Landrace/adaptive breeding discussion

[Ridgerunner]

Is there a standard for identifying mixed breeds? One cross is Biel x JG, but how to identify his children? Biel x JG x BA? If you're dealing with only two or three breeds that's workable, but anything more starts to look like an algebra problem.

[(Biel x JG) x BA] x (RIR x JG)

Are you familiar with this chicken calculator? There is a bit of a learning curve but it's not that hard. Some of us can help answer questions. If you try crossing two colors/patterns you usually get chicks that pretty much all look alike. But if you then cross two of those offspring you get a huge number of different possibilities. And that's just with the same grandparents. If you mix in a different color/pattern with a different grandparent the number of possibilities may explode. Of course how many different possibilities depends on what your original selections are. I made one selection and only got 4 different possibilities of the grandchildren. Other starting selections gave me 30 possibilities. It can get complicated really fast.

Chicken Calculator (kippenjungle.nl)

Certain dominant traits like comb type of feathers on the legs can give you a clue, but after the first generation that does not always work for every chicken. Say all your starter chickens have a single comb except for one that has a rose comb. All future chicks that have a rose comb can be traced to that ancestor, but by the second generation But by the second generation many of the chicks with that ancestor will not have a rose comb. The gene pairs split randomly so by the second generation different genes show up.

Conversely if one ancestor had a recessive gene it can start showing up in the second generation so you can trace it back to that chicken. But not all descendants will show recessive traits.

The only way I know to manage this is to keep breeding pens so you know which are the parents, mother and father, take care incubating the eggs so you know who laid each one, and keep excellent notes.

 

[LaurenRitz]

I'm not so much concerned about traits in this question (although that's part of the reason for keeping track) but about simply knowing which mix goes into each bird.

It gets really complicated. Was that BA the father, or the great-grandfather? Or the mother? And are they the same bird?

Once I get past the 3rd generation I hope not to need this information except for reference, but right now I'm having a hard time describing the mixes when I talk to people here.

If there isn't a standard I guess I'll go with the "algebraic notation" theme.

 

[fluffycrow]

No, there isn't something other than what you're doing. At some point, leaving it at "mix" and only starting the algebra stuff when needed becomes much simpler

 

[NatJ]

Is there a standard for identifying mixed breeds? One cross is Biel x JG, but how to identify his children? Biel x JG x BA? If you're dealing with only two or three breeds that's workable, but anything more starts to look like an algebra problem.

[(Biel x JG) x BA] x (RIR x JG)

I'm not so much concerned about traits in this question (although that's part of the reason for keeping track) but about simply knowing which mix goes into each bird.

It gets really complicated. Was that BA the father, or the great-grandfather? Or the mother? And are they the same bird?

Once I get past the 3rd generation I hope not to need this information except for reference, but right now I'm having a hard time describing the mixes when I talk to people here.

If there isn't a standard I guess I'll go with the "algebraic notation" theme.

To me, the "algebra" one looks more clear than anything else I can think of, if you want to keep track of which breeds were in which generation. You can nest as many parenthesis and brackets as you need, and group the breeds properly.

You might also want to have a convention for which parent you list first in each cross so BA x JG is the opposite cross from JG x BA. If it is mostly for your own information, you can probably use a consistent order and have it work. If you are trying to talk to many other people, of course some of them will mix up the order, so it won't work as well in that situation.

 

[LaurenRitz]

The standard has always been male x female in that sense. It's what I'm used to and I see no reason to change it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not so much concerned about traits in this question

Sorry, I thought you were talking about how to track parentage without keeping the records. As far as I'm concerned you cannot. I agree, the nomenclature I'm familiar with is male over female (M x F)

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

My experience has been that broodiness is easy to reintroduce to a strain. Whenever I cross a non-broody breed with a broody breed, the offspring always brood. I have also seen the crossing of two non-broody breeds create broody offspring. I cannot say that it's 100%, only that I've seen some instances of non-broody + non-broody = broody, while non-broody + broody always = broody in my experience.

I think you all are right on the money to consider epigenetics when discussing domestic chicken evolution and the activation or deactivation of various traits relating to survival.

Also consider that modification of the junglefowl's reproductive biology was likely the defining train of early domestication of chickens. Red junglefowl were likely first domesticated for cockfighting. Yet wild junglefowl cocks only fight during the breeding season. In the non-breeding seasons, the cocks stop crowing, develop dark plumage, and take on laid back and effeminate traits. That's no good for year-round cock fighting. Yet a few wild red junglefowl populations exhibit year-round breeding, indicating that the ability to turn seasonal-only breeding on and off exists even in the wild birds. Ancient humans somewhere in Asia either captured some of these year-round breeders from the wild or alternatively had some of their captive red junglefowl exhibit this trait in subsequent breedings and the humans selected for that trait. The corresponding expression of these changes to the chicken reproductive biology in hens would be longer laying and brooding seasons.

So if we were able to change (or take advantage of natural changes) to the way chickens seasonally reproduce at the very beginning of chicken domestication, it would make sense that we have the ability to mold their reproductive biology further by taking it to unnatural extremes. Yet those extremes can be corrected to a more natural default pretty easily. As the Poet said "uh, life finds a way."'

As far as creating a landrace, I would think that will happen whenever you start with a mixed flock and keep your flock genetically isolated and allow natural selection to work on them over the course of several years. I wouldn't think it would have to take hundreds of years. You can probably do it in a decade.

In some of my threads on my free-range, semi-feral, projects I linked to I. Lehr Brisbin's work on creating the Carolina bantam. He threw a bunch of various common bantam breeds and red junglefowl hybrids out on a farmyard and let them breed and take care of themselves for a few years. Then he threw them out in a Georgia river bottom and came back years later after he had forgot about them. The resultant bird has a red junglefowl's build, a straight comb, and is mostly black with some spangling. Basically a little, black, North-Americanized junglefowl. I would think that step 1 of that blueprint could be followed anywhere with step 2 of "turning lose in the woods" ignored if all you want it tough chickens for your homestead.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm letting mine breed as they naturally pair up - not only is it the only practical way for my free range management, but at the end of the day, I want successful breeders as one of my desired end goals.

I control the other end, by culling.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

How do you handle the free ranging thing with broodies and chicks? I leave out commercial food for the broodies and their babies, but the other birds eat it, which rather negates the point of free range.

I give the adults a grain-based feed in the afternoon, but the hatchlings need something smaller, don't they? And food available all day?

I actually just did a video about this:

I use commercial food to start then I wean them off. Its an easy and efficient process when they have a mother hen as she helps them forage and can forage them younger than when its a group of artificially incubated chicks.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I'm letting mine breed as they naturally pair up - not only is it the only practical way for my free range management, but at the end of the day, I want successful breeders as one of my desired end goals.

I control the other end, by culling.

I made the mistake of tightly controlling breeding on the front end by culling roosters that didn’t meet physical (and often superficial) criteria before they could breed. I also wouldn’t let roosters fight for dominance, instead culling out young stags before they could challenge the brood cock.

The damage was done when I promoted two roosters that were physically and behaviorally what I wanted, but hadn’t been tested against disease. They created 2 generations prone to various ailments found on free range on my farm, Marek’s being chief. Had I let vigor be selected for through keeping my hands off the roosters, I would have likely had several hundred healthy adult birds to choose from by now.

I may be over the hump now, as so far Marek’s hasn’t reared its head this season. But it set my projects back by causing me to go somewhat return to square one. I have several birds on my yard that don’t meet my criteria for superficial traits, but are healthy and apparently disease resistant and I’m having to breed from those. If I could do it over again 5 years ago, I would have let the flock breed naturally from then until now and only start culling from birds that are at least 2 years old so that my breeding stock would have a proven track record of producing vigorous offspring.