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If you have three breeding pens you don't have to have a lot of hens or pullets.

In my original rotational line breeding article I wrote twenty years ago it wa taking the top pullets that matured fast, started larying first and put them in a pen marked pen one . then two and three.

If you have two that's fine per pen but how many chciks are are you going to hatch.?

I checked for fast feathiring and early maturity no trap nesting as no buddy has time to do that unless you are a full time farmer at home.

Again no one does this.

I think today with todays feed prices going towards $20 per sack or more you got to breed more smart with fewer birds but the best layers the best for type and or but not necessary color. As beginners we need to breed for length of body and shape first. Vigor is always paramount on your list.

So if you have kept two females, per pen a total of four females and they are in the two boxes six by six feet say then the male is in the pen with the females for the breeding season. You may keep a spare male in another pen and if you want you can rotate him in to the pen during the half of the season to see what might happen..

I am leaning more to small mattings better record keeping and toe punching and wing banding.

Raise about ten to fifteen chicks per female maybe thirty to fifty chicks per year, cull hard and do it all over again.

Hope this helps. If you are not going to show your birds but just keep them to look at and keep them going don't get caught up in line breeding and all this stuff. You can always get some fresh birds from the top five breeders later in five years so don't worry about that stuff. If you don't own a standard, don't plan to worry about type or color forget the whole subject its a waist of time. Its only for the guy or girl who wants to shoot to have a strain for ten years or more. Only one in a hundred will do this any way. Hope I have not put water on the fire but get your goals in order and pick for vigor, type and then egg laying or feathering and you will be fine. bob
 
Let me throw something in here that also might, just maybe, have a helpful element to consider. Many of us have dozens and dozens of hens in our laying barn. Maybe, these hens are standard bred, high quality birds. Maybe we've gotten weary of the cheapo, throw-a-way, early burnout hybrids. Yup. It happens. Maybe we've fallen in love with the quality of a better bred bird.

But, just because one has a few dozen hens in the hen house working for a living doesn't mean we have to flock breed. In my view, this is what can really cause a flock to go backward.

Take your very best hens, with type, tail, stance, etc and take them to the mating pens. 4 top grade hens, divided in Pen #1 and Pen # 2 with your best cock and/or chosen cockerel prince can follow what Bob articulated. Those four hens will give you potentially 50+ fertile hatching eggs each, or 200-240 fertile hatching eggs during the 3 month breeding season. That is a lot of fertile eggs.

I don't personally see much point in indiscriminate flock propagation haphazardly.
 
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Great point Fred. I have seen people have four or five females in a pen with one male. Lets say you have four breeding pens. Twenty total females. You are going to have eggs up the you know what. If you sell eggs to beginners, or hatch and sell day old chicks in lots of 25 or started chicks in lots of ten then that's fine. But for your own personnel use that's way to many birds. What you need to do is sit on your chair watch the females walk around the pen or outside and then say to yourself which of these two are the very best? Go with them and at least you are mating the best to the best. Now latter when you get real good for compensating mattings. You may have a female with a fault and then you mate her to a male with the strength. That's fine.

Just thinking into the future. More is not better. Breeding smart is the secret for us in the future. Having a buddy with your line is a big plus as well. I have three buddies now with my Red Bantams and we can all help each other if needed in the future. bob
 
Fred's Hens said:
Let me throw something in here that also might, just maybe, have a helpful element to consider. Many of us have dozens and dozens of hens in our laying barn. Maybe, these hens are standard bred, high quality birds. Maybe we've gotten weary of the cheapo, throw-a-way, early burnout hybrids. Yup. It happens. Maybe we've fallen in love with the quality of a better bred bird.

But, just because one has a few dozen hens in the hen house working for a living doesn't mean we have to flock breed. In my view, this is what can really cause a flock to go backward.

Take your very best hens, with type, tail, stance, etc and take them to the mating pens. 4 top grade hens, divided in Pen #1 and Pen # 2 with your best cock and/or chosen cockerel prince can follow what Bob articulated. Those four hens will give you potentially 50+ fertile hatching eggs each, or 200-240 fertile hatching eggs during the 3 month breeding season. That is a lot of fertile eggs.

I don't personally see much point in indiscriminate flock propagation haphazardly.
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Depends on what you start with. If you start with great quality the smaller matings work really well. If you start with average quality or below, you need at least one or two years of huge numbers to bring quality up quickly. Then you can go to your small breedings.
 
Very good point. How do you know what are average strains and the better strains? In fact some strains may take five to ten years to get to the level of the top strains. Of course you can always cross strains and see if you hit the lottery or not.

What does a beginner do?

Sure glad I am not starting all over again.

Then think about the colored chickens that look so pretty in the catalogs that every buddy wants to have.

You can see why there are so few breeders left anymore. Its very tough to maintain and or upgrade a strain of fowl.

http://showbirdbid.proboards.com/thread/5893/inbreeding-serama

Here is a article I found today that hit a home run. This can apply to any breed and I thought you might enjoy reading it its a classic and that's why I be leave in getting the best stock you can then roll up your sleeves and hammer away in line breeding and or Inbreeding. Make these unwanted genes come to the surface and skim them off and in no time you will have a uniform strain of birds that look like peas in a pod.
 
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Any idea what caused this? Is it genetic or can I still possibly breed the chick in the future? In other words is it worth all of the feed it would take to raise it? So far it is a nice dark color, but my camera made it look more yellow. Also I feed wet feed so that is the reason for the messy face.

 
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