I posted a question about my breeding project on a chicken forum and got the expected question–why would I want to mix breeds when I could have something much more predictable by just using an established breed?
“Let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
I don’t expect that he’ll respond. It’s interesting that breeders think if they only mate father to daughter and not brother to sister they can avoid long term inbreeding depression.
Or, as one friend put it when I mentioned that heirlooms are just inbred varieties. “It doesn’t work that way for plants.”
Out in my chicken coop I have four breeds, with another two waiting to be integrated. Each has traits I want in my “landrace.” Each is a fully established breed, inbred for dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of years.
I fully expect some surprises as the first generations remove some of the inbreeding depression.
As someone that’s taken on this challenge: Go for it! Not every breed is perfect for every climate and every purpose. I think folks tend to forget (or just don’t know) that all the old breeds started out as landraces.
Just a word of caution, pests and diseases are difficult to breed resistance to. An unfortunate series of events nearly cost me my whole project and I had to start over almost from scratch.
If you don’t mind me asking, what breeds are you starting out with?
Bielefelder roo. My accidental roo is Jersey Giant but I need to get rid of him. Pullets are Jersey Giant, Black Australorp, Mottled Java. I am adding in Rhode Island Reds in a few weeks.
All are large dual purpose breeds. B, JG, and MJ go broody and make good mothers. BA and RIR for strong egg production and early maturity. JG and B are gentle as roosters and also good at defending their ladies from predators. JG and MJ supposedly lay through the winter. RIR and B are heat tolerant. All are cold tolerant. All are good to excellent as foragers.
JG actually has a reputation for attacking predators. The roosters for all these breeds should be over 9 pounds. Most in the 10-15 range. I have seen hawks fly over, and so far they just move on. Cats and small dogs don’t want to tackle them.
All are mottled or black, for camouflage. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I have been told more than once that hawks won’t go after black birds.
We have been raising chickens for seven years and started with commercial hatchery birds that really don’t do well in pasture situations because they have not been raised by a mother hen. Mother hens defend the chicks, teach them where to scratch, where the water is located and a safe place to roost. With that being said, we ended up with a landrace before knowing the definition. Over the seven years we have always accepted other roosters from urban flocks since roosters were not allowed in the city limits. So we have over 30 breeds integrated into a chicken that lays large size or bigger eggs, can withstand the summer heat, and are good mothers and free range well and have various shell colors for the nice rainbow box of eggs. However, we still pull the spring eggs to hatch inside the incubator just so we know we have enough hens to add to the flock for laying eggs as we sell them at the farmer’s market. By chance, early on we had a couple Silver Phoenix roosters who are protective fathers to rear chicks besides having showy feathers. So with this landrace, now we are adding rare breeds since my neighbor only raises rare breeds and always has extra roosters to trade. So I’m hoping to get a bit more size so the dual purpose egg and meat bird can also lay eggs and withstand our hot summers. We live in southern Arizona and get the 115 degree summer days. we have lots of trees for shade and about 90% of the flock, guessing, pulls through the summer without fans and misters. We also don’t feed high protein feed over the hot summer days and feed a whole seed scratch.
We let them do the breeding. The good roosters gather a harem of hens and defends those hens from other roosters. There may be two or three roosters for 15 hens. They are totally free range all day, cooped at night for predator protection and we have an active compost pile that they can scratch at daily. Lots of delicious insects in that compost pile, the chickens turn it over well.
We have awesome feather colors and really nice egg layers. We always have roosters to trade too. We are also encouraging gardeners to grow grains for chickens. Broom corn, millet, sorghum, and sunflowers are easy to grow and be an edible seed a chicken could consume to help supplement a foraging poultry diet. To me flock raisers depend on feedstore grain too much. Chickens who eat fresh whole seeds seem to be healthier and withstand temperature fluctuations better. Old style and heirloom corn has more protien. Years ago it was noted that chickens or any other egg layer that consumes liw fat grains will yield low cholesterol eggs. I wish I had the references for that statement. But its what my Dad focused on while he produced organic eggs back in the 1970 time period.
This spring I hatched another batch of eggs from my flock. My hatch rate is getting better, and I don’t think it’s my skill with the incubator that’s improving. Some of these chicks are the second generation hatched at home, pretty cool. Egg colors are awesome from the mixed chicks I hatched last fall, can’t wait to see how these turn out. We started out with two silkies in the mix and their contributions to the gene pool are very entertaining in half and quarter silkies with funny hairdos and extra toes. We also donated two dozen eggs to an elementary class and now they’re are 20 of my chickens out in the community.
I think every time I have seen anything with Geoff in it he is always making yet another compost pile. Where I currently am at it is against zoning to have chickens or any “farm related animal”. Crazy I know. So my garden system is hampered by not having a fertility engine but for those of you that can and do keep chickens you can make them work for you and your gardens rather than you working for them.
Rabbits are not written up directly in the regs but rabbits do not tolerate extreme heat and can die from becoming overheated. Temperatures above 77° F (25° C) are dangerous for rabbits. I just got back from picking up some items from the supermarket on the bike. It is 97° F and the new weather feels like method with combined humidity is 116° F for warm blooded animals that need to sweat.
