Hello,
I've been hatching my own birds for several years now, and just bringing in new blood from time to time, but now I'm looking to get more serious about improving my flock genetics, and to me, that means bringing in fewer random chickens. To help maintain such a system, I'm interested in a clan breeding program ("spiral matings"), in which there are three or more clans of chickens, chicks are assigned to the clan of their mothers, and roosters are bred to the next clan over, but for me, it's not really practical to maintenance three separate coops.
That said, managing two coops would be just fine, so I was wondering if a clan breeding program with only two clans is viable. Everywhere I've read says you need a minimum of three, and obviously, the more the merrier as far as diversity goes, but I drew it out on paper and it seems like two would work OK. The other alternative I was considering is a variation of Rolling Matings, where roosters are bred to pullets and hens are bred to cockerels. It's a little complicated, but I'll do my best to describe it below:
In a regular Rolling Matings system, you would save a rooster from a hatch, breed him to the older hens when he's a cockerel, and then breed him to the pullets (whom he fathered the year prior), the next year, when he's a rooster. To avoid such father-daughter matings, it seems relatively simple to me to save not one but two cockerels from each year's hatch. The first cockerel, (preferably one from a cockerel-hens mating to avoid mother-son matings) would be used when he's a cockerel, and then butchered after breeding season. The next year, the second cockerel (now a rooster) that was saved from the aforementioned hatch would be used to breed the young pullets that the first cockerel fathered, thus avoiding father-daughter matings. I attached a picture if that helps.
So, long story short, my question is which one of these two systems would maintain greater genetic diversity? I know it's not a particularly big deal, as I'm not breeding some rare landrace (not yet anyway, but I might do Icelandics one day), but I drew both systems out on paper to try to determine which utilized the most-unrelated matings, and what seemed to be a simple problem, became (to me anyways) a complicated mess of pedigrees. Now I'm genuinely interested in determining which is the superior system. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
I've been hatching my own birds for several years now, and just bringing in new blood from time to time, but now I'm looking to get more serious about improving my flock genetics, and to me, that means bringing in fewer random chickens. To help maintain such a system, I'm interested in a clan breeding program ("spiral matings"), in which there are three or more clans of chickens, chicks are assigned to the clan of their mothers, and roosters are bred to the next clan over, but for me, it's not really practical to maintenance three separate coops.
That said, managing two coops would be just fine, so I was wondering if a clan breeding program with only two clans is viable. Everywhere I've read says you need a minimum of three, and obviously, the more the merrier as far as diversity goes, but I drew it out on paper and it seems like two would work OK. The other alternative I was considering is a variation of Rolling Matings, where roosters are bred to pullets and hens are bred to cockerels. It's a little complicated, but I'll do my best to describe it below:
In a regular Rolling Matings system, you would save a rooster from a hatch, breed him to the older hens when he's a cockerel, and then breed him to the pullets (whom he fathered the year prior), the next year, when he's a rooster. To avoid such father-daughter matings, it seems relatively simple to me to save not one but two cockerels from each year's hatch. The first cockerel, (preferably one from a cockerel-hens mating to avoid mother-son matings) would be used when he's a cockerel, and then butchered after breeding season. The next year, the second cockerel (now a rooster) that was saved from the aforementioned hatch would be used to breed the young pullets that the first cockerel fathered, thus avoiding father-daughter matings. I attached a picture if that helps.
So, long story short, my question is which one of these two systems would maintain greater genetic diversity? I know it's not a particularly big deal, as I'm not breeding some rare landrace (not yet anyway, but I might do Icelandics one day), but I drew both systems out on paper to try to determine which utilized the most-unrelated matings, and what seemed to be a simple problem, became (to me anyways) a complicated mess of pedigrees. Now I'm genuinely interested in determining which is the superior system. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
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