About 5 months ago I purchased 20 black sumatras. They are now approching breeding age and I was wondering after I have breed the parental generation, which birds should I breed together to get the lowest probability of genetic defects. I have a fairly good line of birds and I don't want to mess up the fertility, hatchability,growth rate, or risk having genetic defects. I understand culling will eliminate severly defected birds, but I don't want to be buying birds every 6 months. sorry if this question sounds stupid. I have had chickens for years but have never really been woried with the genetic aspect of show breeding

There are a number of opinions about this subject.
Many people with serious breeding efforts think in
terms of inbreeding as a negative thing that tends
to bring out undersirable traits and characteristics.
On the other hand, inbreeding is difficult to avoid if
you're breeding a line of show-quality chickens.

W.C. Carefoot has a chapter in Crawford's 1990
volume (Elsevier) in which he discusses the
differences in attitudes and goals of the fancier
who breeds to show and that of the poultryman
who breeds for production. Implicit in much of
Carefoot's discussion is the idea that inbreeding is
not always bad and that often the negative aspects
of inbreeding can be removed through selection.

It is probably true that most breeders of
show-quality stock largely ignore traits like
hatchability, post natal mortality, rate of lay, et
cetera in favor of purely cosmetic considerations
like plumage color, body carriage and so on. After
all, the judge at the poultry show isn't interested in
the hatchability of the eggs that the pullet lays or
the post natal mortality or the birth defects of culled
chicks .... So, there is no wonder there is
'inbreeding depression' of these traits. ANY trait
that is ignored in selection is likely to suffer a
'depression' in the resulting progeny.

Some breeders argue, as Carefoot seems to, that
deleterious effects of inbreeding can be overcome
to a significant degree by including those traits in
the selection criteria instead of ignoring them as is
often the case.

If you want to limit inbreeding you should know
something about the parentage of your P
generation. If you got them from a single breeder
of one line of black sumatras, you may be starting
with inbred stock already (this is likely the case).
Half-sibling matings give you a smaller increase in
inbreeding than full-sibling matings, cousin
matings give you a smaller increase in inbreeding
than half-sib matings and so on.

I'm sure Rokimoto, CJR, James C, and others
here can contribute more to this discussion.

here is how i am going to go at it.begin with a trio,then father to daughter,son to mother, half brother to half sister.workthis into 2 lines. about every 4 to 5 generations crosslines. i have notdonethis with poultry but when i bred rabbits it was the only way i improved.if the need for an outside mating arises, bring in a distantly related hen to put with the most suitable male. a serious breeder would mot only look at 1 or 2 traits of a breed of any species if improvement is the goal. line breeding is the only way to maintain control. with a total outcross is made, control is lost. there is no way to know what faults have been introduced.

well... I agree with you, and I believe that most
breeders of show poultry are not at all hesitant to
breed father to daughter, half-sibs and so on. And
that is why almost EVERY line of show poultry is
highly inbred

If you are a serious breeder you might have half a dozen trios producing chicks. You can use two pens to maintain your line and the other pens to experiment with line breeding. You do not want to put all of your eggs in one basket. A lot of people that are trying out raising poultry just inbreed, or make mating without regard to genetic relationship because they aren't interested in maintaining the line. They know that they can always go back to another source for their birds. I haven't met very many backyard breeders that maintain populations large enough to select for reproductive traits.

The simplest breeding scheme that I've seen to reduce inbreeding and maintain a line with selection for show traits is to have two matings. Pedigree the chicks so that you know what pen the chicks come from and only breed chicks from different pens together. In this way you insure that the birds are no more closely related than cousins. Selection progress will be slower than if you line breed, but you have less chance of your line dying out. Variations on this scheme allow you to keep a superior parent in the breeding pen for an extra generation, but you are still putting mates from the alternate pen in with the hold over, and not breeding them to their progeny.

You can use trios (one male and two females) or quads (one male and three females) in each pen, but you have to keep extra breeders. Sterile males have to be replaced with a sib no matter how good they look, and females that don't lay any eggs aren't any good to you.

You can combine this scheme with line breeding by adding breeding pens. One additional pen will allow you to take a superior animal and breed it to its son or daughters. If these matings produce superior stock you can cycle them into your maintenance lines. If they produce weak or sick animals you haven't done anything terrible to your maintenance lines.

The more matings that you do the more likely you are to accomplish something, but your feed bill and time input will increase.

Robbpa, I keep 4 lines of my Dutch Bantams, that I can "braid" the breeding plan and not have tight inbreeding for a number of years. But I never make a cross with another line until I actually see and evaluate the birds from each hatch. Each year, I just cross 2 lines, so it is at least 4 years before every line is hatched for keeping. Birds from every year are sold, except my very few keepers. I do not keep very many pens of breeding birds. Eventually, they will all be inbred, but still not closely. I have never experienced low production of eggs, low hatchability, or other weakness. Every bird is not of similar quality--diversity is present even with inbreeding. By keeping records of dates,every egg, every chick, those who purchase my birds can have a history of their "pedigree" and when they want more birds, I can choose some that will likely be compatible. It means lots of pages of dates, leg band numbers and colors, but that is part of the seriousness of being a Breeder of bantams, and not just an Exhibitor. I would rather raise few birds of very good quality, than 100s of birds that you will have to search through, to get some good ones--and then never be able to repeat the good stuff! It is a passion--requiring study and evaluation, --labor intensive--a worthwhile project (and more than pays its way now). And when someone wins a BEST IN SHOW with one of my birds (and I think that person can breed on with similar quality) it is pure JOY for me. Who can ask for more??? Inbreeding? Don't let it scare you, but for success, it requires evaluation at every turn, and if unsuccessful--a new start. Nothing wrong with that! CJR

this is good stuff. now i am really getting fired up for a breeding program. instead of trying to decide on a second and third breed or variety i will buy two more trios of blk. hamburgs. there are ro many beautiful birds it is easy to fall into the accumulater trap. i will be able to keep 5 breeding runs with individual mating cells in each run. now my challenge will be record keeping. any ideas on that subject.

We have a 'rotation' system of breeding. The
breeding males that are not presently breeding are
kept in a 'rooster stable'. They generally get along
well (well enough anyway that there aren't any
injuries). Our breeding females free range with
our laying flock when they're not actively being
bred.

Inside a nice barn (metal building, 2400 square
feet) we have four breeding pens. We select the
females and males that we want to breed and put
them together in the breeding pens. It takes a
couple of weeks for them to get used to each other.
Egg collection begins about 3 weeks to a month
after the birds have been together. Chicks that
hatch are banded and the particular mating is
recorded in the breeding records books.

The advantage of this is: 1) the eggs from the
breeder females that we don't use for hatching we
sell in our egg business as free-range / pasture
eggs; 2) we don't need a breeding pen for every
male; 3) we don't need a separate facility for every
line we are maintaining or developing.

The disadvantage of our system is that we have to
'take turns' breeding all the lines, since we have
only 4 breeding pens and 6 breeding projects with
about a dozen breeder males (right now). But,
this isn't as bad as it may seem, since we can only
get about two generations a year from any one line
anyway. The time needed for the chicks to grow to
point - of - lay facilitates the rotation method.

We do not raise poultry for show and have no
plans to at this point. We are serious breeders in
the sense that we maintain our own lines and we
are serious about improving our lines. Our egg
business has been paying the feed bill and we are
participating in the formation of a poultry co-op in
our area. Since we have no interest in showing,
we won't show up on anyone else's radar screen.

I'd keep a book for each pen.

Probably the easiest way to keep track is to number your pens and keep puting female progeny back into the pen that they came out of. This way you only have to look in the other books for where the male came from. You can think of each pen as a maternal line.

If you cycle different males through the same pen wait 2 2 weeks before collecting eggs. Hens can store sperm for up to 30 days, but most hens are clear after 2 weeks and any left over is outcompeted by the new male's sperm.

I wingband my birds, but they aren't for show. I used to toe punch and legband. You have to watch how the toe punches heal, sometimes you can't tell that the toe was punched.

Thank you for your post, Rokimoto. Only rarely do
we keep any birds penned for more than a few
weeks. The females cycle into and out of our
laying flock and the males come in and out of the
stable.... The exception is our blue egg project in
which our record-keeping is scrupulous and we
have kept our best females in the same breeding
pen they have always lived in (you asked me once
about the single-comb birds from our Ameraucana
x Leghorn crosses and they are all now in the layer
flock and doing very well. As a matter of fact, these
pullets are so vigourous, active and competetive
that we have tossed around the idea of exploring a
"line" based on them. They are beautiful with their
single combs, heavy feathering, dark-shanks and
beardmuffs. The word we use to describe their
behaviour is "enthusiastic". I wish all our birds
were as robust as they are! They are a joy to have
and to watch.)

The birds in our blue egg project that are our
breeding stock have never been outside the barn
(where our breeding pens are). But, I have now
more than 100 F2s (maybe more like 200, but I
would have to check my records to know for sure)
and I will take an incubator to my nephew's 4th
grade class after Christmas to let them hatch a
batch for me! So, these "barn chickens" in our blue
egg project are the only ones that don't get out on
the pasture. We have several (true) Araucana from
show lines and they range with our laying flock.
The laying flock has three males with it and two of
them are cocks from Terry Reeder's Araucana
breeding project. So, when we collect eggs from
Leghorns in the laying flock, they are probably
fertilized by our Araucana males.

We use an elaborate record keeping system,
mainly because I am obsessive about that type of
thing ... I am a mathematician by training and
computer programmer by trade and all of our
records are 'computerized' now. (I have a fantasy
to write a computer program that accepts genes as
input and draws the chicken for the user.... it would
be fun and a valuable tool to breeders in the fancy.)

When we set up a breeding pen, we often have to
catch most of the hens to examine their bands to
see which ones are which, but usually we know
the ones we're looking for. We haven't felt that this
is a burden on us.

I have never used a toe punch, but I have read
about them. I guess I really don't mind the work of
record-keeping... and actually, I enjoy it so I don't
see it as a burden at all.