Which roo should I keep (OR which is worse: Father/daughter breeding or half-brother/half-sister bre

[CricketR4]

I have two beautiful roosters, a father (EE) and his son (EE/PR). They are both lovely roos, great temperaments, neither are aggressive towards me, the hens or my children or even complete strangers that come over. I am downsizing my roos and am not sure which one to keep. I'm NOT a breeder, I keep a roo or two around as flock protection, and for fertile eggs for hatching when I need some new hens. I DO change out my roo every few years, but since I just did that last year, I'm hoping to keep one of my two roos around instead of getting a new one this year. I do have an Americana that I'll be keeping as well, since he was given to me by a friend that can't have any roos at all. Just need to know: should I keep the father of quite a few of my hens, or his son, their half brother?

ETA: I had no idea which forum to put this thread in, so I hope it's OK to post it here.

 

[MrsBrooke]

I have two beautiful roosters, a father (EE) and his son (EE/PR). They are both lovely roos, great temperaments, neither are aggressive towards me, the hens or my children or even complete strangers that come over. I am downsizing my roos and am not sure which one to keep. I'm NOT a breeder, I keep a roo or two around as flock protection, and for fertile eggs for hatching when I need some new hens. I DO change out my roo every few years, but since I just did that last year, I'm hoping to keep one of my two roos around instead of getting a new one this year. I do have an Americana that I'll be keeping as well, since he was given to me by a friend that can't have any roos at all. Just need to know: should I keep the father of quite a few of my hens, or his son, their half brother?

ETA: I had no idea which forum to put this thread in, so I hope it's OK to post it here.

Line breeding is used by breeders to encourage a certain type of genetics. This type of breeding uses mother/son, father/daughter, aunt/nephew, uncle/niece parings. It is not recommended to use line breeding for many generations because you can start to see hinky genetics pop up...

I have heard of successful grandfather/granddaughter, grandmother/grandson matings before, but much past that... Eh. I'd be careful.

I've always read that breeding brother/sister is a crap shoot. Sometimes, the chicks are okay, other times they aren't or won't be viable as embryos. Unsure about step/half-siblings pairs.

Hope that helps.

MrsB

 

[Amina]

Hmm... well, a father and daughter would share half of their DNA. A half-brother/half-sister pair also got half their DNA from the same parent... but maybe got a different half from that parent. So I think half-brother/half-sister is better.

 

[keesmom]

It sounds like you are holding on to mostly new pullets. In that case keep the father. If you were keeping mostly older hens then I'd say the son.

 

[donrae]

I really don't think it matters on your small scale. Honestly, you're talking about hatching 20 some birds, give or take? Not going to matter. I've done both the scenarios you mentioned, and didn't have any issues to speak of. As long as your parent stock are healthy, you should be good to go. On the off chance some weird, funky hidden recessive thing pops up with hatching next year, well, roosters are easy to come by.

 

[Mommy 2 Wee Ones]

Hmm... well, a father and daughter would share half of their DNA. A half-brother/half-sister pair also got half their DNA from the same parent... but maybe got a different half from that parent. So I think half-brother/half-sister is better.

Amina, that was what I was worried about. I have 3 half siblings, 2 Roos who have the same Father, different Buff Orph Mothers, this 1/2 siister, same Father (Silkie) Mom was a NH Red.

Our Banty went broody mid May of this year, hatched out 4 chicks, 3 were small like Banty Mom, but 1 was always taller & bigger than the others. I now think that Puffles Mom is my 1/2 Slikie/NH Red hen,


Dad - Hank



Mom - Lollypop



Child - Puffles (no crowing yet, too young to lay an egg....so we wait.




Only surviving sibling - No Name, who is small like Banty Mom - Ramin

 

[Amina]

I don't know that it's really going to matter. I think I would just keep the one I liked better, and keep track of the relationships as much as possible just in case of problems.

 

[Amina]

While I would still probably just keep whichever roo I liked better, you might want to check out this wikipedia article on coefficient of relationships:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_relationship
Scroll down to the "human relationships" chart, and you can see how different types of relationships compare to each other in terms of inbreeding.