Breeding Program/Genetic Diversity Problem

[Lyok]

Hello,
I'm new to this forum, and I just realized I posted this in the wrong section, so this is a re-post.

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!

 

[NatJ]

Hello,
I'm new to this forum, and I just realized I posted this in the wrong section, so this is a re-post.

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 don't know which of those ideas is better, but I'll be curious to see if anyone else has opinions.

I can think of a way to do something like a 3-clan spiral system with just 2 pens:

One pen contains hens from several clans, and you do not hatch eggs from this pen.
The other pen contains hens from just one clan, and a rooster from the correct clan to mate with them. You hatch eggs from this pen.

You might start with a clan A rooster and clan B hens in the "breeding" pen. Hatch eggs, keep pullets (clan B) and cockerels (need to breed with clan C.)
The next year, use one of those males you hatched, with clan C hens. Keep pullets (clan C) and cockerels (will breed with clan A hens next year.)
As you keep rotating around, you would only be hatching from one clan per year, always with a rooster who is one year old (hatched last year) and hens that are 3 years old (because they hatched 3 years ago, the last time their group had the breeding pen.)

Depending on how long you expect to keep individual hens, you could have more than 3 clans. You might be able to do more than one clan per year, depending on how fast your cockerels mature.

Breeding from 3 year old hens would give some selection for longevity. It would cause you to make slower progress on breeding for many other traits (less cycles of selection per year or per decade.) Then again, if you hatch 3x as many birds from the one pen, you can be more selective about which birds from that pen are kept for breeding, so you your progress might not be that much slower, as compared with hatching from 3 pens but 1/3 as many per pen.