Rooster Breeding Questions

[Sharon Yorks]

1. If a person wanted to use one rooster for two breeding pens, how often would you want to switch the rooster to assure fertility? Would you need to switch him back and forth from pen to pen everyday?

2. And, if you had two hens that were twin sisters, and you bred a rooster to hen #1, would it be considered inbreeding if you bred the chick out of those two back to hen #2...the aunt of the chick? Can you breed a chick to its aunt? Weird question, I know, but I don\'t know how the DNA and/or the genes work in this case.

Any thoughts on these matters would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sharon

[John]

how often would you want to switch the rooster to assure fertility?

I move mine twice a week.  Sundays and Wednesdays work for me.  
I have other coops with 1 hen each that I don\'t leave the cocks in with.  They have their own coops, but they visit the hens on Sundays, Wednesdays and Holidays.  

[OldChurchEggery]

I\'ve heard it explained that \"inbreeding\" is brother-sister mating as opposed to line-breeding, which is father/daughter mother/son. I guess by \"twin sister\" you mean hatchmates out of the same rooster/hen combination. You could definitely breed the offspring of one sister to the other sister if you wanted to create two lines of genetically similar birds. There are so many ways of creating lines and breeding programs there\'s something for everybody. I\'m still so early in it that anything I\'m hatching now (as far as Ameraucanas go) they\'re all F1s.

[Mike Gilbert]

I\'ve also heard it is line breeding if it works, inbreeding if it doesn\'t work.

[Sharon Yorks]

Yes, by twins I meant hatchmates out of the same rooster/hen combo. They look so much alike I can only tell them apart by one hens left middle toenail. One is the hen I\'m holding in the picture in the avatar. I\'d really like to get more of these so it\'s great to hear I can breed them like that. I didn\'t know you could breed mother/son. Is line-breeding something that is a normal thing or is it a risk thing that \"might\" work? I don\'t want no weird chicks running around...and what happens to a chick when it \"doesn\'t\" work? I\'d like to get more of a selection of branched out lines from these two hens. I just have to figure out how to do it.

Oh, what does F1 mean?

Sharon

[Mike Gilbert]

Sharon, F1 means first filial generation.  The first generation birds, if you will, from a breeding project;  the first generation after the parental one.   Then the subsequent year would be the F2, the third F3, etc.    Line breeding tends to accentuate and concentrate both good traits and bad traits, but without it we would have no pure breed chickens.   The trick is to keep a large enough gene pool going, in order to prevent inbreeding depression.   Symptoms would be decreased production, decreased hatchability, sometimes decreased fertility, smaller size, slower growth, etc., etc.    I see no harm in breeding cousins, aunts & nephews, etc., as long as you are starting with good, vigorous stock to begin with.  If necessary I would breed parents to offspring too.   Brother/sister matings are a little too close, I think, unless you are in the beginning stages of a project involving outcrosses of unrelated lines.

[Tailfeathers]

Hi Sharon,

Hope you got all your questions answered to your satisfaction.  Just wanted to say I agree with John.  About 2x per week is what I do and ironically Sundays and Wednesdays work best for me too.  Sometimes Saturdays.

God Bless,

[Sharon Yorks]

Hope you got all your questions answered to your satisfaction.

There is never an end to all my questions  

I have one particular cockerel servicing two different pens...one pen has 2 hens, the other has 4 hens. I was switching him every other day. It\'s nice to know I don\'t have to switch him as often.

More questions:

1. But now, getting into the \"why and how\" things work, I also have 1 pullet in a pen by herself and am wondering how often would a male have to \"visit\" her. In other words, when I put him in with her, let\'s just say he\'s very happy to see her. Is a 15 minute conjugal daily visit effective enough or must he be in with her for a longer period of time?

2. Why do roosters get into the hen boxes. I have one that seems to be in there more than the hens. He\'s an \"active\" rooster so I\'m not worried about him portraying too much of his feminine side. And he\'s not in there breaking eggs. He just seems to like nesting. Is that normal?

Thanks,
Sharon

[John]

Is a 15 minute conjugal daily visit effective enough

With some of my little coops, with one hen, the visit could be over in 5 seconds....the hen is assuming the position as I open the door and when I place the cock in he goes straight over and mounts her.  I could then take him out, but leave all the cocks in with the hens until later in the day when I take them all out.

[grisaboy]

Brother/sister matings quote]

Brother/Sister matings are kind of close but can be done.  I have one pen up set up that way now.  But this is because I suspect this particular family is carrying recessive yellow leg genes and I want to flush it out.  The key to close inbreeding is to select hard for vitality, productivity, fertility, etc.  As long as you have strong healthy birds then your inbreeding is fine.  Once this drops off, you need to be looking for an outcross.  I don\'t keep a lot of birds but I keep enough that I can at least have birds that are 2d or 3d cousins for an out cross.  Productivity and Vitality have to be part of your selection criteria.  Don\'t keep any wimpy roosters and only keep the best layers for your breeders.
I read a clip from a game site where they used a breeding method called \'three In then out\'.  In this method they would inbreed Father to daughter, to grand daughter, to great granddaughter (three generations in) then an outcross.  This supposedly would magnify the traits that they were breeding for.
Curtis

[grisaboy]

I think they do this to show off for the hens.  The same way they will call the hens with a nice juicy bug.  He\'s trying to tell his hens that he found them a nice comfy nest box.  He\'s trying to prove that he\'s a good provider.

Curtis

[Sharon Yorks]

Good to know. Right now my two best hens (the twins), that I\'m wanting to get more lines from, are each giving me 7 eggs in 10 days. Last year at the fair the one I took gave me 5 eggs in the 7 days there and was fluffing in the sawdust on the second day, with no care in the world for the other birds around her. She won best pullet (out of 22) and reserve grand champion (out of all 83 birds there). I\'m not trying to brag, just really proud of my girls. They were the first purebred Ameraucanas I ever hatched out and my son\'s first year at the fair.

It\'s really good to know I can breed them like that and get more lines from them, plus not have to make them be pestered my the male as often. I know they were out of a black male from Paul Smith\'s #15 pen and a John Blehm hen that were both sold to Joe Woodiel a few years ago. That makes them F1 in my breeding line, right?

Makes sense about the hen box issue. Yeah...I can see that would be his character. Very much so. That makes me laugh. Thanks for clearing that up.

Sharon

[Mike Gilbert]

I know they were out of a black male from Paul Smith\'s #15 pen and a John Blehm hen that were both sold to Joe Woodiel a few years ago. That makes them F1 in my breeding line, right?

Right.   With those bloodlines, you should be able to breed some great birds.    

[Sharon Yorks]

With those bloodlines, you should be able to breed some great birds.

Lord willing, that\'s the plan. I tried to get some more just like them, but something got Joe\'s rooster.  

I have 5 chicks out of the one hen. I bred her to my big Splash cockerel and these chicks should get some really nice size since the hens are so big, too. But that was before I learned about the (G) (S) gene, so now I\'m hoping most of them will be female and take after their daddy\'s gene since they are blue. We hatched them as early as we could (January) so they would have some decent size for our Aug. fair. We\'re planning to sell them at the fair anyway. I have a quarantine coop, but have now decided to sell everything that leaves the property so we don\'t risk bringing anything back from a show. My friend calls me paranoid. I prefer to call it  overly cautious.

I\'ll have to post some recent pictures of the chicks. They\'re growing so fast.

Sharon