Excessive inbreeding can cause infertility, severe deformities, and lethal genes but it can also produce some spectacular birds.Įvery seven years or so, you can then out cross to bring in some fresh blood lines. You do not want to breed brother to sister if you can help it as that is a very close shared gene pool. Take it a step further and breed Grandfathers with granddaughters and grandmothers with grandsons. Line breeding involves pairing fathers with daughters and sons with mothers. Introducing new birds and breeding with them can bring recessive gene traits to the fore front and you can be bringing in unwanted traits that will be difficult to later breed out. Line breeding is one way to keep up the health of your flock but still keep it closed to other birds. By constantly improving your flock by keeping the best and the most vigorous and only breeding with those, you can continue to breed for many years without going outside of your own flock. ![]() ![]() The best must also be the most vigorous and healthy. They can breed with those birds for many years provided they keep the best and sell or cull the rest. Most breeders start with a good set of birds that are excellent examples to begin with. Maybe your breeding goal is to get rid of something such as extra claws or toenails. Is there something that needs to be improved? Those would be things like, type, feather color, skin color or feather quality. Other methods are needed.įirst, the breeder needs a plan. There is no such thing as a perfect bird. Single mating is taking one outstanding female and one outstanding male and breeding them. Weaker males were not selected as worthy mates by the females.Īfter domestication occurred, the farmer used artificial selection to improve his flock. These strong genes were passed along to their descendants. Males that were strong and vigorous had a large following of female hens. In nature, jungle fowl used natural selection when choosing their mates. The short answer is that serious silkie breeders take care to improve their silkies by breeding to fix good traits and eliminating bad ones as they set up their breeding pens. ![]() I am often asked why silkies that are hatched out from breeders look so different from silkies that come from large hatcheries.
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