How Do I Get Chickens to Breed True?

[NatJ]

How do I get chickens to breed true. Everything I'm seeing says "Work with the breed for 5 years" is 5 years the magic number? I'm very confused if anyone would clarify this it would the greatly appreciated.

There's no magic number. And developing a new breed will typically take longer than working with an established breed.

From looking at your chart: you should plan to hatch a LOT of chicks every year after the first, because you will be getting chicks with a wide mix of traits, and you will want to choose the right ones for the next generation.

For example, smix3 will pass rose comb to half of its offspring but not to the other half--you'll have to decide which half you want. And smix2 will pass pea comb to half of its offspring. So smix4 (from crossing them) will have chicks with single combs, chicks with pea combs, chicks with rose combs, and chicks with walnut combs (rose + pea). Each comb type will be on about 1/4 of the chicks.

bmix2 is small, and smix4 is large. So your "final mix" is probably medium sized. But if you cross them back to bmix2 and pick the smallest birds, or cross them to each other and pick the smallest birds, you will get some that are smaller. Repeating for several generations will probably result in birds that are smaller yet.

You will have some chickens maturing much faster (Leghorn influence) or much slower (Brahma influence). You will have some that are better layers than others, so you will probably want to raise quite a few hens to maturity to evaluate the egg laying qualities.

And then there's selection for temperament, and maybe for body shape.

Even ignoring feather color and leg color, there are lots of traits to consider.

Time and number of chickens both make a difference. If you hatch thousands of chicks per year and pick the ones that are just right in every trait you can check, you will get offspring that breed true for those traits in a relatively short amount of time. Your chart has 4 levels of crosses, so figure at least 5-6 generations to have any traits breeding true. I don't know how many generations you can raise per year--many people only do 1 generation per year, some people manage 2 generations per year.

But if you can only hatch 20 chicks per year, you could easily be at this for many decades.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Creating a new breed could take decades, even new varieties (silkied or frizzled too) can take a few years.

 

[LapisLazuli]

If you are going for small it may be better to go for cochins instead of brahmas, as you keep the fairly small comb and leg feathering but lose the giant size.

I was using brahmas for their comb type.

 

[Ridgerunner]

@LapisLazuli you are not trying to create a breed, I'd consider it more of a type that suits you. In some ways that is just semantics but it helps with the mind-set.

For your traits there is not one gene pair that controls any of them. It's not as simple as dominant-recessive like it can be with certain colors or patterns. Either they have barring or they don't and you can see that as long as they are not white. The more gene pairs that affect a certain trait the more variations of combinations you can have. It's best to start as close as you can to your final desired result. Do you see a breed out there that has most of what you want? There is a huge advantage in starting out with as few breeds as you can and incorporate the gene pairs you want. Keep it as simple as you can.

The more different traits you are breeding for the more complicated this becomes. One big factor in this is that the more chicks you hatch and raise to the point you can select for your traits the faster your selection will go. It's not just a case of hatching chicks, you have to raise them to the point you can see the differences. That takes time and can be expensive.

Now for your traits:

small - This is in the eye of the beholder. Not sure what small means to you, bantam or a smaller full sized bird. Avoid introducing extremes like Brahma's that you have to breed out.

cold hardy - Not sure what this means to you. Naked Necks are considered by some to be cold hardy and they have single combs and no feathers on the neck. Not exactly what I'd consider cold-hardy just by looking at them. Some breeds are supposed to lay better in cold weather than others, thought I'd think any production breed would do. To many people cold-hardy is about comb size. Pea and rose combs are better than single combs. Maybe that by itself would be enough for you. For anything else how are you going to judge it?

lays a lot of eggs - Keep track of your individual hens and see which ones meet your criteria.. Keep your next generation of breeders from them, boys and girls. The boys pass on those genes to their daughters and sons too. This means you need to keep enough of them long enough so you can evaluate them for the traits you want before hatching eggs. That doesn't necessarily add generations but it does add time.

good temperament - How do you plan to evaluate this? What do you consider "good temperament"? My approach to that is that any chicken, male or female, that disrupts the peace and tranquility of my flock outside the bounds of "just being chickens" is not allowed to breed. If you confine yours maybe you are looking for chickens that take confinement well. If you want lap chickens this may play into your selection.

You can do this. How fast you get there will depend on several things. How ruthlessly you select your breeders, how well you can define and recognize the traits you want or don't want, how many chicks you hatch and evaluate, how long you have to raise them so you can evaluate them, the quality of your starting stock, how complicated you make it, and several things I can't think of right now. I'm not trying to discourage you but trying o be realistic. Good luck on your journey.

 

[jspeese]

Blue varieties do not breed true as you said. You will get, by the laws of averages and genetics, roughly 50% blue chicks (poults, ducklings, etc.), 25% black, 25% splash (varying mixes of silvery white and lavender). So-called self-blue varieties, which I think are actually solid lavender, will breed true. As will the black varieties of those breeds. By crossing the black with the splash, you will get all blue. "Blue" varieties of goslings are the result of a different genetic process and will also breed true. As someone else mentioned, hatchery stock may be genetically "contaminated" and may not sometimes breed true...still good birds, just not show quality. I've always gotten hatchery chicks. The commercial sex-link layers and free-range broilers are actually hybrids and not breeds and they won't breed true either. I never showed birds, I'm just not interested in competition although I love going to shows, but it's my understanding that getting show quality stock requires starting with decent birds and breeding it yourself, which depending on the quality of the stock and skill of the individual breeder could take a couple of years. Some breeds are easier to work with/breed than others.

 

[LapisLazuli]

Why don't red stars and black stars breed true is there a way to get them to?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Red stars and black stars are marketing names for sex link chickens. That means they are hybrids, crosses of different chickens. That might be two different chicken breeds or if they are from a hybrid egg-laying mix they are from two distinctive lines to get the genetic mix so those traits that make them sex links show up.

Through selective breeding you can get back to the genetic mix that will again give you sex links but that means keeping two separate flocks and several generations. But that just gets you back to the ability to make sex links, the other traits will not be the same as your original stars.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Why don't red stars and black stars breed true is there a way to get them to?

Because they're not a true breed and even the color isn't really true most times, there's nothing to breed true

 

[NatJ]

Why don't red stars and black stars breed true is there a way to get them to?

The sex-link traits will never breed true, because of how the genetics of sex linkage works.

If you wanted chickens that look like Red Star hens and breed true, that could be done. It's basically a Rhode Island Red with all the black changed to white. Crossing a Red Star hen to a Rhode Island Red rooster would be a good starting point for such a project (about half the chicks would look like one parent, half like the other, but the colors would not indicate their gender.)

If you wanted chickens that look like Black Star hens and breed true, that also can be done. It's probably easiest to cross a Black Star hen to a Rhode Island Red rooster also, and you'll get about half red chicks, and about half black chicks that have some red on them like the black star did. (Again, color does not indicate sex with this cross.) Working with those black ones, within a few generations you could get some that breed true for the black-with-red pattern. Or, if you just want black chickens, there are plenty of black breeds available: Black Australorps and Black Jersey Giants and Black Minorcas and so on.

If you want to produce your own sexlink chicks that are like Red Stars and Black Stars, keep a Rhode Island Red rooster with White Rock and Barred Rock hens. The chicks from the White Rock mothers will be the Red Sexlinks, the ones from the Barred Rock hens will be the Black Sexlinks. You'll get four colors of chicks in each hatch: red females, yellow males, black females, black with a yellow dot on the head males (those males grow up with white bars on their black feathers.)

 

[ChocolateMouse]

It might be best if you took a few days to study up on basic Mendellien genetics - specifically punnet squares and inheritance.

Some traits are really easy to get to breed true in just a couple generations. Blue eggs for example, or single combs, or solid black feather coloring. Other things like size, egg laying ability, complex colors, etc. take more time. Understanding the genes you're working with will help you understand how long it'll take and what crosses you should be making.

Because it takes around 6months for a bird to go from chick to adult, you'll be at it for a long time no matter what you do.