WELCOME Back! Right now is one of the most Perfect times in the year to start narrowing down your flock to your Potential Breeders. Everyone is going to have their own way of doing things, but I hope you are able to take some of these tips and incorporate them into your flock.
First things First, you need to set down some Goals! What are you going to be breeding for? Egg Color? Meat Production? Egg Production? Are you going to be breeding a specific Chicken Breed and Variety? Are you Breeding to Preserve a Rare or Endangered Breed?
Writing down your goal will help you to stay on track and not go down other rabbit trails.
Second, you must know what the bird should look like. How all the parts of the body should fit together and how the color should look on the bird from its eyes and beak all the way to its toe nails and all the feathers in-between! Most birds and varieties will be listed in a Standard of Perfection "SOP" for short. In America the most common SOP is put together by the American Poultry Association "APA". Your bird may not be accepted into the APA yet, but most breeds have a SOP that you can find even if it is in another country. For Instance the Cream Legbar is not in the APA's SOP but there is a good breed website that has a Proposed Standard that we can use. Maybe you are wanting to make your own breed, well you probably have an idea of what it should look like in your head. Start writing that down and hold yourself to those goals. At Cross B, I have all the Standards to every breed printed off and in a binder for easy access, along with owning the APA's SOP Book.
Now that you have a Goal and your SOP, it is time to start evaluating your birds! No matter your Goal the Conformation of your bird matters! Even for Egg Color. You do not want a bird that lays a beautiful purple egg but only lays 30 a year. You want her to lay very well, Right? Well how all of her body parts goes together can greatly affect egg laying capacity. Evaluation can start as a chick for major defects like cross beak or even for getting sick, but the outline or silhouette of the bird can only truly happen when the bird reaches bodily maturity. A lot of people start this level of selection at 6 months of age. For some breeds this is a decent age but for others you may have to wait for a longer period of time. If you are looking for meat production you will be weighing and picking up your birds often for evaluations. Here at Cross B, we start evaluating in the hatching egg! Anything misshapen gets eaten! Then as chicks for anything we can at that age, could be wry neck or feather stubs, etc. If the Defect is detrimental it is culled and some that are just cosmetic are sold as egg layers only. Next we watch them as they grow, we pick them up looking for defects like crooked keel bones and just any small defects that we have missed. When they get to 6-12 months of age, we sit in the pens with them watching them move and interact with the flock. Then we take a photo shoot for all of the guys and gals left. This allows us to sell birds we do not select for breeding to the public where they get to see what they are getting with out having a bio security problem. It also allows the public and ourselves to evaluate how the flock is improving or not throughout the years. All along the way, when I see something I like on a bird or dislike I Mark them with a zip tie on their left leg to let me know to watch this bird.
A good tip is to take the correct profile of your breed of chicken and black it out like a silhouette, this allows you to really look at the whole shape of the bird instead of getting side tracked on some small issues.
LASTLY, Selection is never ending. Longevity, Egg Production levels, Disease Resistance, and many more aspects or traits from breeding can be continually selected for. For Instance Hen B, may have laid 200 eggs at her Pullet age and continues to lay 200 eggs a year on year two and three. But Hen A may have laid 220 at her Pullet age but year two she is down to 180 and year three down to 160. Which line of birds would you like to continue. Hen B.
Keeping great records is KEY. I will be adding some of my personal chicken records excel sheets to the next blog for those interested in looking. And will also add some links to some other people that have created very great record sheets. I hope they will help you decide what to start keeping records of and help you to continue breeding and improving your flock.
REMEMBER to have fun with your flock! These birds are all beauties in their own way and need to be preserved!
SEE YOU NEXT TIME!
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