Percent Show quality from SQ parents?

[BamaChicken]

I agree too.

 

[standardbanty]

My opinion is that not all show winning birds make great breeders. a judge that i was talking to said that "the birds that get grand champ are most of the time not the bird i want to take home. Its the good breeders in 2nd or 3rd even 4th i want to take home".

 

[country]

Guitartists.."did they happen to be a new color variety like Cuckoo??? This could explain a higher percentage of faults."

<No, the worst chicks were Just standard old colors. Sher>
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Urban Coyote.."I think a lot has to do with how 'stabilized' a strain or bloodline is. If a lot of out crossing has taken place recently then expect for faults to show up in the first two to three generations."

<Hi Coyote, May I call you Wiley E?

(I still like Road Runner cartoons!) I found your post very interesting & informative but it really has me questioning everything I thought I knew about breeding. Are chickens different from dogs? With dogs it is the INBREEDING that brings out hidden faults. An article by a top German Shepherd breeder once stated that a perfect GS could be created by raising a litter to adulthood, selecting the best brother & sister & breeding them to each other, then raise that litter, again select the best brother & sister to breed together, so on. She claimed that after 7 generations of this inbreeding you would have a superdog. Since that would be almost impossible unless you were a billionaire, dog breeders usually inbreed once & then outcross or linebreed to try & stabilize good traits & correct bad. Is it different with chickens or am I misunderstanding the terminology? It's been eons since I did any dog breeding, so I may have forgotten some important points & mis-remembered others. Can you explain any further or point me at some good breeding articles? Right now I'm totally befuddled! Sher>
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geareduplyn - "If they have been consistently winning at shows you should get birds no DQ faults."
<That's kind of what I was hoping for but unfortunately, that's not what happened. Sher>
"Any outcross is a can of worms."
<Sounds like you agree with Coyote, so I guess I'd better start reading up on poultry breeding. Sher>

To everyone else, thanks for replying. I know you're right about not bringing known faults into a line, but it will sure be tough to sell or put an otherwise beautiful chick out to pasture for lack of one toe! Especially since I thought that was a recessive trait & probably wouldn't show up unless my line has it too. Of course, there are other DQ issues on many of these chicks & even more may show up as they get older so the whole question is probably moot.

Thank you all.
Sheri

 

[Black Feather]

Hi Country

Well, from my own experience I’ve never had a show line that did not have a recessive disqualifying trait that does not crop up once in a while. A basic understanding of genetics helps when breeding anything and it will give you excellent tools when it comes to understanding why things happen the way they do.

The missing piece of your puzzle is that you have no idea what the parents of the eggs you bought looked like or what their lineage was like. Some breeders may do a lot of what you suggest. Take the beautiful roo and even though he only has four toes use him as a breeder. Now, what if this same breeder has a hen that is beautiful except for her comb, it’s big and rough and oversized, but she’s beautiful in every way other than that. Now the breeder is breeding a roo with a major fault, with a hen that has a major fault in the hopes that they will get a chick with neither. Unfortunately you’ll probably get the majority of chicks with DQ’s.

I find stabilizing a bloodline means line breeding and inbreeding. The way I was taught is to take the father and cross him back to the daughters, and take the mother and cross back to the sons. Then put the original parents back together. Now you have three potential lines to work with. Here’s a drawing of the potential possibilities.

Once you have had a bloodline for a while you know to a certain degree what to expect. By introducing new blood into your own line you are adding unknown factors. So, on top of getting a few of the expected faults that you are used to, you now get new unexpected faults. Mind you this goes for strengths as well, not just faults.

If I was in your position I would continue to breed the bloodline you have been working with all along and keep it relatively pure. Then when you get to the point where you are not seeing improvements anymore go out and find one specific bird from another bloodline that has the strengths you want to add to your line. For instance if you have been breeding for three years and everything looks good, but you just don’t get chicks with the heavy foot feathering that you want, go find a bird from an established breeder that has exceptional foot feathering, and then breed that bird into your line and cull cull cull. Hopefully you will be able to maintain all of the positive factors of your original line, plus the added foot feathering.

Clear as mud?

Oh, one other thing I was thinking about is also pay close attention to the way some breeders advertise their winnings. Here is an example: “Champion Silkie” Ok, to me this means absolutely nothing. There could have only been 3 Silkies in the class. Yup, they got Champion Silkie, big deal. “Best of Breed” Same thing with this title, not that big a deal really unless there were 25 Silkies in the class, or the competition is top of the line. Now, when you get to higher levels of winnings like, “Champion Feather Leg”, that’s getting a bit better. This Silkie now probably competed against the Cochins, Brahmas, Booted Bantams etc. Once you get to things like Champion Bantam, Grand and Reserve of Show, etc you’re probably looking at better birds, especially if the breeder has had these winning consistently and has been doing it for years.

Man, I’ve really rambled on this one. Hope it’s not too much!

One last thing. Talk with lots of experienced breeders who have developed bloodlines, not people who bought champion birds to begin with.

Urban Coyote

 

[Three Cedars Silkies]

Quote:
Urban...I totally agree with this. We do show our cochins and I know that they are 100% lineage of one of the country's best breeders of black cochins. But, my barred roo won "best of variety" and I wouldn't consider him true exhibition stock. I do think I can breed some great birds from him with the right hens...but put up against Tom Roebuck's barreds...he wouldn't win. That's why I buy birds from the very best show breeders and pay that extra $$. At least that helps the chances that most DQ's are bred out of them.

 

[tileman@prodigBird Raiser]

You want to try to have about 50 chicks from each breed and then out of the 50 chicks you pick the best 4 pairs or so. Also for about every 2-4 birds only 1 of them is good enough to show.

 

[country]

Hi Urban Coyote,
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on genetics & especially for the chart. I guess I must be a visual person because your chart really helped clarify things for me. I've spent the last couple of days all over the internet, reading everything I could find on breeding & genetics. All I've done is become even more confused. You've helped clear some of the fog from my brain! I'm also interested in breeding Sizzles so I really need to know this stuff or I will be doomed to multiple visits to this board asking "If I breed this to that, what will I get?" Not that there's anything wrong with people asking questions but I'd like to be able to figure out at least some genetic things for myself. (However, if you have a visual chart on breeding Sizzles, I sure won't turn it down!)

I have a jillion Christmas things to catch up on & coops/brooders to clean so I won't have much online time until after the holidays, but I'll check this thread then. Meantime, I've printed out your posts for future reference. If my brain gets foggy again, I'll just refer to your chart.
Thanks
Country

 

[country]

Hi Oldtimegator,

That's why I buy birds from the very best show breeders and pay that extra $$. At least that helps the chances that most DQ's are bred out of them.

Actually, that's what I thought I was doing. I ordered eggs from what I thought were considered to be top Silkie breeders, with gorgeous birds, well known in the show ring, and with a lot of wins. In fact, they're so well known that I couldn't afford birds or chicks from any of them which is why I went for the eggs instead. I didn't expect all SQ chicks but really thought I would get a minimum with really glaring DQ's. Instead, out of 44 chicks hatched (you don't even want to know how many I ordered), there are 17 with DQ's that were visible at hatch. I have 9 with no DQ's & that I evaluated as med. to ex. for foot feather, middle toe feather, 4th-5th toe separation & toe set, so at the moment I'm hoping that they will mature to breeding quality. But Silkies have a large number of faults that don't crop up until they're a lot older so who knows what I'll end up with. The other 24 rated mostly poor ratings, especially for toe separation & set so I doubt if they will even be breeding quality but I'll have to check into genetics a bit more to see for sure. Not sure where toes rate on the dominant/recessive scale. Plus, with all the DQ's in the lines, I may be opening up a can of worms if I try to cross any of these birds with my own. My own Silkie hatches this year have had only a tiny percent of DQ's.

I guess my experience shows that "buyer beware" doesn't only apply to used cars!

Thanks,
Country


Hi tileman@prodigBird Raiser,

You want to try to have about 50 chicks from each breed and then out of the 50 chicks you pick the best 4 pairs or so. Also for about every 2-4 birds only 1 of them is good enough to show.

If I end up with 1 out of 4 of these chicks that are showable, I will be thrilled! I really like those odds so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that you are right.
Thanks,
Country​

 

[BamaChicken]

How old are they right now. You mentioned they were chick?

 

[LittleChickenRacingTeam]

My friend who is in his eighties, says out of 100 hatches, he ends up culling 95 or more to come up with his show birds.

He breeds strictly to the Standard & his lines show it.

What some people call Show Quality that you see at a local fair, is a far cry from a TRUE specimen that you see at a APA/ABA sanctioned Poultry Show.