Breeding

In this sixth part of the basics guide, we will touch upon some of the breeding options that are commonly used in the industry and how they can be applied to the small-scale rearer.

You have successfully reared a view chickens at home and you decide that you want to breed your own.
What will you need? What precautions you need to take? There is a lot of uncertainty about the whole process and in this guide will hope to give you some of the information that will help you to achieve this goal.

You have probably heard of the terms "in-breeding" or "line-breeding" and others and may be wondering what extent you need to be aware of these issues when breeding.

In-breeding

In-breeding, as the name suggests, involves keeping a flock of chickens isolated and breeding from them. This achieves a high degree of uniformity amongst their genes. The advantage of this is that you will know exactly what you are getting and in many cases that is exactly what you want. The problem with in-breeding is due to the mating of relatives, the chickens become more susceptible to degenerative genes. While it is not inevitable that your birds will succumb to a degenerative gene, there is an increased possibility that they will.

Introducing unrelated strains into the breeding cycle can be an option and will tend to produce chickens that are more fertile than those purely in-bred. It  rejuvenates the gene pool and in many cases will result in improved productivity and egg laying.

Assuming that you will be undertaking some kind of in-breeding then what are the options available to you? One option is adopting a closed flocks system. This system has been used for decades and involves maintaining as large flock as you can and organising them in such a way that cousins mate as opposed to the siblings directly.

Commercial operations would maintain eight or so breeding pens with cockerels from one pen being bred with pullets of another. Small-scale and home breeders would do well to make use of three or perhaps four pens and trying to keep as many cockerels as they can to maximise the size of the genetic pool for a given strain.

Line breeding

This is the term given for when you have one champion Cockerel for example and you want to breed has many chickens as you can from that prime bird. This is typical if you are entering birds for "Best of Breed" show awards and other similar events. You can use this system to build up your flock of pedigree birds and then at a later stage introduce a closed system with these animals in order to rotate the gene pool at a later date.

Out breeding

Quite a popular and common process whereby unrelated strains are brought together to breed. This is commonly done to rejuvenate the situation where birds have been in-bred for some time. Out breeding can result in improved productive performance of the birds and the egg laying capabilities and is commonly used to produce the commercial hybrids. The maximum benefit is achieved when pure bred strains from the same breed are crossed.

Cross-breeding

Cross-breeding is the process of breeding one pure breed with another. Today there are so many varieties of Bantam that it is unlikely that you would want to do this. Further it is also likely that any new strains produced this way would be recognised by the breed clubs and associations.