Self-Repopulating Flock

[meeko626]

So this is all just a hypothetical dream of mine. I was looking around on the McMurray website and it inspired this. So I would get a Jersey Giant rooster, a New Hampshire Red Rooster, and a Dark Cornish Rooster. I would also order the McMurray Brown Egg Layers Package of 25, which contains a random assortment of Black Australorps; Lt. Brahmas; Dark Cornish; Black and White Giants; Buff and White Orpingtons; New Hampshire, Rhode Island Reds, Barred, White, Partridge, Buff Rocks;Delaware, Sussex, Turkens; White, Silver Laced, & Columbian Wyandottes, Red Star and Black Star. I know some of those are broody, and I want to raise them for meat but not start harvesting for a year or so. Also not incubate any of the eggs but let the hens raise them. Let them build their flock population naturally and let natural selection pick and choose what traits do and do not move on, and then keep breeding offspring and such. I would let them free range theoretically. After 10-15 years I would have a unique "breed" (for lack of a better term) right? Any way this wouldn't work? I guess I'm moreso asking the seasoned chicken farmers out there.

 

[Mrs. K]

Could be wrong, but what you might end up with as the years progressed was less and less. Less meat, less eggs. When you mix breeds you can get a super bird, but considerably more often you get birds with the weaknesses of both breeds.

This is the reason the standards have been established, so as to give guide lines what characteristics make for a good specimen of a bird. Those birds are bred together, and eventually you get very few poor genes in the birds, and one can get consistent results.

If you were very busy with a good sharp knife, keep careful records both of meat and eggs, you could improve your flock, but it will take a lot of years, and consistent records. Natural selection would work towards keeping the birds reproducing generation after generation. Often times birds that grow quickly need more food, that lay eggs more often need more food, and natural selection is going to move to a more middle of the road bird.

Just my take on it. However, the decrease in production will be years down the road. It would be a fun project to try.

Mrs K

 

[meeko626]

So basically just cull certain individuals of the flock that portray negative traits?

 

[centrarchid]

Too much genetic variation, too small a flock, and too little time to get the desired unique strain that breeds true. In same time interval you would be a able to improve average performance for in your setting. Your setup is likely going to be difference than that of the hatcheries. Think diseases and nutrition.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Mrs. K, I have to disagree with you. That doesn’t happen often. I believe the Standards were established so people could compete against each other in showing chickens. The judges had to have some rules to judge the chickens and the competitors had to know what the requirements were. Breeds were developed to fill a niche, maybe as eye candy, meat, eggs, something else, or a combination. Standards were then developed so you could show them. How else can you explain all the different color/patterns of the Rocks? What’s the practicality behind that?

Take Delaware for example. The breed was established as a meat bird. The characteristics they were looking for were light feathers so the plucked carcass looks prettier, good conversion of feed to meat, rapid growth, body confirmation to get the right cuts of meat, skin color for a prettier carcass, takes confinement well, things that enhanced them as a meat bird. Eye color, number of points on a comb, how sharp the barring is on the black feathers, things like that have nothing to do with meat production but are part of the Standard and were only added so people could compete by showing them. The production qualities were captured as best they could but many things superfluous to production were added.

When people raise Delaware to the Standard for show, many (I’d venture the vast majority) raise them for what the judge sees and do not raise them for the production qualities. The judge doesn’t see how well they convert feed to meat or how long it took that bird to reach maturity so these production traits are not always bred into the birds. I know I’m being nitpicky.

Meeko, sorry for the hijack. Where abouts do you live? I’m not after your zip code, mother’s maiden name, and social security number, just a rough idea of your climate, especially how harsh your winter is. In some ways what you are describing isn’t that far from a model that farmers have used for thousands of years to keep chickens. They did not keep breeds, they kept a barnyard mix that foraged for practically all their food during the good weather months and had their foraging supplemented in the harsher months, usually grain they raised themselves and better access to kitchen and garden wastes after the hogs were butchered. Until butchering, the hogs got those. The quality of forage is important. They had different weeds and grasses, weed and grass seeds, all kinds of creepy crawlies to catch, decaying vegetable matter to scratch in like leaf mold, and having livestock like cows or horses so they could harvest partially digested nutrients in the poop. Very few people on this forum have the quality of forage for this to work.

Another huge issue is predators. Obviously for this to work the chickens have to be free range. Some people can free range their chickens and go years between predator attacks. Some people would be wiped out right at the start if they tried it. It doesn’t matter if you are urban or rural, it can happen either place. I grew up on one of these farms and only remember two predator attacks before I left for college, a dog that a visiting uncle politely shot for us when Dad was at work and a fox that was in a pattern of taking a chicken every morning at dawn until Dad figured out his pattern.

Those chickens were not left entirely on their own. The eggs were collected daily and used. The eggs would quickly pile up if you don’t collect them and you can attract egg eating predators if they are left in the coop overnight. When a hen went broody we selected which eggs she hatched so you got a mix across the chickens to help keep up genetic diversity. Occasionally a hen would hide a nest and hatch her own eggs so you constantly got a supply of hens that went broody. Broodiness is an inherited trait.

Those chickens did not lay a double extra huge egg and did not necessarily lay every day, but they laid plenty of eggs. You adjust the number of hens so you get the number of eggs you need, with some to spare. The chickens were not huge, but Mom could feed a family of five kids with one hen. Back, neck, gizzard, and liver were standard selections on the platter. Chicken and dumplings can really stretch a chicken.

I’d tweak your choice of breeds some. Get the variety of hens as you mention, but don’t go with a Jersey Giant rooster. That’s a huge body to feed itself foraging, it’s slow to mature, and it cannot fly really well so it’s harder to dodge predators. I’d go with something smaller and quicker that can forage better, like a game or leghorn. The other two roosters aren’t that bad but I’d personally go with smaller quicker roosters. Your choices should be OK though. For 25 hens three roosters is probably a good number. One good vigorous rooster should be able to keep all hens fertile in that setting but you will need a spare in case of predators. With that many roosters you need enough space so they can each establish a separate territory. Don’t try to keep them very close together. They need to be able to get out of sight of one another.

After several generations you will not wind up with a breed, you will wind up with a barnyard mix if they survive. If you have to have a word to describe them other than barnyard mix I’d call them a type. The more effort you put into culling and selecting which ones you want to breed the more you can tailor them to your wishes. If you just let them go you will wind up with some that are fairly productive and some that are not very productive. But since you are hatching more of the eggs of the ones that lay a lot, you should wind up keeping egg production reasonable. A hen that seldom lays is not that likely to get her eggs hatched.

One problem you will face is genetic diversity. The more they inbreed the more likely you will get a drop in fertility or production and health could suffer. The more breeding chickens you have the slower these problems develop and the more you cull for any deformity the less of a problem this is. Be pretty ruthless in removing any chickens that don’t meet your standards before they have a chance to breed. A standard way to get around this problem is to bring in a new rooster every four of five generations to renew genetic diversity.

What you are talking about has a chance but how successful you are will depend on you tweaking the plan to adjust for quality of forage, space, predator pressure, and lots of other things that crop up. Good luck.

 

[Mrs. K]

@ Ridgerunner - I respectfully disagree with you on some points, and as you said, that does not happen very often.

I do not have a great deal of experience in breeding chickens, but I do have a great deal of experience in breeding of cattle. Breeding poor cattle to poor cattle do not produce outstanding cattle, there is a huge genetic variation and you get all sizes, all sorts of growth rates, some taking more feed, different breeding rates and often times animals that really do not thrive. The original poster indicated that they would be obtaining hatchery birds. Which there is nothing wrong with hatchery birds, I , myself have raised a lot of them and eaten a lot of their eggs. However, they tend not to be high quality birds or long lived birds.

I think that your point of the show bird looking at traits such as feathering and not production records may be partially valid, however, most judges are or should be touching the birds, feeling the bone structure, looking at beaks, breast width, space between the pin bones, weight and age of the bird. Bone structure is indicative of being free of defects, sound legs are vital to animals mobility, good beaks give a bird a better chance of proper nutrition. Bright vivid feathers of the proper coloration indicate a purer breed and good health.

My original point, that if you are into birds to breed, one should have a sharp knife, ruthlessly cull and keep very good records. To just allow natural selection, will produce a lesser bird, one perhaps that is more thrifty as in stronger foraging, perhaps needing less additional feed, but to survive like that, then the birds will be less weight and less egg production. Back in the good old days, there were lots of times when there were no eggs.

I do agree strongly with you on the Jersey Giant, the predation issues that have ruined many a fine plan, and that adding some higher quality roosters occasionally is a good idea.

Mrs K

 

[Folly's place]

I would like to add from my own experience here. Twenty plus years age my first birds arrived from a neighbor; five Belgian d'Uccle bantams, originally hatchery stock. They roosted in my pole barn and raised chicks on their own for five or six years, with MANY losses to predators, before I finally set up a night time coop and run. The survivors layed a lot of eggs, were very savvy (read flighty/wild) and didn't much resemble show type Belgian d'Uccles. Selection worked very well for survival in a dangerous environment, but not for production qualities. As Mrs. K and RR both pointed out, selection for meat and egg production is something WE want, not Mother Nature. And meat qualities are different from egg production qualities. Also, extremes in type aren't useful here; Jersey Giants if bred to standard sizes, won't be a good choice. Natural selection alone brings you back to the Jungle Fowl; smaller flighty, active, not meaty. mary

 

[centrarchid]

Natural selection for me does operate against extremely large birds but can also operate against small birds as well. Flightiness is not solely a function of genetics as my birds can learn this attribute without genetic change. Genetics and likely epigenetics involved as well but covered above. Birds I have are exceptional on the wing and can fly many hundreds of feet when they are conditioned by previous threats or socially directed to do so (this odd statement is very important to how my birds adapt to different free-range challenges). Smaller birds can be selected against by size selective predators (Great-Horned Owl) while are more vulnerable to ground predators during day if size is large enough to slow acceleration during take-off or reduce range. Larger hens are often favored when it comes to brooding and rearing chicks as they are less likely to be depleted energetically during periods when foraging is curtailed. Larger hens can also cover larger broods (can mean chick size as well as number) before roosting up the same larger hens can be more effective against chick predators such as Coopers Hawks. Larger birds can be more resistant to extreme bouts of cold weather although smaller birds can get by on less feed. Parasites can also a factor that is clearly a response to local challenges. A given free-range sight presents a suite of selection pressures and it is far from restricted to impacts by predators. If the "natural selection" is managed then you can still have some wiggle room for selection with respect to productivity (eggs and meat). All situations I have seen involved some degree of management, intended or otherwise, that spares birds from the brunt of predator pressure and usually aids with nutrition and protection from the elements as well. This holds even for my keeping with birds on walks that to the eyes of many would appear to be feral.


Breeds selected to a standard for looks generally do not fare well, especially when those standards deviate from optimum for physical performance.