Signs of "Line Breeding"?

[Chickie'sMoma]

Quote:
Biotin is a B vitamin. It is known as vitamin B7, or occasionally as vitamin H.
There are many common foods that are rich in biotin, including egg yolks, milk, poultry, fish, broccoli, spinach, and cauliflower.

There are poultry vitamins and minerals available to add to their water. I use human vitamins, too.

thanks! i was wondering if you could add human vitamins if a specific issue came up! i have noticed an occasional bent toe (usually the 5th in the favs) in chicks but they seem to fix themselves after a week of giving good feed and water with vitamins. i usually give spinach on occasion to my birds but i will have to remember to give it often while they are breeding. and haven't done broccoli in some time but i will remember for next year's crops to plant some extra just for them to nibble on!

 

[Chickanmanfromarkansas]

Thanks for all this information kathyinmo:

By Mark Pattison, Paul McMullin, Janet M. Bradbury

Nutrition and Hatchability

The importance of the nutrition of the dam is indicated by the fact that the egg must contain all the nutrients needed by the embryo.

Development in the egg and for a week or more after hatching is, as far as fat soluble vitamins and some other factors are concerned, reliant upon supplies from the yolk. Hence, deficiency signs in newly hatched chicks (and often within the next 7 - 10 days) usually reflect a breeder feed inadequacy rather than a relationship with the starter feed.

It is difficult to affect the relative protein, fat, and carbohydrate content of an egg via the diet of the hen, but the concentration of the vitamins and trace elements in her blood and tissues directly influences that in her egg. Hence, analyses of egg yolk to determine vitamin and other deficiencies in the breeder may be the preferred and more direct route than blood or tissue sampling of the relevant hens.

Even at acceptable rates of hatchability a proportion of dead-in-shell embryos may exhibit nutritional signs, as detailed above, as a result of individual variations of metabolism.

It is of basic importance to realize that hens can produce eggs with dietary levels of vitamins that will not allow the eggs to hatch (except in the case of Vitamin A deficiency, in which the cessation of production occurs first).

Nutrient deficiencies may give rise to malformed embryos or reduction in hatchability, but it may be difficult to identify by the examination of the embryo the nutrient deficiency responsible for the poor hatchability, since the time of embryonic death will often depend on the degree of deficiency involved. Thus, it has been shown by experiment with pantothenic acid that, while in extreme deficiency hatchability may be totally suppressed, in milder deficiencies a peak of early mortality (1-4 days) occurs but later peaks change according to the amount of pantothenic acid in the diet. Most water-soluble vitamins have a similar effect.

In practice the nutrient deficiencies most likely to give rise to reduced hatchability, unless adequate breeder supplements are used, are Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), and some others of the B group (eg biotin), Vitamin E, manganese, zinc, phosphorus.

Early death may be related to:
* Biotin
* Vitamin E deficiency (vascular lesions).

Later death (ie later and around mid-term) may be related to:
* Riboflavin (anaemia, oedema, micromelia, mesonephros degeneration, and clubbed down)
*Phosphorus (no specific abnormalities)
*Zinc inadequacies (faulty trunk, limb, beak, brain and eye development - abnormalities associated with development of the skeletal mesoderm).

Death during the last few days and at hatching, may be related to deficiencies of the following:
*Vitamin B2 (clubbed down, curled toe, micromelia, degeneration of the myelin sheath of peripheral nerves, degeneration of embryonic Wolffan bodies)
*Biotin chondrodystrophy, syndactyly, characteristic skeletal deformities, ataxia, and chondrodystrophy in newly hatched chicks)
*Folic Acid (chicks may be of normal appearance but die soon after pipping; in severe depletion chondrodystrophy, syndacryly, and parrot beak)
*Vitamin B12 (malposition, myoatrophy, chondrodystrophy, oedema, hemorrhage)
*Manganese (chondrodystrophy, parrot beak, globular head, cervicothoracic oedema, retarded down feather and body growth, micromelia and ataxia in newly hatched chicks) - bone formation defects are probably associated with abnormal mucopolysaccharide in the organic matrix of bone. Vitamin B12 and manganese deficiencies may be associated with extreme reduction in hatchability.

Nutritional deficiencies may be direct (ie due to inadequate supply in the feed). This can be the result of nutrients not being added, badly mixed or badly stored feed. Alternatively, dilution by post-manufacture addition of cereals to formulated rations can be implied.

Indirect deficiencies can be caused by antagonists such as mycotoxins, inadequate absorption (eg parasitism or disease), underconsumption (eg overcrowding), or the results of an inappropriate drug inclusion.

While "nutritional deficiency lesions" are commonly seen in dead-in-shell embryos, incorrect feed manufacture is now seldom incriminated and definitive deficiencies of single nutrients are rare. Instead, a miscellany of lesions suggestive of a number of nutrient shortfalls is the commoner finding. It has also been reported that syndromes, which seem to mimic the signs of certain deficiencies, may be evident despite adequate supplies of that nutrient in the feed (eg a clubbed down syndrome has been seen in flocks well supplied with Vitamin B2).

Definitions for some that may not know:

chondrodystrophy: A disturbance that affects the development of the cartilage of the long bones and that especially involves the region of the epiphysial plates, resulting in arrested growth of the long bones.

myoatrophy: atrophy or wasting away of the muscles.

syndactyly: A condition in which two or more of the toes are joined (fused) together.

oedema: The presence of an excessive amount of fluid in or around cells, tissues or serous (resembling, producing, or containing serum) cavities of the body.

micromelia: abnormally small and imperfectly developed extremities.

ataxia: shaky and unsteady movements or loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement

Very good read and lots of thought provoking; I intend to try doing this with my Easter Eggers.​

 

[Chris09]

I have been line breeding Rhode Island Reds of 4 years now and cant say I have had any problems in doing it. (I know breeders that have been line breeding for over 20 years with no ill effects)

(by Dr Charles R H Everett & Craig Russell) from another site.

My personal research in breeding has led me to begin gathering and collecting articles and books by cockfighters (cockers) of long ago; these men of the past preserved several different breeds of chickens for hundreds possibly even thousands of years. During that time they maintained type and vigor to an unparallel degree. It is my belief that their methods of breeding should be examined in detail to be utilized by the modern preservationist. Let me add, however, that this article is not an endorsement or defense of cockfighting; neither will I belie them in any manner. Instead, it is a heartfelt acknowledgment to men who perfected the art of breeding chickens. Further, I believe the modern preservationist can learn much more from the breeding techniques of cockers than he/she can from textbooks on commercial poultry breeding. (Note* It should go without saying that at all times you must select for vigor and type regardless of the breeding system utilized. Cocker Tan Bark states, “Good breeding is only a matter of intelligent selection of brood fowl)…

He go's on to talk about a, "Breed form" of a great breeder of gamefowl William Morgan and some of the English cockers called, “3 times in and once out.” That was used to produce, “pure strain.”

First Generation Hen Cock ½ hen ½ cock
Second Generation Hen to son Cock to daughter ¾ hen ¾ cock
Third Generation Hen to grandson Cock to granddaughter 7/8 hen 7/8 cock
Fourth Generation Hen to ggrandson Cock to ggranddaughter 15/16 hen 15/16 cock
Now in the 5th generation you breed the 15/16 hen to the 15/16 cock. Then, choosing the best hen(s) and cock(s) you begin again.

Information above from backyardchickens.com/ wiki/index.php?title=Line_Breeding

Now I think that if this type of breeding was used for hundreds /thousands of years to produce and maintaine type and vigor in birds than it cant be as bad as all are saying it is.

Chris​

 

[Jared77]

Something else to consider is even though you can breed a number of birds you can keep a laying hen around for a while so you might produce a number of birds but only a few generations. That's what many people seem to forget when they get caught up in the aspects of linebreeding. They get so caught up in taking granddaughters and great-granddaughters to the original sire that they forget that your not swapping out the mother for the daughter to be bred by original sire every year.

By taking a slower approach and using a repeat breeding (making more siblings) your giving yourself time to let the offspring that made the cut to mature and be evaluated even further. Chickens are fertile for a sometime so there is no reason to rush them out the door to make room for the next generation to be bred.

Take advantage of that and be sure of what you have first and if what your producing isn't up to par or has issues you still have something to work with. If what your producing is up to your standards, then you move on and produce the next generation. But until then there is no reason to keep producing generation after generation without evaluation.

By linebreeding you double up on traits in an effort to get them to express themselves stronger so you can select for them from the offspring produced. Repeat that breeding a number of times to produce more of the same strongly expressed good traits in the offspring. Then by selecting out the very best from each clutch of chicks produced and now you have a number of the top percent the very best produced from that combination to build off of for the next generation. By repeating this process you keep working to increase the expression of the most desirable in subsequent generations.

I bet if you were to really inquire about the old lines and these long closed flocks you'd see that exact process going on. The sibling production being much higher than generations produced when you look at the number of birds they've produced. Just because a line has been around for a long time doesn't mean its got hundreds of generations in it. And it shouldn't. I'm sure they kept a breeding groups of that were all somehow loosely related all following the exact same breeding practice thing with the different breeding groups. So if things started to slip they'd introduce a cousin or aunt or uncle do an outcrossing. By doing this its not a complete unrelated breeding that would scatter their hard work all over the place no it would be close enough to keep things moving forward without losing everything they'd worked up to.

I did this in finches for years and never had any major issues. Records were kept, you tracked offspring and worked to get the very best you could to pull from for the next generation when the time came. I never had issues with fertility, or small clutches, hatch rates, or any other issues. I also didn't have to keep a large number of birds to make it work either. You keep your standards high, cull hard, and keep good records. I had great success with this method and having seen its success I will be applying it to my chicken breeding as well.

 

[Ryu]

Yes it's not like every generation they are moving on. I spoke with someone last weekend who said that the lifespan of their Cornish bantams is 10-12 years. Granted I'm sure that they aren't being used in the breeding program for that long, but I've heard of going out to as many as 5 years. I've used some of the same birds for three years in the my breeding program.

With any breeding program it is up to the person running it. You have to select for vigorous, fertile, birds that have type or your program won't go much of anywhere.

 

[Robert Blosl]

Interesting thread. How do you line breed two pullets and two cockerels from a setting of eggs? Bob