But work worthy of doing? Increasing the productivity of the standard bred fowl can only improve the ability to breed them, as the more eggs you get the more you have to hatch and the more you can improve the breed. It only stands to reason that birds that fertile and productive are also going to be those that pass along their traits more readily and easily, wouldn't it?
I got a taste of that just this past year when I was doing some experiments on a different hatching method and also with my first foray into using a regular incubator. In each case, using more standard bred WR eggs than any other but including eggs from hatchery stock in the coop, I consistently hatched out WAY more hatchery mix birds each time. So much so that out of four incubation attempts I only had 2 full blood standard bred WR chicks make it to hatch. On the other hand, I had 22+ of the hatchery stock mix to make it to hatch. That hatchery stock sampling were from one BA and one ancient WR, the standard bred sampling came from one WR and one Delaware. The standard bred Delawares had no showing at all as not one of theirs made it past the 10th day.
I know it's not a double blind study, the gene sampling too small, and there are too many variables to mention, but it was pretty convincing to me all the same. Put it down to mutt vigor or increased fecundity, but the hatchery stock seem like they possess a pretty viable offering to improve the current performance of some standard bred birds. And I know that statement just made some faces pucker up, but I'm not likely to care about that. I'm just thinking out loud and that idea has been floating around in there for some time now.
I think that serious breeding work is worth doing, but most folks I know don't want to do that much work. It's easier to get hatchery stock and replenish from that, or simply let your birds flock mate than it is to breed to any type of standard.
I did not anticipate SOP breeding when I first decided I wanted chickens for eggs, meat, and farm help. But after researching things and seeing the differences in appearance of hatchery vs standard bred stock, and knowing that I wanted to help preserve an old breed, I switched gears to breed to the SOP so that my Javas looked like Javas and if I was going to encourage other folks to help keep them from nearly going extinct again, that I was disseminating birds that at least sort of resembled what they are supposed to look like, even though they still have some improvements that I'm working on. But it's about needs and priorities. A large priority for us having chickens was not just utility farm birds, but also birds to connect us with history. For people that simply have a priority for eggs, meat, or pretty feathers, most any hatchery bird will do that for them, while costing less and taking up less time and energy.
Technically if you were a farmer letting your birds free range and flock mate without making actual breeding decisions, after a while, that would be breeding to some sort of standard, because survival of the fittest would take over and you'd only be getting the birds that were smart enough and hardy enough to survive. I read an article recently about raising turkeys in an old book and the author mentioned that the farm wife was the one that generally took care of the poultry flocks, and she didn't have time to be worrying about whether or not they had the right feather color or whatnot. Her priority was to have food on the table and to sell birds to make money to run her household. That made me laugh.
Personally, I think that too many show people have for too long been worried about making pretty birds to win ribbons, rather than looking at their utility purposes. The day I found on the APA's website a blurb about exhibition birds not laying that well - that was disturbing. How can you perpetuate these birds if they don't lay? There was just a discussion in an APA group with some folks mentioning this and that they knew of breeders that were trying to keep their birds from doing a lot of laying, because they wanted good looking birds that could win ribbons and a hard working laying hen is likely not going to be as pretty. That only serves the purpose of people looking for ribbons, not people that want useful birds or want to help preserve a breed standard.
It's interesting that you saw a difference in hatching between the standard bred and hatchery. Does make you think that the hybrid vigor could be at work. We only have ever had our standard bred Javas, except when I was a kid and that doesn't count because they were there for layers, not seriously breeding. But I know that I don't have nearly the amount of problems with our birds that my friends who have hatchery birds have. But then too, part of that could be differences in husbandry.
For me, I would not want to have recently crossbred Javas, but that's a preference based on my historical research and experience with them. But I can see that if there are SOP breeders out there that have been focusing too much on appearance characteristics and not as much on production and hardiness, then if they can't fix that problem, infusing with hatchery stock may help. But I have a feeling that there are enough show breeders that don't think there is a problem.
Today, there really is no great need to keep productive birds. We have discretionary money that our ancestors did not have, so we can keep totally useless chickens, because we can go to the store to get eggs and meat to feed our families. If people were dependent on feeding themselves and their families with what they could grow and raise, like their ancestors - they'd be less concerned about a pretty feather duster and more concerned about having a chicken that lays decently and gives them meat.
