Question about breeding from a very small group of birds

[Orange Ribbon]

Saladin, I sure do appreciate your response. I think this is the program I will go with, and I like the idea of dividing my young birds into two flocks as it will be easier to keep up with.

As far as my flock of 2 year old birds I see that I could start another two families with just those 6 using the same program. Take a cockerel from the chicks of these original birds and mate it the next year to the old hens, and take the older rooster and mate him to the younger hens, thus having two more families to work with. I could make them green and yellow for example and would breed them completely separate from the red and blue groups.

One more question mainly just out of curiosity: I see you like to breed every other year to make it simpler to keep up with what chicks got with who, but could a person breed them every year if they didn't mind the extra work of keeping them separate? Like I said, I'm just wondering. I think I will stay with every other year to keep me out of trouble!

Thanks again. This has been a great thread to learn some stuff.

 

[saladin]

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[chickendales]

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one thinks i thought of doing is wing banding all my babies that way i know what group they came from

 

[Oregon Blues]

Gypsy, you say the colors are all mixed up.

It will help you that you can take recessive colors that pop up in your flock and move them to their own color group.

I don't know chicken colors, so will use a horse example:

Red is recessive. All red horses have 2 red genes. They can never pass on any color other than red. So in a mixed herd, if I wanted a pure red line, I could move any red horse born in my brown herd into the red herd and it would only produce red for me when added to the red herd.

Whatever color is the most recessive in chickens, if that color pops up, you can move that bird into the flock of its own color and it will not add the possibility of other colors. If red happens to be the most recessive color in chickens, you can move all red chicks hatched into your red flock.

And if you are collecting a dominant color you probably will never get it pure without genetic testing for homozygous genetics. For example, white is dominant in chickens, so a chicken only needs one white gene to be white. That other color gene could be for anything and it might or might not actually show up for many generations. It might be lurking in the background for decades before it shows up.

You will have to consult someone who studies chicken color genetics to learn what colors are recessive and thus can be moved to the flock of their own color.

 

[saladin]

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Along these lines:

With my Cubalayas I pay no attention to colors. I just have my two groups and rotate the appropriate males. You get some off colors, new colors, and great standard colors this way.

I call it 'hound dog breeding.'