So....I think that sometime in the future I would like to breed cochins to the SOP. This would happen in a setting where roosters are legal, and I have enough space/funds to set up a breeding setup. I think that the easiest would be blue, black, and splash, because when bred together, no matter the color of the hen or the roo, you'll always get some combination of blue, black, or splash chicks. The problem with this is that splash is not a recognized color for cochins. Would I just want to focus on one color, instead of the three? Would I want to pick colors that breed true, and just keep them seperate? How many different sources do you have to use for birds to prevent over inbreeding? How many eggs do you usually hatch at once? How many do you cull down to? For cochins, who are a broody breed, would you let the birds hatch their own eggs, or no?
If you don't want splash chicks, you could breed black to blue. You will get half black chicks and half blue chicks, never any splash. Focusing on one color would be easiest, but black and blue would be pretty doable.
Inbreeding is not a bad thing if done properly. Always choose healthy chicks and never cross full siblings, and inbreeding is great. Inbreeding can reinforce all the good traits of your line. Some genetic diversity is also important, because inbreeding also reinforces bad qualities. Too much genetic diversity is bad because you will never get consistent type. A good balance is 2-4 sources of stock.
You can hatch as many eggs as you want, but more is better because you have to cull a lot. If you follow the rule of 10, you get one good chick out of 10, one great chick out of 100, and one exceptional chick out of 1000. It's a good rule to follow, because choosing the best chick out of 10 will improve your birds much faster than if you choose, maybe 5 okay chicks out of 10.
I personally do not let hens raise my chicks. Chicks need to be monitered as they grow, so you can track heath, rate of growth, and sort out early culls. This is much, much easier when you raise the chicks.
Also questions on selling chicks, eggs, and birds:
Do you ever sell unwanted cockerels and pullets as 'show quality xyz', or do you cull all of them?
Do you vent sex your chicks or sell straight run?
How do you get your birds to the point where they're calm enough to show?
Are there some traits that are easier to breed out than others? (e.g. if a bird is great everywhere else but has poorly feathered feet, is it easier to fix the feathered feet, than, say, wrong eye color?)
I'm not sure why you would sell unwanted show quality? Seems like they would be better for breeding. If they need to be culled form your program, you can sell them as pets or layers.
If you are doing bantam cochins, vent sexing would be dangerous and could kill the small chicks. You could learn how to vent sex them if you are breeding LF cochins. Most breeders sell chicks as straight run, or grow them out to six weeks and sex them. Cochins can be sexed pretty accurately at 6 weeks, so you could do that.
Handling the birds a lot throughout their life will make them calmer.
Some traits are easier to breed out than others. For your feathered feed example, I imagine feathered feed would be easier to breed in since it's a dominant gene. I don't know for sure.
That's a good point about the genetics side of things- I know that birds can be 'split' for some things? What does that mean?
It means a chicken only carries one copy of a gene. A chicken can be split for any gene.
) and they are a lot more cuddly than their mom. My third chick will cuddle, but it's not his favorite thing to do. He prefers to be pet. The 4th one hates people and will scream if you try to touch her, which isn't like her mom at all. So, in my experience, the way the mom acts will not always determine how the babies will act. Of course, I'm sure it does in sometimes, but not all the time.
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