Nope. I have that rooster supposedly from pen B and a different set of hens from a closed flock. Just starting out a 3 pen program will, IMO, will create more problems than successes. The first year and I suspect for a several years thereafter it will be difficult to have enough quality offspring to work 2 pens.
The first year only one pen, pen A is needed. Your best rooster is used to cover your 3 or 4 best hens. Everything egg laid is hatched. From those hatches the best rooster is selected for pen B. If that rooster is significantly better than the rooster in pen A from the prior year, the original pen A rooster is retired to the soup pot. The pen A rooster that starts everything off should be as close to the standard as possible. After you have that, pen B is populated.
There are several ways to approach a spiral breeding program. When using completely separate lines each year is equivalent to an out cross and as each generation is hatched the negative impact becomes less and less.
In my program the F0 hens are bred to the best F1 rooster. The best F1 hens are bred back to the original F0 rooster. In my program that's why the F0 rooster has to be as close to the standard as possible.
Trying to fill 3 pens prematurely requires
View attachment 1356620 the breeder to make compromises in quality that shouldn't be made. A successful breeding program revolves around extreme selective pressure. I have 30 chicks running around. I make my first non kill cull selections at one month. Right now I only have six that I like that will definitely make it to the grow out pen, one has already been destroyed at 2.5 weeks, the other 24 will be culled again at 8 weeks for Cornish .game hens. My goal is to hatch 100 Cornish this year and am hoping I will get 10 suitable for use in my breeding program.
