General chicken conformation

[Cammo77]

Morning all. I have read a few breed standards and have looked at a heck of a lot of photos and videos of different breeds of chickens since catching the bug and there's plenty of shapes and sizes of bird out there. I noticed a lot of the dual purpose or land race breeds have similar body shape. Are there any rules to good conformation for both hen and rooster in such breeds? If I was to breed crossbred birds what should I aim to breed for conformation wise? I'm coming from a horse/cattle/sheep breeding background so please forgive my thinking if I'm way off on my questions. Cheers.

I'll add a photo of my accidental stud/idiot young crossbred cockeral that I'm stuck with for now

 

[AprilWC]

A lot would really depend on your goals.

Are you interested in showing? If so, I would start with birds from an experienced breeder in a breed you are interested in.

If you just want to breed dual purpose chickens, I would want:
* good laying (4+ eggs per week)
* good foraging ability and/or good feed to meat conversion
* broad back and breast
* strong legs with wide stance
* relatively quick growth (ready to butcher in 4-6 months)

I also interact with my birds so a good temperament is important to me.

Says the person raising Jersey Giants, a breed that is NOT fast growing or have good feed to meat.

 

[Cammo77]

A lot would really depend on your goals.

Are you interested in showing? If so, I would start with birds from an experienced breeder in a breed you are interested in.

If you just want to breed dual purpose chickens, I would want:
* good laying (4+ eggs per week)
* good foraging ability and/or good feed to meat conversion
* broad back and breast
* strong legs with wide stance
* relatively quick growth (ready to butcher in 4-6 months)

I also interact with my birds so a good temperament is important to me.

Says the person raising Jersey Giants, a breed that is NOT fast growing or have good feed to meat.

My plan was to breed a few pure Barnevelder as layers (maybe show if they're good enough) possibly using them as a base for my other line.

Great tips thank you. That's the sort of thing I was wondering. I was looking closely at Indian game at an auction the other day wondering what it would dress out like and whether it could breed a stockier type bird. That's what got me thinking about general conformation.

 

[SourRoses]

I understand about the conformation having grown up around horse breeding and I still think of it that way!

It's much harder to find informative conversations about the way chickens are built than the color genetics. So it's always interesting to me when people are talking about it.

Basically, the build is dependent on the breed. Often the standards will use words like "balanced", but just what balance is seems to be an issue of human perception. So you have to look at pictures to understand what they were going for (or at least I do). In my perception, too many breeds went for a deep U shape between the neck, back, and tail. I want a horizontal chicken with a flowing tail (Sumatra shaped, but rounder and bigger and spotty), so it looks like a fat pony. Oops! Are my breeding goals based on horses? I guess that slipped in there! At least I was never into racing, lol.

Aside: There is such a thing as "thoroughbred chickens", not a breed but that the quality of the breeding was "thorough" with the result homogenous. The term seems to be the origin of the Thoroughbred horse name.

The game type birds you mentioned have a very different body to the typical laying breed. A result that falls in the middle may not lay very well.
One of the few conformational tidbits I've picked up (and I'm always looking for more) is that egg size is in part controlled by the width of the pelvic aperture, which is mostly determined by the thickness of the skeleton in general. So thinner bones make for a wider opening. The legs are an easy and reliable way to tell. So compare the thin legs of a Leghorn, which lay rather large eggs for their body size, to the legs of a dual purpose breed. It counts for the roosters too, as half the genes of their female offspring will come from them. In my breeding program I'm selecting for both general size and dainty bones (hopefully not far enough to be detrimental) because I want the biggest eggs.