More Ideas on Maintaining a Breed

More Ideas on Maintaining a Breed 

After I wrote my first article on establishing a breed, several people ask about how to maintain a breed. I did a little research and some thinking and came up with the following ideas.

The first factor is maintaining a large breeding population to select a few very outstanding fowl to perpetuate the strain. This population should contain some close bred and some almost unrelated fowl. The idea is to inbreed and then outcross then inbreed and outcross and so on. When I say outcross, I mean within the breed. 

A second factor would be to have the healthiest conditions to raise our fowl. The best bred fowl raised poorly will not result in good fowl. I feel that many good strains have been lost because of over crowded conditions and poor feeding practices. 

A third factor is money and time. (enough said)

Now to some productive practices. These ideas are not listed in order of importance, but all should be used at some point in the breeding program to maintain your strain with quality fowl.

1. The most successful matings should be duplicated with close relatives and if the Nick is true, you will have quality fowl from those matings to breed. For example, you breed a many time winner to a well bred well made hen and get world beaters. Get a good brother to the rooster and breed to some good sisters to the hen. You might even go breeding cousins of the original pair together.

2. The above mentioned pen should be linebred. Breed a good stag to his mother’s sisters and some good pullets to the rooster’s brothers. Then bring the reslting offspring back together. These would be bred much like the original cross and they should resemble the original cross breds. If you are lucky enough to get these results, then you can breed back to old original stock. This is inbreeding through line breeding and out crossing by crossing two line bred strains. The possibilities are endless when you maintain enough stock.

3. Breed some of the oldest stock to some of the youngest stock even when they are close bred. The tendency is to breed away from some of the good characteristics by accident and this will bring those back into the gene pool and very often it will result in hybrid vigor also.

4. Learn who has some of the same fowl and if they are good, bring their blood into your line. For example the Pitmaster breeds Redfox fowl and the Redfox fowl are being bred by Jack back in Alabama. If these two guys trust each other, they would have a lot going for each one by exchanging fowl from time to time. They have the same fowl, but because they are individuals, they will select for different traits. This practice will result in hybrid vigor also.

5. You don’t have to breed all your good stock every year. Most people have too many fowl to care for, it is much better to raise only what you can care for, but don’t let the unused brood fowl get away from you. You will need them later. Some years you will need to breed only battle stock, by breeding to other breeds.

6. Keep good records. You will need to know how all of your fowl are related. Record the fighting records of the roosters. You need to know which hens produce the most eggs and raise healthy babies as well.

7. Breeding brothers to sisters is usually unproductive, but if when the next generation is considered, it has a use. I like to select the hens from brother-sister matings that look the most like their grandmother and stags that look like their grandfather and cross these back to the old stocks (a brother to the old rooster and a sister to old hen). This is another form of linebreeding by intense inbreeding and then line breeding to the old stock. These fowl may not be strong enough to win at the top level, but they are very often great producers.

8. Bring your linebred strains together when you want to fight successfully, these crosses will have enough hybrid vigor to provide the bottom.

9. Always keep linebreeding only the very best crosses of these crosses. Every six or seven years you should be able to start a new line of fowl and bred these back to the old fowl.

10. Numbers are needed to maintain the line, but plan your breeding program so that you make only the number of brood pens that you need each year.

11. One last thought, have at least a five year plan for your matings. Plan breedings that will not be produced until five or ten years from now. This is one form of goal setting and it will provide you will a guide.