Understanding, securing and perpetuating good brood stock
(From the short audio book—“Brood Stock.” Free to students at Advanced Breeding Academy. Enrol now. PM RBS Premium on FB for details.)
Securing good brood fowl is one of the most important initial steps in breeding. First you have to decide what kind of chicken to produce. The characteristics to put in the bloodline. Then, it’s time to acquire the materials you will start with. Time to look for seed fowl.
A seed fowl is the fowl with which you start a breeding program to produce the chicken that you desire. To a breeder, a seed fowl is either pure or heavy of the features he wants in his bloodline. It doesn’t matter whether it is pure of a bloodline name or not. It doesn’t matter as long as it is prepotent for desired traits and thus can pass on these traits.
Prepotency is what makes seed fowl. Prepotency is the capability of an individual to pass on desired traits to the offpring. Be sure your seed fowl is prepotent of the traits you desire in your bloodline.
HOW TO SELECT BROOD FOWL. You select brood fowl by the looks or phenotype. If possible also by the genotype. The true genotype is as important. There are fowl that possess the looks that you want in your bloodline. But, the genotype might be hiding those that you don’t want. If you are selecting from chickens you breed yourself, and you understand breeding, then it is not a problem. You would know what the genotype really is. If you bred the particular chicken, you know if the traits it manifested are fixed in its genotype.
For example, a rooster manifested certain traits. And you have been breeding the said trait in that bloodline for an ample period. Then you will know that said trait was bred into it. The trait was not just acquired through some lucky draw of genes.
If you didn’t breed the rooster yourself, take a look at the full brothers. If its brothers possess the same traits then chances are good that the characteristic they all possess are fixed in their bloodline. Thus, can be passed on to succeeding generations. The trick in selection is to find a way to determine if the traits you desire are fixed in the individual or line you want to acquire as brood stock.
SPECIALIZE ON A FEW TYPES Specialists are better on their specialized fields than general practitioners. So chances of producing better brood fowl is higher if you specialize on a few types. When you breed only a few types, your resources will allow you to produce more samples of the few types you have. The more samples you will have, the more accurate your assessment of the gene pool’s value. If you have more samples of the same type then you can pick the best materials for breeding said type.
For example if you blend only lines that are fast, agile and smart dark fowl then you will end up with very fast, agile and smart dark fowl. Many samples of one kind. This approach is positive assortative. Good for creating brood stock.
But if you breed a fast ground shuffling sweater to a high flying white to a power but slow hatch to a smart roundhead, then you will end up with lines with mixed looks and ability. With a few samples each of different kinds. This is negative assortative. Not good for brood stock.
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