Landrace/adaptive breeding discussion

[Perris]

Did it indicate whether the mutation came from a single bird? I can't see the same mutation popping up in hundreds of carefully maintained heirloom breeds simultaneously.

no, but if I understand Ball aright, that (and many other) mutations is what the genome does (not simultaneously, just routinely). Reproduction is not replication; RNA is not a biological photocopying machine.

I don't know that heirloom breeds, carefully maintained or otherwise, are relevant. What is your point?

 

[Perris]

What has been done is make the hen lay all the eggs she can lay in a continous burst

that is exactly what turning off the switch did, and I was talking about clutch size not lifetime production, so I think we are on the same page here.

Edited to add, I have a thread on numbers of eggs laid 150 years ago, for those interested, here
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-many-eggs-were-laid-by-hens-150-years-ago.1593024/

 

[Perris]

they start eating a lot more than normal

I have noticed this too. And I think they don't flip unless they think they are in a good enough condition for the rigours ahead.

more food to expect to last 21 days on and remain healthy

I have in the past thought a hen in the nest box was broody when in fact she was there because she was under the weather. Checking body condition is an easy way to differentiate.

In my experience hens don't sit to death - I suspect such cases are where the hen was sick but the keeper thought they were broody. They certainly couldn't do 3 weeks without water! They must and do leave the nest to eat, drink, poop, and some also want to dustbathe while they're off.

Once the hatch has started they sit tight again for up to 3 or 4 days, so they can look a bit depleted when they come off, but a healthy hen will quickly regain condition if there's good food for her to eat. I put a bowl of mealworms right in front of her while the chicks are resting and digesting under her, and the rest of the flock are elsewhere, and let her eat until she wants no more. I do this repeatedly during the first few days. Once she starts waking up the chicks and inviting them to have some, I know she's replenished, and we resume normal feeding.

started broody clucking

I have noticed this with this year's pullets. 2 out of 3 of them were doing it. 1 still is though she has stopped sitting. Another one has done a lot of broody inflation, turning herself into a basketball briefly, before resuming normal behaviour. I think they're both hovering. The slightly older one has resumed laying, and she'll be 1 at the end of the month, so if she flips after that, I'll let her sit.

To not risk her getting broken, I moved her to a safe pen, which looking back on it, probably did what I wanted to avoid.

Classic error. I'm sure we can all think of instances where we caused what we were trying to avoid. It's often better to sit on our hands because we don't know best though we think we do.

could have this been regarded as pre-broody behaviour

I'd say yes.

I'm convinced that the male plays an active role in either encouraging a female to brood, or by aiding his broody females

Me too. I caught Killay yesterday (and not for the first time) trying to interest a hen in the flowerpot in which Polka brooded Fez last year

 

[fluffycrow]

I believe he does.
There are lots of factors in trying to establish a semi feral group which is as near to Landrace as one is likely to achieve.
I know this sounds rather odd to most people but the first thing one has to do is not want. As soon as one says I want this and I want the chickens to do that, the project is doomed.
One of the defining factors of a true land race is we haven't interfered with them much since their ancestors went feral. It's our lack of interference that made them what they are, not our wonderfull animal husbandry skills.
People have a lot of trouble with the idea that another species knows more about their business than we do. Want something like this to succeed then back off and let the chickens decide who they mate with, where they live, what they eat, with the exception of what one may have to feed them; one cant expect the nurient requirements of a hen that lays 250 eggs a year drop to one that only lays 100 overnight.

Don't restrict their movements. Allow for at least one acre per tribe. If a hen hatches and the progeny leave, or get driven out and make their own tribe, then you'll need another acre to accomodate them.

Build lots of coops, broody coops in particular.
The tribes are going to fight, all the time, every bloody dayThe females fight, the males fight. The females and males fight. The saving grace is unlike humans, they rarely kill each other. It all seems to be about saving face apart from the few irrevocable personal grievances. Sometimes one has to play judge, jury in these cases.

Pick the right breeds for the right reasons from the right place to start with.

Buy a lifetimes supply of tissues; a lot are going to die.

Most of all, live with your chickens, don't keep and breed them. Give them the vote.

There's quite lot of wisdom there. Indeed, it is not easy for humans to take a step back. Unfortunately, like some other people on this thread, I'm not working with too much space. Only around 2-3 acres. Not sure what I can do with that space, but that's what I have. About a month ago I started letting Big Red's group and the Tsouloufates out at the same time. They're definitely formed a tribal system, although unfortunately Big Red's territory encompasses the Tsouloufati coop. Bad design on my part, I know.



Changing our perspective on chicken keeping living ways one person at a time, huh?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

no, but if I understand Ball aright, that (and many other) mutations is what the genome does (not simultaneously, just routinely). Reproduction is not replication; RNA is not a biological photocopying machine.

I don't know that heirloom breeds, carefully maintained or otherwise, are relevant. What is your point?

I've used a lot of photocopying machines. Nature is better than they are, its just that the genome has SO SO SO many more pages...

Otherwise, yeah.

 

[LaurenRitz]

no, but if I understand Ball aright, that (and many other) mutations is what the genome does (not simultaneously, just routinely). Reproduction is not replication; RNA is not a biological photocopying machine.

I don't know that heirloom breeds, carefully maintained or otherwise, are relevant. What is your point?

You're talking about probably millions of unrelated birds at the point where they say the mutation occurred. But mutation does not "spread" except to progeny. If a mutation occurred, how did it "infect" birds on the other side of the world to the point that the mutation is in nearly (?) all populations?

You said "If my memory is correct, the mutation that broke the complete clutch process came along after all this, and is what brought about the jump from those 20th century lay rates to the modern ones of around 300 eggs per year for production strains."

But unless I am misunderstanding what is being said, that is flatly impossible. It would have required a simultaneous worldwide and identical mutation in most of the world's chicken breeds.

*Edited to add: all of the affected populations must have had a common ancestor, which is where the mutation occurred

 

[LaurenRitz]

I've also had one Tsouloufati do something like that. She started using the nest box right next to the main nest box. She got very defensive whenever she was approached, making the same clucking sounds. Never sat at night in the nest, though. In her case, I thought she might've been going broody (potentially). To not risk her getting broken, I moved her to a safe pen, which looking back on it, probably did what I wanted to avoid.

I was able to solve this problrm (in a sense) by moving the whole nest. My nesting boxes are just big plant pots, so once I was sure she was committed I moved the whole thing to a broody coop.

 

[fluffycrow]

I was able to solve this problrm (in a sense) by moving the whole nest. My nesting boxes are just big plant pots, so once I was sure she was committed I moved the whole thing to a broody coop.

I did move her whole nest. She broke anyway. Granted, most of my birds are not the friendly type frequently observed on BYC. Especially the Tsouloufates, they'd rather drop dead than be picked up by me (which is totally fine). They only tolerate me when I've got food. So in order to move her, I had to pick her up, which was obviously stressful enough she broke

 

[Perris]

You're talking about probably millions of unrelated birds at the point where they say the mutation occurred. But mutation does not "spread" except to progeny. If a mutation occurred, how did it "infect" birds on the other side of the world to the point that the mutation is in nearly (?) all populations?

You said "If my memory is correct, the mutation that broke the complete clutch process came along after all this, and is what brought about the jump from those 20th century lay rates to the modern ones of around 300 eggs per year for production strains."

But unless I am misunderstanding what is being said, that is flatly impossible. It would have required a simultaneous worldwide and identical mutation in most of the world's chicken breeds.

*Edited to add: all of the affected populations must have had a common ancestor, which is where the mutation occurred

clearly I didn't explain his idea very well. I've just got in after a long day out and will try again later. But we're not talking about just one mutation in just one bird.

 

[Perris]

But unless I am misunderstanding what is being said

OK, don't worry, the thrust of the book is that biology has changed its thinking a lot in the last couple of decades but no-one's really bothered to explain the changes to the general public, so we're all really behind the curve now and need to get up to speed.

There's a lot to take in so let's do it in stages.

So the first point to grasp, and grasp firmly, is that the genome is no longer thought of as a blueprint, or the genes as instructions to build an organism, or proteins as sort of organic machines, or the body working like some sort of organic machine or computer programme. The problem of how genotype (the genes) becomes phenotype (the observable traits) has not really been cracked despite all the work on the human genome project since the 1960s.

The second point is our desire to map things 1 to 1: we want to see 1 allele 1 trait, different allele different trait etc. but it does not fit well with the evidence. Lots of alleles may contribute to a trait, and in very messy ways. Shank colour in chickens' legs springs to mind.

The third point is that the conventional narrative is all about coding proteins, but only 2% of the genome codes proteins. What on earth is the other 98% doing then? It can't all be junk in the evolutionary attic! This was sort of rubbed in when the human genome project discovered that the final tally of protein-coding genes is a little over 20,000; apparently most biologists don't believe that is anything like enough to make a human. Surely there must be more instructions needed to make something as complex as a person?

Then, what is passed on to the next generations is not genes, it's the whole genome. Natural selection works on the organisms that carry the genes, not on the genes directly, and it's the phenotype, not the genotype, that determines fitness. (Indeed, some argue that natural selection works on the group, not even the individual, but let's park that for the time being.)

And a genome can't build a cell. Rather, the cell is a precondition for anything the genome can do (p. 94). An organism won't spontaneously form, so "a genome sequence can never fully specify an organism: how it will grow, how it will look, how it will behave - in short, how it works." (idem) Ball reasserts the role of the cell as a key functional living unit, at least as far as I've got into his book.

A big problem is that the gene is not alive. How something not alive turns into something alive is still a mystery. The gene has been too atomised to actually explain how life works. "Genes do not produce life, but on the contrary depend on it." (p.104)

So how does this impact so far on the mutation that stopped a hen sensing that her clutch was complete so she should stop laying and start incubating, with the result that she didn't go broody and just kept laying till her body was spent? In short, it's probably not 1 mutation in 1 hen; it's lots of mutations in lots of hens, randomly caused in different places and times, some of which have the same effect, albeit by a variety of different routes, with one last little change or other that in combination with what went before was 'the straw that broke the camel's back'. Many people here have hens that never go broody and lay all season long, that are not production hens; I have some, you have some. Commerce took the 'best' of these types and honed them into birds that, with artificial light and food, lay for about a year and are then discarded as waste, because they are unfit for continued commercial production. They did not do rocket science. They just exaggerated traits that nature created.