Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 39. Today I’m going to be teaching you all about a system of breeding and keeping a genetically diverse flock of chickens for years independent of outside genetics. What that means is that you will be able to keep breeding and improving your flock for years without worrying about inbreeding problems.
I learned about this method as I’ve learned a lot of chicken care tidbits from Harvey Ussery. But rather than explain it the exact same way as he has. I’ll try to put it in my own words and show you what I mean by explaining what I’ll be doing with my new flock of Black Copper Marans.
Proper Care of Your Flock Genetics
One of the foundational elements to a sustainable and profitable homestead is going to be animals kept well, and bred well for years to become healthier and better adapted to your location. We do that with our vegetables by saving seed year after year from the best, healthiest, and most productive plants we have. Likewise we should be doing the same with our livestock. Now, the way most people keep their birds is to have a single or maybe two roosters, and they allow a hen or two to hatch a clutch of eggs every spring, or they set some in an incubator and raise them up. But that’s neither a responsible way to breed your birds nor will it be likely to produce long term benefits.
The problem with that method is that you will be breeding father to daughter, or siblings, this is kind of like line breeding but more haphazard and while sometimes it will produce an exceptional animal like in line breeding, for the most part you will be degrading your flock quality. It is by no means a long term solution. You will start to see mutations and genetic abnormalities show up, deformed chicks will be born more often. The short story is that you will after a couple years be forced to acquire “new blood” to keep the flock strong. So if you want a truly self sufficient, or well maintained flock, you should be breeding with purpose and care should be taken.
That means being careful with who gets bred to whom and what birds are allowed to pass on their genes to the next generation. I’ve even heard of some rare breeds being saved with a single trio of breeders, and new selections being made every year to preserve the very best genes to pass on to the next generation. You may have 20 birds, but you won’t be saving eggs from all 20. You’ll save eggs from the best two hens out of 20. Generally you are shooting to breed the top 10% of your available hens and the absolutely best roosters.
Practical Application
Just because you may have a lot of inferior birds in the flock doesn’t mean you can’t continue to improve the flock, you just need several small holding pens to keep the special breeders separate so you can ensure you have specific pairings.
I’ll have 2 or 3 smaller runs with shelter, a feeder, and a water source for the breeding birds. I’ll leave the selected rooster and whatever hens I decide to breed with him, and do the same for as many good roosters I have. I may have lots of other birds who have off traits that I don’t want to breed in my flock lines. That’s fine, I just don’t hatch eggs from those hens! We eat those eggs, or sell them (not as hatching eggs) Those birds that aren’t going into our breeding program get mixed in with the general egg laying flock. This will also enable me to keep the most valuable breeding stock more secure behind higher security fencing. So my hope is that if anything gets in to kill any of my flock, I’ll at least have good breeding stock secure in a fort knox chicken pen or chicken tractor. I am seriously considering building 3 chicken tractors to keep my special breeding stock in and making it out of hardware cloth so nothing can break in, not even snakes would be able to get in to steal eggs and not even weasels would kill my birds in there.
