How to select prepotent brood fowl
The real key to success in game fowl breeding is selection. The ability to select your brood fowl will make or unmake you as a breeder.
Selecting a brood cock is much like selecting a good fighting cock. Selecting a hen is more complicated and less accurate. Nonetheless, most of the factors that apply to selecting a brood cock apply to selecting a hen.
The only difference is that we cannot select a hen based on its fighting ability.
Select a brood cock like you select a battle fowl with the additional concern that the individual to be utilized as brood cock has better chances of being prepotent.
What makes a brood cock or brood hen prepotent?
So you have a potential brood cock in hand. Nice looks, great fighting ability. How then would you judge the cock’s potential to be a prepotent brood cock?
A brood cock or hen is pre-potent of traits that it is pure or heavy with. For example a pure straight comb hen is prepotent for the trait of straight comb because it has no genes for other comb types to pass on to its offspring. A cock that is heavy with genes for speed may be prepotent for speed because there is big chance that it can pass on to it off spring genes for speed.
Well, if you breed the brood cock yourself you will know if the traits it manifested are ingrained in its phenotype, and thus, this brood cock is prepotent of these traits. For example if it manifested speed in sparring, and you have been breeding this particular line for speed over an ample period, then you will know that the speed on the cock was bred into it and not just acquired through some lucky draw of genes.
This is the reason the longer the bloodline is in your hands the more familiar you will become as to its traits. Breeding in your favourite traits into this bloodline year after year, generation after generation, will make the bloodline purer or heavy with these favourite traits.
If you didn’t breed the cock yourself, then there would be some problem.
You can always ask the breeder how this particular cock was bred, but you cannot rely that his answers are all accurate. Some breeders are downright dishonest. But even the honest ones may not divulge everything. He might consider a few facts trade secrets. Or maybe he’ll tell you some white lies just to satisfy what you want to hear.
The best you can do is to ask the breeder if you can see the full brothers of this cock spar. If its full brothers fight similar to the potential brood cock then chances are good that the characteristics they all possess are deeply rooted in their bloodline and thus can be passed on to succeeding generations.
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