Theoretical, Science Fiction Question

[wegotchickens]

An advantage to freezing sperm packets is that after you get to where you're going, if you need better foraging birds you could slip some game bird sperm packets into the hens and cross things up a bit. If your birds got too flighty, or too thin, you could inseminate with Orpington sperm packets to get a larger more stable bird.

With frozen sperm you could make sure your gene pool never got stagnant.

 

[LarryPQ]

I don't know about the genetics problem, but 100 birds on a ship is going to cause some dust/air quality issues.

While you couldn't freeze embryos, you could have a fairly large back-stock of frozen chicken sperm. Doesn't take up much space or need much energy.

Then they could quickly devolop side-strains of birds. Perhaps there are a few hobbiests on board? Or each family is allowed a safe-deposit box sized amount of storage.

 

[wombat]

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That's an excellent idea!

 

[wombat]

Hatchery mortality rates seem to run between 2.3% and 5.6%, based on a quick google query ... on this world ...

You might want to add to your story the need to contend with a native viral outbreak or other disease event that none of your earth creatuures have immunities to ... could hit your birds or your humans ...

Think of Europeans bringing smallpox to the Americas, or some of the diseases brought back from the Americas that hit Europe ... but with modern science trying to race to contend with the outbreak before your small colony suffers unrecoverable losses.

Maybe throw in a rather frightening and sophisticated parasite, too.

Gotta watch out for those extra-terrestrial foxes, and not the sort that Captain Kirk was always chasing after.

 

[LarryPQ]

Tribbles like chickens. Yum.

 

[Chickndaddy]

Just how much biotechnology are you wanting these colonists to have?

Depending on how far the journey through space to their new home I would suggest putting any live animals, especially the birds, into cold-sleep. Birds are only productive for so long, so to waste feed and time on the trip only to have dirty, tired, paunchy, worn-out layers.

I would suggest extensive frozen egg, sperm, and embryo banks. I would definitely incubate every egg they get when they reach their destination. Not allow the hens of any breed (or species) to go broody and set as this decreases their productivity. Not sure if you could freeze bird embryos (I know you can freeze mammal embryos) but in Jurassic Park (the novel) they developed the embryo and then later put it into a synthetic egg so that that hatchlings could break out of a shell naturally.

With the mammals you would definitely need females onboard in cold sleep to receive the embryos when you reach the end of the journey. And like Dragonsdawn and The Chronicles of Pern you could plant cattle embryo into horses. On that note I remember reading in a college textbook about beef cattle that they planted a certain amount of embryos into a Simmental cow and she birthed 15 calves...at the same time.

ETA: I had to go find the book to see if there was any more info. The book is called Beef Production in the South by Stewart H. Fowler and that portion was emphasizing the importance of reproductive efficiency.

I think the frozen banks of biological material is your answer to genetic diversity. It would take up very little room and you would be able to bring the DNA to produce anything, even an elephant or blue whale if you wanted to because a live animal would be impossible do to the restraints of being on a ship.

 

[racuda]

When can we read your story?

 

[LarryPQ]

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Don't do that! You'll have all us chicken people tearing apart your story like the uber-nerds at a Star Trek convention disecting the plots of every show!!!

 

[3KillerBs]

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Yes, there are going to be all sorts of challenges for my colonists to cope with.

 

[3KillerBs]

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I'm intentionally restricting the amount of bioengineering because, while Dragonsdawn was a very good story, the ability to solve everything by cooking up genetically engineered solutions in the lab has always struck me as too close to solving problems by magic.

Electricity is going to be in limited supply for a good while (generating it isn't so big an issue, but extruding and insulating wire will be -- the stuff is both heavy and bulky to bring from earth). Same for the batteries to go with the solar panels.

I'm not big on the no-weight, no-bulk, no-raw-materials-required, snap-your-fingers-and-there-it-is technology. My colonists are bringing technology that they know they can sustain on colonial resources alone as they get established.

Incubating poultry eggs will be a priority. But a critical power failure in the freezers that held the sperm and embryos may be one of the disasters that challenge them. (Authors are evil that way.

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