Future Breed Creation Project

[cubalaya]

If you look hard you will find

 

[SarahGfa]

If you look hard you will find

Where to look? I have tried looking for cubalaya chicks for more than a year, but only a few hatcheries have them and usually out of stock. I can only find Cuban Game Fowl hatching eggs for sale on ebay, no cubalaya.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

If you look hard you will find

Not always. Several breeds I adore are simply unavailable in the US, let alone my region.

And then there are the different varieties i would love to create of breeds that are already around and haven't been made by anyone else that I'm aware of

 

[cubalaya]

You dont want hatchery cubalayas. Buy from a breeder

 

[SarahGfa]

You dont want hatchery cubalayas. Buy from a breeder

Do you sell cubalaya chicks or hatching eggs?

 

[phasianidae]

Hi Alex,

You've brought up a great topic! I think it's great that you want to make a new breed. To answer your question on what is needed as far as numbers, only two. One rooster and one hen. The topic of inbreeding does not relate to chickens in the same way that it does to many other animals. The reason for this is their productivity. If you're breeding cattle and you only have one cow and one bull, you will only have one calf from which to make your selection. If that solitary calf turns out to be infertile you would be in trouble. Contrast that with chickens, if you have a decently productive hen, you can get 250+ chicks per year. Now of course if you're making a new breed you will likely be using more than two breeds as your foundation, so you would naturally be starting with more than two birds; but to make my point, even years down the road you could cull down to just one rooster and one hen and still carry your breed forward.

I write that just to illustrate that inbreeding in itself is not much of a concern. In practicality, you'll probably find that there's a sweet spot as to how many hens/roosters to retain for breeding each year. I would want to keep few enough in that I've culled them hard and there is a degree of uniformity, while still having enough hens to produce big numbers of chicks to select from. If you're going to be working with a lot of different genes, you will need to hatch significant numbers. Every additional gene that you're dealing with exponentially increases the number of chicks you will need to hatch in order to get one that has them all.

It's amazing that so few breeds have been created in the last one hundred years, but our society is much less agrarian than it used to be. The amount of people who have a deep understanding of chicken phenotype genetics is very small. The percentage of those people who also have the vision, time, space, and dedication is of course even smaller.

If you aren't aware of him already, check out Dr. Tom Whiting of Whiting Farms. The articles on his website as well as the videos of him on youtube contain some valuable information to anyone working on chicken breeding and genetics.

Ryan

 

[Alex_Zurago]

Hi Alex,

You've brought up a great topic! I think it's great that you want to make a new breed. To answer your question on what is needed as far as numbers, only two. One rooster and one hen. The topic of inbreeding does not relate to chickens in the same way that it does to many other animals. The reason for this is their productivity. If you're breeding cattle and you only have one cow and one bull, you will only have one calf from which to make your selection. If that solitary calf turns out to be infertile you would be in trouble. Contrast that with chickens, if you have a decently productive hen, you can get 250+ chicks per year. Now of course if you're making a new breed you will likely be using more than two breeds as your foundation, so you would naturally be starting with more than two birds; but to make my point, even years down the road you could cull down to just one rooster and one hen and still carry your breed forward.

I write that just to illustrate that inbreeding in itself is not much of a concern. In practicality, you'll probably find that there's a sweet spot as to how many hens/roosters to retain for breeding each year. I would want to keep few enough in that I've culled them hard and there is a degree of uniformity, while still having enough hens to produce big numbers of chicks to select from. If you're going to be working with a lot of different genes, you will need to hatch significant numbers. Every additional gene that you're dealing with exponentially increases the number of chicks you will need to hatch in order to get one that has them all.

It's amazing that so few breeds have been created in the last one hundred years, but our society is much less agrarian than it used to be. The amount of people who have a deep understanding of chicken phenotype genetics is very small. The percentage of those people who also have the vision, time, space, and dedication is of course even smaller.

If you aren't aware of him already, check out Dr. Tom Whiting of Whiting Farms. The articles on his website as well as the videos of him on youtube contain some valuable information to anyone working on chicken breeding and genetics.

Ryan

Thank you, I didn't see this until just now but I've been watching a lot of Kenny Troiano Bred to Perfection Podcasts on how to narrow a gene pool through inbreeding and linebreeding without causing inbreeding depression.

I have a full outline of which breeds are involved, where I will get them, which traits are sex linked, and how to select to get proper seed fowl to run through his founders program to build consistency and good breed representation

 

[phasianidae]

Thank you, I didn't see this until just now but I've been watching a lot of Kenny Troiano Bred to Perfection Podcasts on how to narrow a gene pool through inbreeding and linebreeding without causing inbreeding depression.

I have a full outline of which breeds are involved, where I will get them, which traits are sex linked, and how to select to get proper seed fowl to run through his founders program to build consistency and good breed representation

It's a great podcast. The episodes with Danny Feathers are golden. Danny tells a few stories of how he created a couple of his lines -- great info. If I remember correctly, he even mentions how he inbred brother x sister seven generations in a row without any negative effects.

 

[Alex_Zurago]

It's a great podcast. The episodes with Danny Feathers are golden. Danny tells a few stories of how he created a couple of his lines -- great info. If I remember correctly, he even mentions how he inbred brother x sister seven generations in a row without any negative effects.

Yeah the difficulty is I'm trying to find ways to shrink the number of makings to get all the traits onto a set of seed fowl to get improvement and consistency. I want it to have beard and muff with blue Egg gene but I want it fibro so I'm looking for fibro easter eggers and fibro Ameraucanas and have had no such luck

 

[cubalaya]

I have sold cubalayas and eggs in the past. I may do something in January where i can get prepaid for hatching and growing out white cubalayas for interested buyers. I will no longer do large hatches based on people saying they want them or hold them indefinitely while all the expenses and care falls on me. I have mostly young birds and the Cubalayas that i have already could last me the rest of my life. So watch in January or contact me then on the prepay