Inbreeding: Good or bad idea?

[Ridgerunner]

Successful breeders, by which I'm referring to people who show their birds & win regularly in stiff competition, will all advise you to line breed. That's how all of those breeders produce their winning birds.
Many people on this site with little or no breeding experience & certainly no history of producing winning birds will advise you to avoid line breeding & to regularly bring in "new blood".
In reality adding "new blood' or out crossing as it is sometimes known is the best possible way to screw up a line of poultry.

To me, this depends on your goals. If you are breeding for show or for specific certain traits, I totally agree. I think this is what the OP should be looking at, a very controlled breeding program. That's also how all breeds have been developed.

If you are running a small backyard flock where you have a few hens and one rooster, the way small farms with eggs and meat as a goal have been doing this for thousands of years is occasionally bring in a new rooster to keep up the genetic diversity.

 

[stefan333]

I have gotten some amazing advice, straight from the experts, so thank you all very much. I, too, have noticed on this site some inaccurate information (mostly about more in depth chicken stuff) so I always take away some ideas and then find a good book about it. I've also found some valuable online publications from the chicken industry dispelling a lot of common myths. One of the things I've repeatedly heard is that you can't check fertility once you start incubating, but the chicken industry who employs scientists to study these things says you can up until a certain point, and they do a great job of explaining the process of fertility and incubation beyond just the basics of temp, turning, and humidity. Breeding is a bit more in depth, too, so I'm doing my research now. For me, enjoying my chickens goes way beyond just having a backyard flock that lay eggs: I wanna completely understand and experience EVERYTHING chicken. I have to analyze and understand everything, so thank you guys for helping me on my chicken journey.