Going "whole hog"

[MrChicken207]

I'm wondering what groups like ALBC and ABA do when they conduct population counts. Do they count all of the birds of the breed, or just the birds that would be selected for breeding? Anyone know?

 

[Lbrad7]

I have a few comments and questions about this topic. First there seems to be an incredible amount of snobbery in these heritage breeders who have these "pristine" bloodlines. I have bought several breeds from the top names in Welsummers and French Black Copper Marans and when you mention that you want to purchase birds from another well known breeder everyone flies into a tissie. "oh you can't foul the bloodlines!!!!" "If you want more birds, I will hook you up with someone who can take care of you" Then when you talk to the other breeder, they think the other is "ok" but not up to their standard.

My question is this...if these breeders keep working with the same birds, how do you avoid excessive inbreeding??? It seems to me that these breeders have to be either inbreeding the the extreme or sneaking in a outside bird here and there to avoid hatching out birds with two heads or 5 legs. I'm not an expert in genetics, but that seems to be high school biology.

I hope I haven't offended anyone, that is not my intent. I just love the Welsummer and Marans breeds and I am getting really aggravated at dealing with the heritage breeders. How can you ever strenghten a breeds genetics if you keep working with the few well known breeders stock? I imagine they can all be traced back to the same imported trios.....just my thoughts on the subject.

 

[Rafter 7 Paint Horses]

There are a lot of things to consider before jumping into this.

Is there a market for eggs, chicks, chickens in your area? Are there swap meets, flea markets, small animal auctions in your area?
Go to these and look around. Price the chickens that are there for sale. Talk to the sellers, see what is their best sellers and why.
Go several times, get a good feel for what is popular in your area.

If you intend to make a business from this, you will have to supply what the public wants, not just what you like.
Get an exotic breed also. Something that is unusual, if you get their attention, you can make sales.
It is all in the marketing.

If there is no market for chickens in your area right now, start small and create one.

DH has been doing this for about 45 years. Only sell healthy stock, be honest, and stand behind your product.
We have gotten many repeat customers because we "made it right" for someone who wasn't happy with their purchase.
Be social, not just business. People who are buying animals like to be talked to. Give your advise when asked, but don't push your ideas about raising them when not asked for it. Nobody wants to feel like they are not smart enough to take care of their animals. If they don't know, they will usually ask.
We give our phone number out and tell them to call if they have any questions. We have calls often for suggestions on many things. If I know, I tell them and if I don't, I tell them I will try to find out and call them. Then I do it.

If you don't have the knack for talking to people, you will not do well with this.

We do well hatching and selling chickens. We started with the best stock we could afford, then built on that.
If you want to start with hatchery stock, then go ahead. When you are able, get better brood stock.
Everyone has to start somewhere. Lots of people get started in chickens from buying a few chicks from a feed store...(hatchery chicks)...and they don't even know what breed they are. The TSC's here were selling "Assorted Reds", so you would be ahead right from the start if you could tell them what breed they are buying.

I hope I have helped you.

Jean

 

[n3kms]

Quote:
I was wondering about some of these things as well. If a bird meets the requirements for the breed then it looks like it would be carrying most of the same genes as the original members of the breed. To maintain a strick line the way it is described in this thread, then it would seem you would have to keep culling a lot due to inbreeding for years and years and years. In breeding of other purebred animals most people want to bring in strengthening characteristics. All these breeds originally came from other breeds to start with anyway that were bred together to get certain characteristics that they desired. So , keeping the same characteristics would be preserving the breed.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Well, yes, in some breeds there is a considerable amount of backbiting and snobbery and me-good-everyone-else-bad

OTOH, there are some legitimate reasons for discouraging people from mixing bloodlines. Try to separate yourself for a moment from analogous issues in human society, and just look at the actual issue with *chickens*. Different lines are somewhat different gene pools; first, if you mix them you lose some genetic diversity, and second, because of the way polygenic traits work (and most traits ARE polygenic, i.e. affected by multiple genes) crossing two lines, each of which has excellent qualities and may indeed look pretty similar, does NOT always give you an equally-excellent result and in some cases can set things back to a kind of mediocrity that requires many generations MORE selection to escape from. Even if the two lines are equally "good" and equally old-and-authentic-and-well-tended lines of the breed.

This is not theory (although if you WANT the theory to explain why it happens, I can certainly talk genetics with you); it is the way it WORKS, in real life.

My question is this...if these breeders keep working with the same birds, how do you avoid excessive inbreeding??? It seems to me that these breeders have to be either inbreeding the the extreme or sneaking in a outside bird here and there to avoid hatching out birds with two heads or 5 legs. I'm not an expert in genetics, but that seems to be high school biology.

You need not necessarily outcross, if you started with the right gene pool to begin with and have culled effectively every generation. Chickens do not usually get inbred nearly as fast as people think they should (and it does not normally manifest itself as "two heads or five legs", usually just a depression of fertility, hatchability and/or health). Even if the population you start with DOES have some recessive-deleterious traits hiding in there that will cause problems in time, an intelligent breeding program minimizes inbreeding. You keep multiple lines/pens going, with small amounts of switching of animals between lines/pens every generation or generations. There are a number of well-worked-out, tried-and-true schemes for doing this.

So inbreeding need not be much of a problem if you conduct your breeding properly. If at some point it DOES become an issue, the best solution is generally to get just one or two roos (very good ones) from a CLOSELY RELATED line, such as someone else whose birds are from the same original source as yours. If you severely outcross, to birds of much different ancestry, you will usually find unwanted traits popping up and a dilution of the good traits you want. Again, even if that other line was itself quite a good line.

It's not that you can't mix lines of course, in general -- it's that in CONSERVATION BREEDING in particular, it is important to strictly limit the amount of it.

Quote:
Nope, not unless all you care about is the beauty-pageant aspect. There are any number of things that you cannot see -- thriftiness, disease resistance, adaptability, etc etc. Two birds can look quite alike and yet have substantially different genetic backgrounds in these other sorts of traits. It is the WHOLE PACKAGE that is the point of conservation breeding, not just the "let's have something that looks like this picture"

To maintain a strick line the way it is described in this thread, then it would seem you would have to keep culling a lot due to inbreeding for years and years and years. In breeding of other purebred animals most people want to bring in strengthening characteristics.

Actually you generally inbreed any OTHER animals to a considerable extent, too. The amount you can get away with varies among type of animal. But SERIOUS dog or cattle or etc breeders do not say "oh, let's find a really unrelated animal" -- they say "let's find as closely related and compatible-background an animal as possible, that also has a really good example of this trait that I want to strengthen".

(edited to add: there is a lot of confusion here I think about what "inbreeding" means. I am too tired and in need of lunch to define it at the moment and besides I doubt anyone really cares, but the bottom line is: You can stick with a fairly confined lineage (original pool of ancestors), without outcrossing, and really limit inbreeding pretty well if you breed intelligently.)

Again, though, there is a big difference between developing/improving a breed, versus conservation breeding to preserve older gene pools (including all them bazillions of genes that do NOT affect conspicuous things like feather color etc, but that are equally or more important in the future utility of chickens)

Just sayin',

Pat​

 

[patandchickens]

BTW, for anyone seriously interested in the topic, I highly recommend _A Conservation Breeding Handbook_ by Phil Sponenberg and, um, someone else (sorry

), available from the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Pat

 

[Lbrad7]

I have heard of the "generations" method being used but don't really know much about it. The two or three lines were you described it in your post, made it more clear to me than any of the conversations I have had with breeders in the past. Can you recomend any sources for me to find out more about it?

Thanks!!!

 

[Lbrad7]

You just answered my question! Thank you!

 

[MrChicken207]

So, in theory, if you started with a trio or two from another breeder, and then work up to 3 or 4 pens of a rooster and a half dozen hens bred out of that, then switch males (kind of like a round robin) every 3 years, you'd be goodfor a decade or so. Then, you find an owner of some "cousins" of your birds, and acquire (buy, trade, beg, etc.) 2 or 3 roosters from them, in theory you would be good for another few generations (another decade or so). So, in theory, you could end up with a good flock of birds, with very little outcrossing, that would last almost a quarter century. all starting from a trio or two fro a breeder. Am I seeing/explaining this correctly?

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Well, it would really be a whole big lot better to start with more than just a trio (by "start with" I mean in the first few generations, and ideally all should be somewhat related) -- but otherwise, yes, that's basically it. And of course cull appropriately each generation, having kept detailed enough records that your culling can be intelligently done.

Exactly *how* long you can go on in this way without seeing inbreeding problems is kind of a turkey shoot, depending on the (invisible) genetics of your original birds.

As far as *how* to go about keeping several lines/pens going, and choosing among options of how to allow controlled gene flow between them, there are all sorts of different schemes that different people use. Google line-breeding chickens, or read some chicken breeding/genetics books, or the book from ALBC, for pros and cons of different schemes. IMO a lot of them work about as well as each other, so it is "merely" a matter of avoiding making really *stupid* choices <g>

Good luck, have fun,

Pat