Question for other serious breeders

[Black Feather]

If you had a bird that was stunning in every way, but it's one fault was a DQ, would you keep it for your breeding pens?

UC

 

[magikchick]

That depends on if you could breed out the DQ and improved your line with the bird. If it's something that would get into your line and keep croping up, no.

 

[DTchickens]

Quote:
I agree.

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

I currently have 2 Heritage Delawares that were "culls", only becasue they had minor defects to the standard. One roo and one hen. However, the original breeder said that "what one doesn't have , the other does and vice versa, they should throw beautiful babies". Soooo....unless the trait would be inherited by all offspring, I wouldn't cull it.

 

[Year of the Rooster]

I know I'm not one of the serious breeders here, far from it.. but my 2 cents:

Make birds compliment each other. What one doesn't have, breed it to a bird that does, like Yard full o' rocks said with the Delawares. If you could, try mating this bird with another bird that doesn't have this one DQ, but is also decent in the perfect qualities that the other has, so as not to have offspring with less perfect characteristics, if you know what I mean.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Ideally, you only want to breed two perfect birds together. Unfortunately, there is no suh thing as a single perfect bird, much less two of opposite gender.

To a certain extent, the previous two posts make some sense.

One thing that no one has yet mentioned is the difficulty in correcting the DQ. Some DQs are easy to breed out. They may keep cropping up on occasion, but if the majority of the offspring are unlikely to inherit it, using a bird with a DQ is worth considering if you have no other bird available. However, some DQs take many generations to get rid of.

For example, on a cross between a black skinned, mulberry combed bird and one without the FM gene, most of the offspring will end up with dark skin and dark comb. A few end up with light skin and red comb. And occasionally you will have one who is dark skinned with a red comb. When you already have dark skin, getting rid of the red comb is VERY difficult.

On the other hand, if you have a single combed bird who is stuffing in every other way, breeding him or her to a correctly combed bird will give at least 50% correctly combed offspring. If the correctly combed bird is pure for the correct comb genes, then all offspring will have correct combs. The thing you will need to remember though is that the correctly combed offspring in either case only have one set of correct comb genes, the other set will give single combs. (It is actually a bit more complicated as there are several genes for comb type.) So you need to remove the wrong combed bird from the gene pool after the first cross, and you want to mate the offspring back to the correctly combed parent or to an unrelated bird. Breeding brother to sister will give you a percentage of birds with incorrect combs.

In general, a bird who is outstanding in every way except for an easily corrected DQ is probably a better choice than one who is so-so, but has no DQs.

 

[TK Poultry]

if it wouldnt totally hurt your line then i would keep them especially if they would bring eye appeal to your line b/c that is your first impression when you have someone come to see your flock is how they look i love flashy and a minor fault or even a DQ can be bred out and not all the offspring maybe none will get that DQ i have a BR hen with smudged barres that is a hard thing to correct but a ameraucana with a comb that is a tad bigger than desired is easily fixed it all depends but i think the eye appeal thing is near the top of my list on nearly all my breeds because that is also the judges first impression is the eye appeal and the quality you keep it, it could depending on the fault kinda neutralize it but not erase it im no top breeder just a backyard hobbiest with a few breeding pens but that is my 2cents!

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I agree with what has been said. Another reason you might breed from a bird with DQ's is for the bloodline its from. An example is a friend and her polish. She had a line of buff laced polish for a few years and had a barn fire kill all of her stock except the worst one, and of course it was a cockerel. He had a lopsided crest and big comb and funky toe nails. But she kept him because he came from winning stock and was the last of her line. She bred him to some nice hens and he threw amazing babies.

Like Sonoran said about the combs, if your bird is perfect in every way but has a single comb, keep it for breeding. When we were working with barred wyandottes we crossed a barred rock with some wyandottes and the one bird with a single comb was so perfect except the comb so we sold him with some pure wyandottes to make good chicks.

My thought is as long as its easy to breed away from and you have a bird to compliment the bad trait, keep it.

 

[Henk69]

My answer is very counter-intuitive.

Genetically a DQ is a dominant mutation or a recessive one.

If they are recessive they can easily be covered in the next generation but they could keep popping up in later generations.

If they are dominant they can easily be selected against.

If your animal has a purebreed dominant DQ then the breeder must have been sleeping.

Myself I am very reluctant breeding with animals with known DQ's.
Unfortunately it took a few years before I knew all of them (if I know them all by now), so some of them manifested themselves over the years.

It is a pain to see the majority of your birds having DQ. It means that for every DQ you should double the number of eggs to hatch. Need I say more?

 

[Black Feather]

Hey guys, thanks a bunch for your thoughts an insights on this.

Normally I HATE DQ's and cull the birds asap. This particular pullet caught my eye yesterday and I thought, "right on, there's a potential champion for sure". One of the things I've been trying to breed for in my flock is rosecombs with more prominent chests, arched necks and shorter backs. This gives them that nice showy look in the show room. My birds sort of have this, but not very prominently. This particular hen has these traits in spades! Nice round chest that she carries forward, arched neck and short back. Then I started looking her over and wouldn't you know, her tail looks a little lop sided. I'm not 100% sure if she's wry tailed, but I had the odd bird crop up last year for the first time that was, and one of my breeders slipped by without my noticing. You don't notice her tail when she's running around the barn yard, only when she gets placed in a show pen......so whether I like it or not it is currently in the flock.

So, now here is my dilemma. I have a huge number of young pullets this year so I think the plan will be to keep her until I see if any other pullets show the trait. If I get one or two without DQ's then I'll cull her out of the flock. On the other hand if she's the only one then I'll put her in a single breeding pen and mark out all of her offspring so I can keep track of what she throws.

UC