Is hatchery stock less resilient than breeder stock?

[RainbowEggsBasket]

I've noticed many young chickens that do not make it to maturity to lay eggs are hatchery stock with vaccination. Of course, some of the chickens from backyard/professional breeders don't make it, but in my experience I lose way more hatchery birds vs non-vaccinated backyard chickens. Is my assumption more or less correct?

 

[AidKD]

More correct. The chicks that my hens hatch are much stronger and much more resilient than the hatchery chicks I've ordered.

 

[16 and me]

More correct. The chicks that my hens hatch are much stronger and much more resilient than the hatchery chicks I've ordered.

Was just thinking about this this morning. Last years September hatches are a mix of home brood and hatchery day olds added on hatchday. The backyard mutts are strong and excellent layers. The RIR from the hatchery is smaller but still a great layer (of small eggs). The Barred Rocks are tiny and lay less than any of the others, and their eggs are also quite small relative to the other chicks of the same age.

 

[AinaWGSD]

It would be interesting to see a study, but I don't know if one exists.

My theory is that, for the most part, birds from a breeder are going to be more hardy because of genetics. Hatcheries are going to be less selective with their breeding stock because they are breeding huge volumes, we're talking thousands of chicks of the most popular breeds with each weekly hatch. Breeders are hatching on a significantly smaller scale and are choosing each individual bird in their breeding program, they're going to weed out the inferior birds before they get a chance to pass their genes on.

 

[NatJ]

I've noticed many young chickens that do not make it to maturity to lay eggs are hatchery stock with vaccination. Of course, some of the chickens from backyard/professional breeders don't make it, but in my experience I lose way more hatchery birds vs non-vaccinated backyard chickens. Is my assumption more or less correct?

I have raised quite a lot of chicks from hatcheries (hundreds of them, spread out over a number of decades.)

I have also raised quite a lot of chicks that I hatched in an incubator (again, hundreds of them, spread out over a number of decades.)

For both groups, after they reached a few days old, if they died before laying age, it was almost always because I killed them to eat. A rare few were caught by predators. There have been no obvious differences between the groups in ability to live to laying age (or equivalent age in males, if I hadn't killed them myself).

To the best of my knowledge, I have never owned a vaccinated chicken. So that is the big missing point in my information. (When I started raising chickens, I never heard of an option to get chicks vaccinated. When it was available later, I already had a history of unvaccinated chicks doing just fine, so I saw no reason to do anything different.)

My theory is that, for the most part, birds from a breeder are going to be more hardy because of genetics. Hatcheries are going to be less selective with their breeding stock because they are breeding huge volumes, we're talking thousands of chicks of the most popular breeds with each weekly hatch. Breeders are hatching on a significantly smaller scale and are choosing each individual bird in their breeding program, they're going to weed out the inferior birds before they get a chance to pass their genes on.

That's interesting, because I have a theory that is almost exactly the opposite: hatcheries will refuse to deal with any bird that needs special care, so they will just cull any bird with any kind of health problem. A breeder will be more motivated to breed from a chicken that is exceptional in some way, even if it is slightly less healthy.

So I would expect hatchery birds to be uniformly resistant to everything they can encounter in the hatchery breeding flock, but birds from private breeders will be variable depending on what things were important to that particular breeder.

But I would expect hatchery breeder flocks to be protected from exposure to some kinds of diseases, and extreme weather conditions, so there would be no selection there. That could leave the birds from private breeders as the only ones with any selection for tolerating those traits.

Breeders are hatching on a significantly smaller scale and are choosing each individual bird in their breeding program, they're going to weed out the inferior birds before they get a chance to pass their genes on.

By the time they weed out the ones with inferior color, body size, body shape, feathering, temperament, and various other traits, they may not have many birds left to choose from. Those other points are commonly criticized in chickens from hatcheries.

 

[Ridgerunner]

In general I tend to agree with @NatJ but a lot depends on who selects which chickens get to breed. Hatcheries have their own breeders, many of them with college minors in genetics along with poultry science degrees. But each hatchery is different and has their own. Non-hatchery breeders are probably even more diverse.

To me a lot of this is genetic diversity. The more genetically diverse the healthier the chickens, in general. Hatcheries have their own techniques to maintain genetic diversity, usually a pen breeding system. That's why they don't generally produce chickens suitable for show, the genetic diversity is too great.

Breeders also want genetic diversity to keep their flock healthy, but they are breeding for certain traits so they can win the grand championship at a show. Some of them are excellent at that, some maybe not so much. Their techniques are different from the hatcheries because they have different goals.

I only got hatching eggs from a breeder once. The ones that hatched did fine. I sometimes get hatchery chicks, they do fine. I often hatch my own, those do fine.

Like NatJ my experience with breeder chicks is limited but I suspect it is the individual breeder or how we keep them that is more important than whether they are hatchery or breeder chicks.

 

[Folly's place]

I too have hatchery chicks, birds from breeders (not often!) and raise some of my own.
I have chicks from hatcheries vaccinated against Marek's disease, and my own birds aren't vaccinated for that. They are the 'canaries in the coal mine', who would get sick well before any of the vaccinated birds would have issues. So far, no Marek's disease here, thanks to luck and biosecurity.
And show breeders select for looks, not necessarily health or egg production. Also, nearly everyone breeds young birds and eliminates birds after maybe two years of age, so longevity isn't valued, not a good thing IMO.
Shipped chicks are at the mercy of the postal service, and not every postal worker cares to take care of these little guys. Most shipments do okay, but there will be losses.
So I agree with @Ridgerunner and @NatJ
Mary

 

[texsuze]

I'll chime in here with only my personal experience from 14 years of keeping pet chickens. I started out with four Meyer chicks, one who lived to age 9. My hatchery girls after that had all lived to at least 4 years old.

My first girls from a 'real' breeder were 3 started pullets (Dominiques) the last of whom passed last year at age 8 1/2. I currently have a 7 y.o. BA from a NPIP breeder; flockmates from this hen were another BA and an EE who only lived to age 4. These girls were vaccinated for Marek's and, I believe, fowl pox (?).

The youngest girls in my flock now just turned 2 and were day-old chicks from Meyer hatchery, all vaccinated for Marek's. So my experience is all over the board in terms of longevity, vitality.

 

[nuthatched]

It depends how you define "breeder".
Is the "breeder" just letting chickens from wherever he finds them breed and he sells the results? Not giving much thought to quality. Or a breeder that focuses on bettering his stock, culling, week, deformed and sickly birds.
Do note the former outweighs the latter by dozens to one.

 

[RainbowEggsBasket]

It depends how you define "breeder".
Is the "breeder" just letting chickens from wherever he finds them breed and he sells the results? Not giving much thought to quality. Or a breeder that focuses on bettering his stock, culling, week, deformed and sickly birds.
Do note the former outweighs the latter by dozens to one.

Can't agree more!