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I must be dense, because I still don't get it. Number one, if I were improving my flock, I wouldnt be breeding, for example, a wrong eye color back into the flock. That would be culled. In breeding a brother/sister, you don't know what genetic dna has been passed on to each from the father/mother. Just because they are brother/sister, doesnt mean they are cloned. If you hatch out 20 eggs from a roo and a hen, odds are you'll have 20 different looking babies, unless from a inbred line already. I don't mean to be argumentative, I just think this isnt as simplistic as its made out to be.
I hope the genetics guru chimes in here.
I must be dense as well and I have a degree in molecular genetics. Any form of inbreeding has the potential to turn out very bad. Mother/son, father/daughter, brother/sister matings all have risks. The risk of a build up of recessive genes in the population goes up drastically with related matings.
To breed traits in or out usually takes generations of careful back crossing. That is you breed distant relatives to enhance the trait of interest in the gene pool. Distant in this case usually means offspring separated by at least 2, preferably 3 or 4, matings with no common parentage.
But then birds area a strange brew genetically and I'm not an expert in avian genes. I guess on this one I'll go with hard data from breeders and dump the $50,000 education.
Still doesn't make since to me.