At the moment, I only have a bunch of laying hens and roosters of various breeds and a few silkies that I've had a few breeding experiments with. I'm really into prepper things and survivalist stuff, but I love chickens too. This made me wonder, what chicken breed would I use if I was in a doomsday situation? I've looked for good dual purpose breeds that are great at foraging, but none of them are up to my standards of thriftyness. So I thought, why not just breed my own! I don't plan on doing this now, but would love to do it in the future. In this "Doomsday Chicken", I'd want a few different traits:
.Good foraging
.Good at evading predators
.lays 140 to 180 eggs per year
.consistently goes broody once or twice a year
.roosters at least 6 pounds at maturity.
.Cold and heat hardy
Breeds I want to use:
.American game ( I've heard they are good at foraging and frequently go broody)
.Rose comb brown leghorn (lays a lot of eggs and are more cold hardy than the single combed leghorns, also camouflaged)
.Buckeyes or partridge chantecler (cold hardy, good foragers and occasionally go broody)
I'll figure out a name for it later.
Tell me what you think!
Consistent survival and population net-growth are your most important traits. Everything else you can get to your goals may have to be icing on the cake.
There was a biologist named I. Lehr Brisbon who developed a breed of wild woods chickens in two steps. First, he released several random and common breeds of bantams into a farmyard along with some junglefowl hybrids and allowed them to breed and live freely for several years. Second, he gathered up the survivors and turned them loose into a Georgia river bottom and left them alone for a few years. Over time, natural selection morphed into small, Old English game bantam-like, black and spangled chickens.
You don’t need a woods chicken, just a barnyard chicken. So you can probably just replicate step one by turning out several breeds of homestead heritage and rustic breeds known to be good free rangers and let them breed at will. The strongest will survive. They may morph into directions you aren’t expecting but so long as you keep their size up and don’t let them become bantams they ought to be useful.
You may find that apart from the pleasure of doing the project, American games are already that practical homestead survival bird. You could cross an American to a big bodied oriental game and maybe get that big size you are looking for. Although there are some Americans that push 6lbs already.