How many chickens for genetic diversity?

[wishful]

If you're trying to establish a breed/get back to the standards/some such thing (for example if you wanted to try to recreate white Hollands from the foundation breeds or develop a flock of barred Hollands bred to the standard, to try to preserve the breed) how many birds do you need to prevent inbreeding? Seems like if you're trying to develop a line or breed or whatever, you aren't really going to be wanting to bring outside blood in because it's going to take you some steps back, genetically, but you also obviously can't just keep breeding the same five chickens or whatever and expect good results. Does anyone know what the minimum number is that you could have and still have enough genetic diversity to avoid problems breeding with just your chickens for many generations?

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I'm going to give you a bump because I'd like to hear some opinions on this myself.

.....Alan.

 

[Mahonri]

Inbreeding in chickens is not a problem like it is in mammals. Some folks do line breeding with show quality birds (or birds with desirable traits) for many generations.

Although I will say that I recently hatched 38 chicks of one breed from three different breeders including eggs from my own flock.

I'll be keeping the 15 best pullets and 2 best roos.

 

[wishful]

Thanks for the info, Mahonri. So it's ok to inbreed a fair amount, or it's still an issue but just not nearly as bad, so you can use the same blood for a fair while without needing to get any new chickens into your breeding program? Either way, it's good to know I wouldn't give my chickens horrible deformities or any such thing by keeping a smallish flock.

 

[Surehatch]

Good thread, might be a good idea to introduce some new genes into the pool every now and then to keep your flock strong and healthy

 

[Bantimna]

Generally if you are looking to improve a breed then inbreeding will be necessary.
A good thing to do is to introduce a non inbred bird into the flock every few years.
Inbreeding needs to be carefully monitored, if you breed in too much then problems can a rise, if too little you might be having a long time before you get the type and standard the bird you are looking for.
And it would be best to hatch out many chicks, and choose the best and hatch out many again and carry on like such, to get the desired bird.