Breeding isa browns

[wortham]

Hi yall. I have trouble finding what I need on here sometimes so if someone could point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

I have a bunch of isa brown hens laying. I have a Rhode Island Red and a barred rock rooster in with them. Would it be a bad idea to try to hatch their eggs? What would it produce? I read somewhere that the lesser traits would come out trying to breed hybrids. Can someone enlighten me. Thanks in advance.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

It is an excellent idea. Hybrid vigor usually takes over with mixes.

Yes, never breed forward an animal with an obvious health flaw (unthrifty, cross beak, wry neck), but with mixes, there is less chance of having a recessive match up. You get that with a number of pure bred lines.

If you place your RIR rooster over those ISA hens, you essentially are furthering a Production Red line. Really good egg layers, not so good for meat. Should all be red colored, both genders.

If you place your BR rooster over your ISA hens, you again will get good egg layers, though not as likely as prolific as the RIR/ISA. They will be hardy birds that lay well. A bit better in body weight, but not a truly dual purpose bird for meat and eggs. With the rooster being barred, all chicks will be barred, single copy, both genders. (Breed those BR/ISA girls, first gen F1, back to the barred rooster and you will get double barred males, single barred females....breed those F1 BR/ISA barred females to the RIR, and you will create black sex links...boys single barred, females black with red leakage.)

It is an excellent project. I have had great success mixing pure breeds with commercial hybrids (ISA/Red Star/Red Sexlink/California Grey).

Just be sure to always use your healthiest, strongest, least problematic birds. I would settle in with that flock and those 2 roosters for a number of seasons and select for the best of the best to set you lines of fine, home brew egg layers.

Shout out to Tennessee...lovely country. My daughter and her husband are organic farmers in Tennessee. Love visiting my grandbaby there

LofMc

 

[wortham]

Awesome news! Thank you so much. I'm gonna start collecting for the incubator now! I do love the isa brown hens. They are very friendly and dead set on producing eggs. My next venture will be letting my ameraucana rooster breed my cream legbar hen. I lost my clb rooster in the bitter cold snap we had this winter. So until I get another I figured what could it hurt to let them cross. I'm sure good blue egg layers. But not sure if they would be autosexing.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

What color is your Ameraucana? (And are you sure it is Ameraucana and not EE? Matters in breeding outcomes but not in hybrid fun)

If your Ameraucana is not dominate white, which is unlikely as white is not an accepted color and EE would be hybrid split, chances are you will get Autosexing as the CL hen is single barred.

With either EE or Ameraucana and the CL you will get blue green eggs, but those chicks could receive 1 or 2 blue shell genes depending if the rooster is pure or a EE mix....Punnett math is more complicated, but only pure for blue shell bred to pure for blue shell will ensure pure for blue shell...it only matters for breed forward as you don't want to breed out the blue shell genes.