Hello to everyone. I'm a fairly new member and just a couple of months into Isbars but like most of you I have fallen in love with this breed. I read about the inbreeding problems and the weak immunities and other problems and now that I have some of these wonderful birds I want to be part of the solution. I have purchased some grown birds from different sources and am happy to say I have some black eyed birds, some orange eyed birds directly from GFF this spring, and some that have darker eyes with just a little orange. And some eggs from two lines in the incubator. I would like to pair these darlings up properly so each hatch will be an improvement but I'm not sure exactly how to do so. Ive concentrated on acquiring some diversity first. My two mature roosters are a blue old line and a splash mixed lines (or second line, not sure). Then I have a black new line only going on four months old. Can someone direct me to a crash course in improving chicken genetics? LOL! I think I have a good start but where to now? I understand part of the egg color problem comes from inbreeding too and anything with black eyes has been inbred to death so it seems that egg color might just be one of the problems and culling all of those isn't necessarily a fix. GFF seems to think breeding their new line to the earlier ones is a fix for those problems so the fix is an ongoing one not a short term one. My original plan was to obtain all three lines and practice a modified form of spiral breeding, initially aiming for a higher concentration of the new blood in the majority of the first babies, then start the spiral breeding, hoping for a standard forthcoming before starting to shoot for any one thing. Health first, then appearance and production. Am I way off base here? Any suggestions on the next step? Thanks for any suggestions. I've read many of the posts and really like this group. Some serious minded bird lovers!
