Quote: Aw, shucks, I'd like to take all the credit, but I can't; for thousands of years, countless great breeders did basically all the work for me, all I'm really doing is upholding the best traditions.
Seriously, though, if you are referring to breeding female-abuse and human-aggression out of males as being "reversing 4, 000 000 000 years of evolution" then I highly recommend you do a little study of chickens in the wild, and increase your knowledge of the variety that exists in domestic poultry. And possibly study other wild animals too. Quick resolution of conflict and avoiding it when able are two almost universal survival traits. It doesn't mean conflicts aren't natural, but the extreme of violence exhibited by many domestic stock is not. Males who damage their mates are not as likely to pass on their genes as males who take all due care.
It's been proven how incredibly rapidly a knowledgeable breeder can take a wild animal and develop a strain of tame ones; it's in the region of five to twenty years, not the number you quoted. The time frame for breeding out negative social traits is even smaller, by far, when you're referring to already domesticated stock. There are some species which would require hundreds of years, possibly, to fully tame, but chickens are not it.
For the record I make no claim to be a 'knowledgeable' breeder let alone the 'greatest chicken breeder of all time' --- in fact I have been quite surprised by my swift and thus far enduring success in achieving the behavioral traits I wanted in the productive and hardy type I wanted. Much credit must go to the uncounted breeders who developed the family lines throughout the centuries which are now involved in my mongrel stock.
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'Normal' is what we believe it is, as I said before.
You are breeding from what you consider 'normal' --- violent chickens. By your own estimation, you are breeding 'grossly inferior chickens'. This I would attribute to your criteria for selection.
I am breeding from what I consider 'normal' --- peaceful chickens. Mine have been steadily turning out as I'd hoped they'd be, for generations now. This I attribute to my criteria for selection.
There's a fundamental flaw in believing that 'normal' somehow equals substandard poultry, or that breeding violent males somehow equals above par poultry.
The majority of the work's already been done for us; the many hundreds of years of breeding behind many breeds have 'fixed' many great traits quite deeply, and we can mix and match without fretting we'll produce an ancestral type overnight. If we maintain good criteria we will achieve our goals, whatever they are.
At no point did I recommend letting them regress into feral birds with self selection as a rule, which would of course take the shortcut you mentioned right back to a type that does not serve our needs, but rather those of a wild animal. Selecting birds which show the care that's been put into their ancestors, rather than those that show the aberrant behaviors that have been bred into their ancestors, is the best way to achieve truly productive stock. Violent stock damage each other and I have no patience for it. Some do though, but each to their own.
Quote: I'm not going by one experience, but rather many hundreds, so I assume you are referring to yourself here.
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Since I'm viewing it through the eyes of someone who has studied animal behavior for almost their entire life, I assume you are referring to yourself again. I highly recommend, again, that you broaden your education.
ETA: I am starting to think, from everything you've said, that you only have one rooster. Breeding programmes don't move fast with only one, of course depending on what you're trying to achieve; also, anthropomorphizing animals won't help you achieve a healthy and productive 'normal' flock.
Best wishes.