Messing With Mother Nature, am I wrong? Discussion, Opinions.

[fowlman01]

I won't get into the debate about helping chicks out of eggs, but I will say that breeding chickens is not like any other livestock. dogs, cattle, sheep etc. In my 45+ years of raising poultry I have seen livestock breeders come and go because they thought they could use breeding practices used on other livestock on chickens. Doesn't work. This is not directed at any individual, this is just my experience. Survival of the fittest is a good breeding principal in my opinion though.

I have raised a lot of animals here on our farm and my wife is a very active breeder and exhibitor of dogs and to me they are a piece of cake compared to raising good chickens.

Personally....I don't help chicks out of eggs and it can have a lot to do with poor management. As one example: wrong humidity at hatching.

Walt

 

[magicpigeon]

I read in a bantam thread once about little chicks which fail to thrive and may remain the size of a day old chick until they die. This was supposedly caused by selective breeding to produce smaller birds. I have to agree that it is not wise to breed weaker birds with worse genetics. I'm also saying we may have brought the problem upon to ourselves. To use two examples: pearlscale goldfish. These ornamental fish need help spawning and very precise water temperatures to keep them alive. They are also born with many swim bladder disorders and can experience a much higher mortality rate than a common goldfish. Another, more common example are show quality dogs. Obviously, we want them to live, but with so many diseases and bad genetics they cannot be bred to another dog. Likewise we cannot say it was "Mother Nature" who gave us these weird and crazy birds as we created them ourselves.

 

[Katy]

When we incubate eggs in an incubator we're already messing with mother nature really. That said, I don't help a chick hatch. I used to once in a while and almost all the time there was a reason it couldn't hatch on it's own...anything from a beak deformity to a leg issue. Now, as hard as it is sometimes it's survival of the strongest here.

 

[sourland]

Many years ago I had a friend with a highly inbred line of white crested black Polish bantams. I hatched a lot of eggs for him. Very few hatched naturally. In his selection/breeding process he had dramatically lowered hatching vigor. Roosters also tended to lose fertility as young birds. I unsuccessfully tried to talk him into doing some outcrossing as an attempt to improve vigor. His reasoning, "If I raise 4 or 5 chicks out of 50 eggs, I'll have a show winner." When breeding animals the more we tolerate, the more we will have to tolerate in future generations. When hatching chicks in incubators how do we know whether low hatchability was environmentally or genetically caused and who wants to take the chance of perpetuating such problems?

 

[farmerlor]

Quote:
This is it exactly. If I help a chick or poult out of the shell it's because I can see that something I did during incubation has caused the inner membrane to be too dry and tough so I simply lend a hand to mitigate the effects of my error. If we were doing this as mother nature had planned and the eggs were hatching under the hen (thus negating my influence and possible error) there would be no help forthcoming.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I agree with whoever it was earlier that said they help them out but don't keep them for my breeding stock, even if it was my mistake in shrink-wrapping them or whatever. I don't breed chickens that injure themselves or exhibit behaviors or traits I don't like. I eat so many compared to how many I keep this is not really a problem for me. I do not raise them to show, nor do I sell hatching eggs or chicks to others. I'm purely selecting for my own flock so I keep the ones that I think are most likely to give me decent offspring according to my individual goals.

I'm not breeding to produce a grand champion or to perpetuate a specific breed. I think these are different situations. I'm not going to judge others with goals different that mine, just say I think this is something these individuals need to make a decision on for themselves.

 

[usschicago1]

Very Good Points everyone, all your posts makes a lot of sense, and I agree, everyone's breeding goals are different!

Quote:
I helped out a few this spring, all ended up dying of dwarfism, mild temperature change, or sudden death. Needless to say, thats the last time I will help out a chick. I doubt my next show winner will be one that was helped out of an egg.

 

[DANNY]

I think that hatching eggs is much different from livestock. In most cases it's poor incubation methods that causes chicks to stick in the egg and has nothing to do with genetics. Low temperature and humidity problems are to blame. I think people should concentrate more on improving their incubation practices and this problem would take care of itself. If you think about it how many times does this happen when eggs are incubated by the hen?

 

[redhen]

I help a chick out whenever needed..
Because I am incubating the egg... and my incubation is by no means "natural"..
Theres LOTS that can go wrong with using an incubator... its nowhere near the same as a hen naturally incubating her eggs.
Soo... why shouldnt i help a chick out of an egg if i caused the problem in the first place by interfereing with mother nature?
Just my opinion..

 

[Redcatcher]

On the flip side, in my 50+ years of raising chickens, I have seen my share of deformed (some of them extremely deformed) chicks hatch completely without assistance. While beaks are a necessity for breaking though the shell, eyes are not required, nor are legs. Not to mention chicks that can have a variety of lethal or internal problems can still be quite capable of hatching unassisted.

Edit: typo