Introducing New Blood in Poultry
I got a call this week from a lady breeding celadons for a few years. She had gotten them from a local and had just been reproducing them for a few years and selling them. The reason she contacted me was about physical issues that are appearing in her current hatches. She is seeing splayed legs, cross beaks and wry neck. Typically, you can breed birds a long time before seeing inbreeding issues, I personally have not seen them yet. I have a very large breeder set up however.
So let’s talk about genetic pool without getting too deep. IF you have a few breeder sets only, then you will need to pay more attention to diversity than I would with hundreds of birds. Continually breeding siblings will move you into a dead in quickly. However, even if you only have 3 sets, you can be successful. Tag each set A,B,C or 1,2,3 and rotate as you go. Put males from A into B hens. B roo with C hens and so on. This is clan mating or spiral mating and works well for many years.
The point of this blog post is actually not clan breeding, it is infusing new blood. The caller wanted to infuse new blood and my initial answer to that was no. If your line is having issues, then adding new blood will only dilute those issues, not repair them. Sometimes, it is apparent that a line has ended and time to start over. My advice to her was to not merge my birds with hers in a group setting. I suggested she keep them separate if she didn’t want to cull. Compare the outcomes and birds themselves. I also suggested she take some of the extra roos hatched from my eggs and create a pen with her hens and see what happens.
Anytime we are confronted with an issue, it is best to write down the issues and the possible outcomes. Kinda like a flow chart. If you are nerdy and want to know if the issue is in the line, breed to a line without those issues and see what happens, called a subline. IF you are not a breeder, just a backyard hatcher, then cull out the problems and replace with new, save your self the issues. When you buy from a breeder like myself, who literally assesses each bird before placing in a breeder cage, then I have done the work for you, that is what you are paying for. I have culled out the too small, too aggressive, not blue enough, too many speckles, deformities from the flock. Those are all traits that can be bred for. Understand that what we breed for are desired traits, but maybe I want to breed small or tons of speckles, I can select those too. Or not select at all and I get what I get, that is mass reproducing.
Sometimes, it is important to add new blood to a line. For example, if you need the celadon gene. It doesn’t just appear, so it must be introduced. This is true in any species, for example, I am looking for a specific gene for my buff Orpingtons, i had to buy it to introduce it. This comes with pros and cons, I will get the gene I am after, but I will also get all the other genes. Sublines are important here, to test the matchings to make sure I want to proceed before jumbling up all the birds.
There is no one shoe fits all way to raise birds. Every climate, environment and eye is different. Find the breeder or reproducer that is in line with what you want and start there. Most importantly, have fun with your birds.