I An Idea For All of You, do you agree (concerns My Genetics Opinion)

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Honestly Thats Quite Easy. Breeding Out Faults in birds and Breeding to improve types are an easy way to learn about genetics and breeding without needless crosses. theres a lady here with cochins that she heavily culled (she got them from hatchery stock) and turned them into SQ Cochins! Heavy Culling and many generations of genetic learning i bet she knows more about genetics than most backyard mixes

I plan on doing this with d'uccles
 
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Honestly Thats Quite Easy. Breeding Out Faults in birds and Breeding to improve types are an easy way to learn about genetics and breeding without needless crosses. theres a lady here with cochins that she heavily culled (she got them from hatchery stock) and turned them into SQ Cochins! Heavy Culling and many generations of genetic learning i bet she knows more about genetics than most backyard mixes

I plan on doing this with d'uccles

And I am working with Columbian Cochins and Blacks. Just started working with the Columbians. This spring I culled my Blacks very hard. Now to wait for next generation to mature to know if I made the right choices.
 
My two cents if anyone cares.


Helping chicks out - I do it because I can't help myself with the eggs that are in my incubator, and I know for a fact that my hens help their chicks hatch because I have seen it. They peck at the eggs while the chick is hatching and make little encouraging noises. There is a BBC show called I think " the secret life of chickens " and it shows a hen pecking at a hatching egg trying to help it along.

I hatch eggs every Sunday and Thursday, I have not had a chick that I have helped out of the shell be weaker than ones that have hatched on their own. I have cracked eggs thinking the chicks were dead and wanted to check development, only to find them still alive. I havn't had any of those hatch well, thats my bad.


Project birds - All I have are project birds. I am breeding Araucana's and everything is trial and error with them. Try finding show quality birds that you can afford to start breeding with. I started with what I could find and am working my way towards show quality. Some day I will get there. I am having fun along the way.

I also have EE X Polish birds, because I had two polish roosters and EE hens and I wanted to start incubating eggs but didn't want to learn with my expensive araucana's. My polish cross's are the goofiest looking birds and I could sit and watch them all day. They were not a project, just a means to an end. Now they lay green eggs that I sell at the farmers market.

We each have to do what we feel is right for us. At the end of the day, you can always eat a chicken or the eggs.

Lanae
 
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Several already pointed out that hens often help out their chicks in nature, but its hard to know how much help a human could simulate vs. a hen. I think if you're going to help your chicks out of the shell, you need to be willing to carefully watch and cull any that turn out to be weak later.

Another Idea- Alot of people are doing "projects" For Fun. I really think this should be left for the professionals, like hinkjc and the genetic guros on this section. I think it would be better to save an endangered breed ( like the java, le fleche, ect) as you can learn as you go with these. I think with the millie fluer cochin project, they are going great, but now with so many people just breeding them and not knowing what to look for (wich is why i dont have them i dont know about that color pattern) the variety is going steps back. When they were low profile, i think they made alot more progress.

What do you think? I can't get these ideas out of my head and im not sure if i need to be "straightened out" or not lol . This is not met toward sanyone or any particular threads/posts:)

I have a totally opposite opinion with you here. I don't think preserving a rare or endangered breed is a job for the novice, or more importantly someone with a small flock that doesn't have access to other breeders. The main problem I would be worried about is inbreeding. Having a breed with good genetic diversity (and subsequently fewer health problems) often means having large flocks or a good network of interconnected people that are all breeding to the same standard. If you're a novice you might get something you thought was a good representative of a rare breed, but isn't at all and pass it on to other people. Or you could get great stock and continually breed with closely related individuals unknowingly and destroy the integrity of the original stock. You might even sell the stock as having come from "so and so's flock" but it is nowhere near the same standard.

A "project" to my understanding is just an idea, usually coming from a cross, that someone or a group of someones is trying to put together. The way I look at it, is there's less history to be destroyed if you mess it up.
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If I were to get into preserving a rare breed, I would want to do so with very serious intent, a large flock and as many contacts as possible. I'll probably never do it since I prefer having my chickens as pets and don't want to deal with the harsh reality of culling, plus I live somewhere where a rooster isn't really an option. If anything I'd be interested in someday trying to put a project together to breed for better *pet* chickens, tameness primarily as well as good layers. How heritable something like tameness may be questionable, but humans have made quite a bit of progress with domestic dogs. I'm a reasonably good geneticist, being a biology professor, though I'd have to learn chicken specific genetics, all I've bred before were tropical fish.
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Just my opinion, but with my incubator, the post office and the cost of some eggs,....darn skippy I'm going to help eggs hatch. Perhaps, when the eggs are plentiful and coming from my own chickens, and I can always gather and incubate more, this will change, but I doubt it. I'm in the business of saving animal lives. I will cull ruthlessly any suffering animal though.

As far as projects go, why should anyone rain on my parade. This is my hobby. No one has to buy my stock. I am new to chickens, but have a strong background in genetics and am doing this for my own amusement. The heritage breeds are of little interest to me. dak
 
I am a confused person when it comes to crossbreeding . lol
i have my own opions on certain breeds, I have 2 projects going right now.
1 is Frizzled d'uccles and 1 is with my pheonix, NOW
I have done qiut a lot of thinking first before i do this.

The only project i am doing with my pheonix is useing 1 white faced black spanish hen with my pure bred pheonix is to see if i can get soem black pheonix with out teh white face, now i think i will changeing the hen to a different black hen,

I look at body type comp type and skin coloring and number of toes ect... i want to breed to teh closest looking as possilbe.

same with the d'uccle, iam cross breeding my red frizzle cochin bantam with my pure d/uccle, i look at again comb type skin coloring body type ect....


I for one will not mess with the sumatras, nor i will not mess too much with the pheonix only with what i see to get my black nothing else going on.

i will not mess with the polish nor cochins.

so you see i am a funny person, I do not like to purposely breed a bantam to a large fowl for reason as bad hatches. but that is me and of cousre i do have some bantams with a brat of a large rooster , but again not purposely doing it, those i will be seperateing off.


Oh and i will not mess with my Showgirls or silkies!! hehe
I had a showgirl in with my girls BUT he was smooth feathered , no no no, well he carryed taht in to teh chicks, not a good idea, so i took him out.


Now when it comes to helping out chicks, one needs to know first if that chick is ready to be helped before helping. And it is very hard to tell, becouse if you help one and it still has blood lines then forget it.
Now i have helped a lot of chicks out of there eggs and have had good results and have bad results. But it is true teh momma does help out chicks out of the eggs aswell, but again they know when it is time to help out.
 
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Your right, and it saddens me with the lack of interest in heritage breeds
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So rather than saying what you believe people shouldn't be doing, cheerlead them into doing what you advocate. Flies and honey rather than flies and vinegar
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