Breeding the Home Flock

[Ontario Chick]

This is a good article by expert breeder and may be a good way to start the poultry breeding section.

BREEDING THE HOME FLOCK

By Don Schrider
Virginia
©2011

I recently hatched out two Black Australorps; one stag and one pullet. They were sired by a pure Black Australorp over two Black Australorp hens. (He is no relation to the hens, but will be the father of the pullet; whereas the stag will be a son and possibly a brother to the pullet). My query is which rooster do I put over the old hens and the young hen to get pure Black Australorps without sacrificing size or character? My chickens are very docile and tolerate this Mississipi Valley heat very well. Any help will be appreciated.—Dan Albarado
Anyone can start breeding simply by collecting and incubating eggs from their flock or letting a broody hen do the work. But the real challenge we face is where to go after that first season so as to avoid inbreeding bottlenecks—that is, the genetic degradation and loss of productivity that follows from breeding close relatives. The e-mail from Dan Albarado clearly indicates the challenge we face—the first season leaves us with pullets related to their father, and cockerels related to at least one hen and to the pullets as either full brothers or half-brothers. Dan's e-mail also indicates that he has found his flock to be excellent for his regional challenges and he wishes to maintain the genetic package that is giving him those excellent results.
I find this topic very exciting as the more people produce their own replacement chickens, the more sustainable backyard poultry keeping becomes. It also validates the efforts of many breeders keeping alive and viable Standard breeds over the past 70 years; what could have been lost has been retained and these breeds are ready to do what they were designed to do—fulfill their productive role in small backyard flocks across the country.
As you have no doubt guessed, we need to adopt methods that leave us room to breed over many years instead of simply hatching without consideration for the future. What I am suggesting is for us to adopt a philosophy that guides our breeding decisions, and which let's us make decisions on how to proceed without, if I can use a metaphor for painting floors, "painting ourselves into a corner."

All it takes is a pair of healthy birds to be able to hatch your own chicks.
Understanding "Breeding"
Breeding's first role is to produce the next generation, but doing so without any planning leads us into a situation where all the birds are closely related and results in loss of productivity and vigor over generations. We can divide breeding into two main functions—maintenance and improvement of productive attributes, and maintenance of genetic diversity within our flock. I will refer to these two aspects of breeding as "breeding for improvement" and "conservation breeding" respectively.
Most available information on breeding focuses on improvement breeding. Essentially improvement breeding is often described as breeding "your-best-to-your-best." In actuality, culling inferior birds and selecting superior birds results in improvements to a flock over time. Good improvement breeding need only focus on mating together birds that share good traits to cause them to occur more frequently in the flock, as well as making sure that mated birds do not share the same faults so that faults occur less frequently. We call these two aspects of improvement breeding "emphasizing good traits" and "offsetting faults."
Conservation breeding has to do with making decisions that ensure there is enough diversity in the flock such that it can be bred for many generations without fear of the individuals becoming too closely related. So conservation breeding focuses on managing how related each individual is to other individuals in the flock; based on relations, who is mated to who; and ensuring that some individuals within the flock are as unrelated as possible. As we design a breeding program for our flock, conservation breeding decisions are going to play a key role in allowing us to breed for many generations without losing diversity.
It should be clear that as long as we can only maintain one flock of chickens, we can only breed for one season without mating related individuals, and, as seasons progress, more and more birds in the flock will become closely related. Nowhere is this more clear than in a small flock with only one rooster—genetically he is half the flock, as every offspring gets half his genes. This simple example illustrates that to maintain genetic diversity we need to use as many males as possible, and limit how often they are used.
As we breed our flock, there are relationships we try to avoid and others that can be used. For instance, brother to sister matings tend to be the most intense form of inbreeding. However, sire to offspring and dam to offspring are less intense. How can this be? A parent only gives its offspring half of its DNA, the other half coming from the other parent. Whereas, brothers and sisters can be nearly identical in DNA and this type of mating sometimes results in loss of size and increase in faults—like crooked beaks. More distant relationships would include cousins, aunts or uncles, and even 2nd cousins. Ideally, we would like our matings to be largely more distant relationships, however, the occasional more closely related mating is acceptable.

Choosing a mate with the same strong points will result in many more birds having those good points. Photos by Don Schrider.
Methods of Breeding
The basic methods of mating poultry are: Out and Out Breeding; Flock Sourcing; Flock Mating; Rolling Matings; and Spiral Matings. While this article will focus on a solution for the small home flock, we need to understand these different breeding systems to understand the bigger picture in breeding.
Out and Out Breeding is simply a system of bringing in new roosters from different sources each year. Traditionally this system was most popularly used in crossbreeding mongrel flocks—that is, roosters of a different breed were used each season over the flock of crossbred hens. This system has also been used in purebred flocks—same breed roosters are sourced each year, but source is changed each year as well. In this system you can save all your females and maintain them as one flock. But productive traits are hard to manage as the source flocks for the roosters will each be strong in some traits and weak in others.
Flock Sourcing is also a method in which you bring in new roosters each year. This system differs from Out and Out Breeding in that you stick with one source for the roosters—presumably a master breeder of your breed. The advantage of this system is improvement of traits over time, relying on the efforts of the master breeder, and the retention of known good qualities—such as the heat tolerance Dan Albarado observed in his Australorps. The disadvantage is that you must cull all your males each year and you are relying on someone else for quality new roosters.
Flock Mating is the breeding of a flock of chickens as one unit. For this system to be self-sustaining, 20 males and 180-200 females should be used. The chickens work out who mates with whom. This is the type of system most commonly practiced by commercial hatcheries, which frequently add the twist of culling the parent flock each year and using only young birds as breeders. Smaller versions of this system can be utilized in the home flock with good results. The key would be to keep as large a flock as possible, with one male per every 5-12 females.

Choosing a mate that does not share the same faults is important when ridding the flock of a fault. Here this male has deep red eye color, while his mate has poor eye color.
Rolling Matings is also known as Old Farmer's Method. In this system you need to be able to separate the flock into two flocks each year during breeding season. Each year pullets are mated to the mature cock birds and cockerels are mated to the mature hens. At the end of the mating season the breeding pullets and hens are combined and culled to the number of hens needed for the next season, the cockerels and cocks are likewise combined and culled to the number of cocks needed for the next season, and the young chicks are grown out to be used as breeding pullets and cockerels in the next breeding season. Some inbreeding does occur, but many birds have little relation to each other. This is a simple system and has the advantage of requiring only two flocks.
Spiral Mating is a system in which three or more matings are setup every year. In the first year you divide the hens up into three or more "families" and give each family an identifying name: such as "1," "2," and "3," or "Blue," "Red," and "Pink," or "Albarado," "Belanger," and "Schrider." Males are chosen to mate with the females—as long as any given male is used, he will always be mated to females from only that one family. Offspring are marked and named for their mother's family. So pullets and cockerels from the "Blue" family are marked and called Blue family. In the second and following seasons, the pullets join their mothers and are used with that family; so Blue family pullets are added to the Blue family hen flock for breeding. Blue family sons, however, are only ever used on the next family hens—in this case Blue family roosters are used on Red family hens and pullets; Red family roosters on Pink family hens and pullets; and Pink family roosters on Blue family hens and pullets. The rotation, or spiral, comes from males of one family being used only with females of the next family. So in your records, you will know each season that Blue family roosters are always used with Red family pullets and hens.
The advantage of Spiral Mating is that close relatives are never mated and you can go many decades without adding new chickens. If you choose to add new chickens, new roosters can be substituted in for one family of males, and new hens can either start a new family, replace an old family of low quality, or be added to the family which they most resemble.
So back to our small flock and Dan Albarado's question. The simplest thing for Dan to do is to divide his flock into two for mating—the old rooster with the pullet(s) and the hens with the cockerel. Next year he will have both the old male and the 2010 male to choose from to use with the 2011 pullets. (Please note that half the 2011 pullets will be from the old male and half from the 2010 male.) He will combine the 2010 pullets with the old hens and add a 2011 cockerel. Note that this male could come from either the 2010 male or the old male. This would be using Rolling Matings.

Lots of good chicks can be hatched from just a few good birds. Trading roosters with a neighbor is a good way to prevent inbreeding in the small backyard flock.
Another method that could be used is to find two other breeders of Australorps in his area and each season trade roosters. In this case the Dan Albarado roosters might be sent to Elaine Belanger to be used on her flock; the Elaine Belanger roosters sent to Don Schrider to be used on his flock; and the Don Schrider roosters sent to Dan Albarado to be used on his flock. Each would only have one mating. This is Spiral Mating in which the different families are the flocks kept by different breeders. This can work well if several breeders are willing to work together.
But let's say Dan Albarado can only manage one flock and can find no one else to swap males with. In this case I would suggest using the old male for 2 or 3 seasons over the old hens and his daughters. At the end of this a new male must be brought in; and that male could be used for 2 or 3 seasons; etc... In his choice for a new male, Dan could go back to his original source—in doing so he would be Flock Sourcing—or he could seek a new source—which would be a form of Out and Out Breeding.
No matter what method Dan chooses to use with his flock, his long-term success is dependent upon having his flock comprise of a variety of individual birds with differences in their ancestry. This will mean saving birds from different generations and using as many different males as his situation allows.
Don Schrider is a nationally recognized poultry breeder and expert. He has written for publications such as Backyard Poultry, Countryside and Small Stock Journal, Mother Earth News, Poultry Press, and the newsletter and poultry resources of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. To visit the online poultry resources of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, visit: http://www.albc-usa.org/EducationalReso ... ckens.html












































 

[domineckernc]

Like, Like, Like

Fantastic info at this website. It's very much information that pertains to breeding a good chicken, meaning a chicken that is well structured. I know things like heart girth and abdominal capacity aren't as "cool" as crests or eggshell color, or millefleurporceleinfivetoedbluespangledpolkadots, BUT, when it comes down to putting a cull on the table it's mighty nice to be able to get your hand into the abdomen to clean it out. It's even better if it presents a nice looking straight keeled chunky thighed roast on the serving platter. If yoiu are breeding a home flock the albc website is your friend!

[Skinny rooster]

Thanks for bringing this over OC, I read this not that long ago, a lot of good info. Interesting that it's better to use the old rooster than brother sister matings. Sometimes I had to do that and was really worried. Even now, my buff Cochin bantam rooster is show quality (actually got a ribbon) but my hens are pet quality, the sons are not that good but the daughters came out nice so I want the older rooster to cover the pullets and hopefully the next generation will be even better. Now I feel better about trying this mating.

[kdms]

That was a very interesting read...and has cleared up a couple of things my DH has been trying to explain for a while but I just wasn't getting his explanations. :idea:

[Ontario Chick]

I try to re-read it every year, and every year I find something new.
I hope it means that I have learned something that year, not that I just forgot half of it. :)

[windwalkingwolf]

LIKE

[dreamriver]

Great post, lots of good info
Thanks