- Apr 20, 2019
- 150
- 326
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Hello! I am looking into breeding chickens, and I have some questions that hopefully someone with more experience can help me with. I apologize in advance because I'm a bit long-winded, but I wanted to make sure my questions made sense! First, here's a little bit of background information.
I'm not new to chickens, but the only experience I have with breeding is hatching out barnyard mixes from my hatchery chickens. Recently, I've been looking into breeding chickens to the standard, and after seeing pictures of hatchery bred chickens compared to SOP chickens, I've been inspired to start a small breeding program. There's a spot in my old cow barn that I'm planning on building pens in. I haven't settled on a breed yet as there are so many that I like! But to start out, I'd like to focus on just one breed(or maybe two if I really can't decide). That being said, I'm still very much at the beginning of my research, and I have some questions I haven't been able to find the answers to yet.
1. From the research I've done, it seems most breeders cull their stock and replace them with their offspring every year or two. If breeders are constantly culling their stock, how do they know the overall health/longevity/production of their stock? I know that for some smaller breeders, their culls go to their personal layer flock, but many also sell or use them for meat. If they are only kept for a couple of years max, but their offspring are sold to people who plan to keep them for their whole lives (and therefore want chickens who are healthy and live for a long time), how can you know this chicken won't develop genetic conditions that only show later in life? I hope this question makes sense as I am coming from the perspective of someone who knows a lot more about dog breeding than chicken breeding. Just as an example of where my brain is, a dog breeder would know their dog's grandmother and be able to know if the dog is still healthy in it's old age or if it has a ton of health issues that are likely to be genetic. But maybe this isn't as much of a concern with chickens? I don't know if I'd feel comfortable selling people chickens if I had no proof that they would be healthy long term besides what I can see on the outside. But at the same time, I fully understand why they need to be replaced and that I would quickly run out of room if I kept all my past breeders.
2. I'm not really looking to breed show chickens, my main focus is to breed healthy, friendly, and productive birds for other homesteaders. I would like to breed to the standard, but I also don't want to disqualify a chicken from the program if it has the wrong colored feet, eyes, or a couple of wrong colored feathers but excels in the other categories. As I said, I want my main focus to be health and temperament, so would it be "looked down upon" if I kept them in the program? I want to stay to the breed standard, but do I have to be extremely strict on small cosmetic differences?
3. I saw somewhere that typically chickens from hatcheries lay more than chickens from breeders, as they are bred with a focus on production. Is this generally true? I'm assuming chickens from breeders generally have temperaments and production levels closer to the breed standard compared to hatchery bred? If anyone has any personal experiences/comparisons, please share!
4. I have yet to decide which breed I want to start with, but some at the top of my list are Wyandottes, Cochins, and Ameraucanas. Most breeding flocks I see seem to be of singular colors, but all of these breeds have lots of different colors. I still need to do a lot of research on color genetics but my current understanding is that breeding two different colors together generally can create a match to one of the parents or a mix. Is it a bad idea to have a mixed colored breeding flock if I culled the chickens that had nonstandard colors? Or would I just end up with a bunch of very randomly colored chickens? I like having a variety of colors, and I have no idea how I'd choose just one!
5. I've been trying to find chicks of some of the breeds that I'm interested in, and it has proved to be very difficult. I'm not really interested in hatching shipped eggs as I know the hatch rates can be very low. The breeders that I have looked at all seem to be sold out for the season. There is a large poultry show close by every summer, and I would likely be able to purchase some adult hens and roosters there. But they will probably be quite expensive, so I would only be able to buy a few. In a recent rabbit hole of chicken breeding research I went down, I saw an old thread on here where someone successfully bred some lower quality chickens to their well bred chickens (I believe in order to get a certain color), and over time and lots of culling was able to create chickens that were to standard. Would it be an absolutely horrible idea if I bought some hatchery chicks and bred them to a few well bred chickens from the show? I know that there would be a lot of culls, especially at the beginning, and I would be going into it with fairly low expectations. But maybe over time I could have chickens that were to standard? I know it would probably be easier to just get adult chickens from the show and try to keep looking for well bred chicks to hopefully expand the genetic diversity, but for some reason, I'm very attracted to this idea. I think I like the idea of a project and seeing a line of poorly bred chickens improve over time. If it doesn't work, the hens would just go into my laying flock (as we sell eggs), so it wouldn't be a huge issue. But if this idea will 100% crash and burn, please tell me.
6. Lastly, does anyone have any good book recommendations on chicken breeding and genetics?
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read all this, and thank you for any input!
I'm not new to chickens, but the only experience I have with breeding is hatching out barnyard mixes from my hatchery chickens. Recently, I've been looking into breeding chickens to the standard, and after seeing pictures of hatchery bred chickens compared to SOP chickens, I've been inspired to start a small breeding program. There's a spot in my old cow barn that I'm planning on building pens in. I haven't settled on a breed yet as there are so many that I like! But to start out, I'd like to focus on just one breed(or maybe two if I really can't decide). That being said, I'm still very much at the beginning of my research, and I have some questions I haven't been able to find the answers to yet.
1. From the research I've done, it seems most breeders cull their stock and replace them with their offspring every year or two. If breeders are constantly culling their stock, how do they know the overall health/longevity/production of their stock? I know that for some smaller breeders, their culls go to their personal layer flock, but many also sell or use them for meat. If they are only kept for a couple of years max, but their offspring are sold to people who plan to keep them for their whole lives (and therefore want chickens who are healthy and live for a long time), how can you know this chicken won't develop genetic conditions that only show later in life? I hope this question makes sense as I am coming from the perspective of someone who knows a lot more about dog breeding than chicken breeding. Just as an example of where my brain is, a dog breeder would know their dog's grandmother and be able to know if the dog is still healthy in it's old age or if it has a ton of health issues that are likely to be genetic. But maybe this isn't as much of a concern with chickens? I don't know if I'd feel comfortable selling people chickens if I had no proof that they would be healthy long term besides what I can see on the outside. But at the same time, I fully understand why they need to be replaced and that I would quickly run out of room if I kept all my past breeders.
2. I'm not really looking to breed show chickens, my main focus is to breed healthy, friendly, and productive birds for other homesteaders. I would like to breed to the standard, but I also don't want to disqualify a chicken from the program if it has the wrong colored feet, eyes, or a couple of wrong colored feathers but excels in the other categories. As I said, I want my main focus to be health and temperament, so would it be "looked down upon" if I kept them in the program? I want to stay to the breed standard, but do I have to be extremely strict on small cosmetic differences?
3. I saw somewhere that typically chickens from hatcheries lay more than chickens from breeders, as they are bred with a focus on production. Is this generally true? I'm assuming chickens from breeders generally have temperaments and production levels closer to the breed standard compared to hatchery bred? If anyone has any personal experiences/comparisons, please share!
4. I have yet to decide which breed I want to start with, but some at the top of my list are Wyandottes, Cochins, and Ameraucanas. Most breeding flocks I see seem to be of singular colors, but all of these breeds have lots of different colors. I still need to do a lot of research on color genetics but my current understanding is that breeding two different colors together generally can create a match to one of the parents or a mix. Is it a bad idea to have a mixed colored breeding flock if I culled the chickens that had nonstandard colors? Or would I just end up with a bunch of very randomly colored chickens? I like having a variety of colors, and I have no idea how I'd choose just one!
5. I've been trying to find chicks of some of the breeds that I'm interested in, and it has proved to be very difficult. I'm not really interested in hatching shipped eggs as I know the hatch rates can be very low. The breeders that I have looked at all seem to be sold out for the season. There is a large poultry show close by every summer, and I would likely be able to purchase some adult hens and roosters there. But they will probably be quite expensive, so I would only be able to buy a few. In a recent rabbit hole of chicken breeding research I went down, I saw an old thread on here where someone successfully bred some lower quality chickens to their well bred chickens (I believe in order to get a certain color), and over time and lots of culling was able to create chickens that were to standard. Would it be an absolutely horrible idea if I bought some hatchery chicks and bred them to a few well bred chickens from the show? I know that there would be a lot of culls, especially at the beginning, and I would be going into it with fairly low expectations. But maybe over time I could have chickens that were to standard? I know it would probably be easier to just get adult chickens from the show and try to keep looking for well bred chicks to hopefully expand the genetic diversity, but for some reason, I'm very attracted to this idea. I think I like the idea of a project and seeing a line of poorly bred chickens improve over time. If it doesn't work, the hens would just go into my laying flock (as we sell eggs), so it wouldn't be a huge issue. But if this idea will 100% crash and burn, please tell me.
6. Lastly, does anyone have any good book recommendations on chicken breeding and genetics?
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read all this, and thank you for any input!
