Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (63 page)

The incredible diversity represented by the five different genetic groups is a phenomenon of bygone days, when chickens were raised primarily in backyards and people had more time for experimentation. The trend toward diversity was reversed with the advent of industrial production, which concentrates genetic resources into a few strains that lay, or grow and convert feed, uniformly well.

The old, lower-yielding breeds were left in the hands of backyard keepers. Unfortunately, as the interests of small-flock owners shift in other directions, or
we lack heirs willing to carry on with poultry, the old varieties have been slipping away. In a process called
genetic erosion
, the gene pool is becoming more uniform and less diverse.

Genetic erosion is not just occurring among chickens but among all livestock and plant crops, as well as in wild populations that cannot withstand destruction of their natural habitat. Although genetic erosion in general is accelerating at an alarming rate, by some accounts the loss of classic poultry breeds is far worse than losses among other livestock.

At the same time, no other form of livestock is so completely concentrated in so few genetic lines; a mere handful of companies, most of which lack long-term goals or a backup plan, maintain the industrial gene pool in a limited number of highly selective (and secretly guarded) strains. As a result, industrial chickens — which make up the greater percentage of the world’s total chicken population — lack more than half of the total genetic diversity native to the species, leaving them vulnerable to newly emerging diseases and putting into serious doubt their long-term sustainability.

Yet it’s no secret that the greater the genetic diversity, the better the odds are of finding individuals with the potential to improve characteristics or resist disease and other stresses that change with our changing environment. A growing number of enlightened souls, some of them within the industry, see the older breeds as a sort of insurance policy, since their traits may prove genetically useful in the future. Because poultry sperm and embryos, unlike those for cattle and other valuable stock, cannot be readily preserved through freezing, the only way to perpetuate poultry genetics is through the living flocks kept in backyards around the world.

If at some future date commercial producers turn to backyard breeders for help, it won’t be the first time. In the 1940s, the broiler industry sought a broad-breasted breed to incorporate into their meat strains. They found what they needed in backyard flocks of exhibition Cornish. Ironically, at that time the Cornish had become nearly extinct — being among the many breeds that had been ignored in the scramble toward industrial egg production.

Pessimists say it’s too late to save some of our endangered varieties, believing the numbers have already dwindled well below viable breeding populations. Optimists feel that any variety may be preserved, so long as you can find one pair to breed.

In small-scale poultry circles, people who collect and hatch eggs from their flocks are divided into two camps: the so-called
propagators
or
multipliers
, who emphasize quantity, and the
breeders
, who emphasize quality. Both groups hatch
lots of chicks. To the propagator, the end goal is the large numbers of chicks. To the breeder, a large number of chicks is merely the means to an end — the more chicks you have, the more heavily you can cull; the more heavily you cull, the better the genetic quality of your stock. Breeding is therefore a long-term investment. The best breeders have been at it for decades.

Breeders look down on propagators because they know that leaving the matings to chance gets you nowhere, genetically speaking. Indeed, if you mix chickens of several different breeds and let them mate freely, eventually their descendants will begin to look like the wild jungle fowl from which they came.

To strengthen your strain’s desired traits and maintain its quality, you need a well-thought-out breeding plan. Your plan should include these steps:

Begin with the best birds available.

Make deliberate matings to meet that goal.

Keep meticulous breeding records.

Mark chicks to track their parentage.

Ruthlessly cull any bird that does not bring you closer to your goal.

Your breeding goal will depend on the quality of the stock you start with, compared with what you want. When selecting breeding stock, look for two things: individual superiority and good lineage. Avoid breeding a bird with poor ancestry no matter how great it may appear.

Once you decide on a long-range goal, break it down into a series of short-term goals that will help you periodically gauge your success. Set a quality line, and don’t mate any bird that falls below the line. Each year raise your quality line a little higher. Concentrate your efforts on improving one trait at a time but not to the exclusion of others. It wouldn’t do, for example, to concentrate on improving type to the exclusion of fecundity.

The most successful breeders specialize in one breed and one or only a few varieties within that breed. Each breed offers so much to learn genetically that concentrating your efforts increases your chance of success. After spending several years mastering one breed or variety, you may feel ready for the challenge of taking on a new breed or an additional variety within your chosen breed.

Breeding exhibition chickens involves mating for type, since type defines breed. It also involves mating for plumage color, since in most cases color defines the variety. Especially pay attention to the color of your cocks; they have greater
influence on the plumage color of offspring because cocks have two genes for color compared to only one in hens.

Select cocks and hens that closely resemble the ideal for their breed and variety as described in the
Standard
. Since every bird has both strong and weak points, avoid mating birds with the same fault. Instead, look for mates with opposite strong and weak points, but never breed a bird with great strong points if it also has serious faults for its breed.

In a show bird, temperament is nearly as important as type. A less-typey bird that’s tame will almost always win over a typier bird that’s wild. Tame doesn’t mean lacking in spirit, though. A good show hen is perky and likes to sing; a good exhibition cock is a show-off. Unfortunately, the more he likes to show off, the more aggressive he is likely to be. The typiest Silver Sebright I ever raised was so aggressive, he attacked me every time I fed him. Despite his fine looks, I removed him from my breeding program to avoid creating more of the same.

Not all chickens used to produce show winners are of show quality themselves. I visited a breeder who was known in his time as the man to beat at major poultry exhibits. He showed me a number of outstanding chickens he was offering for sale for prices I couldn’t begin to think about paying. I asked if he was bothered by the idea of selling a bird that later beat one of his at a show, and he said no — because both would be from his line. He kept steering me away from some birds at one side of the building that weren’t nearly of the same fine quality as the others. When I asked how much he wanted for one of those, he smiled and said they weren’t for sale. Why not? Because those were the breeders he used to produce the chickens that were winning at shows.

Small populations of inbred birds invariably decline in egg production, which is why show birds generally don’t lay well. On the other hand, production responds well to crossbreeding, which is why commercial layers are bred by crossing birds from separate genetic lines. Breeding for commercial production is quite complex, requiring the skills of highly trained specialists. Taking a tip from them, you can markedly improve a strain’s laying ability by crossing two different inbred strains.

Good laying ability is not a highly
heritable
trait, meaning it is less influenced by genes passed directly from a hen to her daughters than by environmental factors. A better indication of a hen’s worth as a breeder is the average rate of lay of all the hens in her family line. If the family, in general, consists of good layers, the hen is likely to pass the ability to her offspring, even if she herself is not a particularly outstanding layer. At the same time, an outstanding layer is not likely to pass her ability to offspring if her rate of production is not typical of her family’s average.

Hatching eggs from hens that are at least 2 years old gives you plenty of time to evaluate their family track record, and hens that are still laying well at two years are likely to pass along to the next generation not only their laying ability but also their vigor and longevity. As they age and their egg production declines, the hens that laid well during their first and second year will continue to pass their superior qualities along to their chicks.

If the color of your eggshells is important, breed only hens that lay eggs of the desired hue or shade. Araucanas that lay eggs with shells of any color other than blue can, in several generations, be brought back to laying eggs with blue eggs. Persistently hatch only eggs with the bluest shells, use as breeder cocks only those that hatched from a blue-shell egg, and take great care not to breed the offspring back to birds that lay eggs with shells that are not blue.