosses due to their intolerance of whatever it is in my environment they can't handle, I consider the aseel x Liege to a failure. However, that doesn't mean that the brother x sister crossing won't lead to good results, or that crossing either of these two birds back into others won't work well. I do plan to cross these two both to each other and to every other kind of bird I have to see what the results are. The pullet is absolutely gorgeous for the body type I want a hen to have and the cockerel looks like a dinosaur.

I penned up Number 1 (my Cracker brood cock) and turned the Blueface stag out to free range. He's been in a coop his whole life so he has a lot of shaping up to do. I consider him overweight and dumpy looking at the moment. He's roughly 8 months old. However, the trend has been with the Americans I've raised that they generally do look their worst about this age and don't start looking better until after the 1 year mark and after a lot of free ranging. So I'm going to give this one at least until Spring until I decide whether he survives the next round of culling. My wife already likes him so I may be stuck with him either way.