Inbred Chickens?

[happysquee]

Okay, so we got a bantam rooster and then got 3 hens. This year we had like....a ton of chicks. I'd say 30 or 40. Should I worry about them inbreeding? We don't really do anything special with them. We feed 'em and they keep the ticks and bugs down. The hang around the yard and do ...I don't know...chicken stuff all day. But I don't want to have a bunch of messed up birds runnin' around next year if some of these new ones start breeding you know? And should i worry abou tthe new roosters wanting to fight each other or the original dad bird?

I know I seem ignorant...I really don't know anything about chickens.

 

[sourland]

Inbreeding in poultry generally presents few problems in the early generations. If carried on for an extended period of time there MAY be problems with fertility, viability etc. You on the other hand can almost bet on the fact that 'rooster wars' will break out at some time. Something about a rainstorm seems to set them off. I once had a semi feral flock of crossbred bantams that raised many chicks. (Used to take 5+ crates to market each autumn.) Following a rainstorm in the autumn flock wide fighting would break out. I always figured that once wet they no longer recognized one another and their rank in the pecking order. "I once had", the fox and great horned owls along with the help of the Cooper's hawks decimated this free ranging flock.

 

[happysquee]

Thanks! So...are they gonna like kill each other all over the place....or just scuffle a bit?

And how many is 'early generations'? 2, 3, 10? Should we maybe get another unrelated rooster or two to kind of dilute the gene pool?