Starting a pure breed flock?

[aart]

That is not always that bad as has parallels in how natural populations are founded. Subsequent introduction of new genes in a measured manner can then be used to increase the genetic variation of the newly founded flock.

Just as much real damage can happen in the hands of experienced breeders where less intensive inbreeding occurs over many generations. What can then be even worse is many other breeders found exclusively off a few "high" quality flocks that also removes lots of desirable genetic variation.

Hadn't thought of that.....good point.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Aart I hope you got my pm. I mainly sent it to show I don’t always just make this stuff up. I once worked out the math for full-sibling crosses versus parent/offspring crosses relative to genetic diversity. There is no real difference. I’m not going to try to do that online. You are dealing with gene pairs and it gets messy really quickly. I’m not even going to look at half-sibling crosses which would be better for genetic diversity reasons.

I very much agree with the effective population size issue. Hatcheries deal with that by using the pen breeding method. They use enough different hens and roosters to have an effective population. We generally don’t have that with a backyard flock, especially if we only have one rooster. But as I imagine you’ve seen me say small farmers have been managing this situation for thousands of years by bringing in a new rooster every four or five generations. There are techniques to manage it.