AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Hi All,

Any help or advice on this would be appreciated.

How do I breed a trait out of a line in only the hen birds but retain my line. I have 3 cock birds and 8 hen birds to work with.

If any more info is needed I will do my best.

Regards
Adam

It may depend on what the characteristic is, but lets say its colour blemish on females only.

Each sex carries two genes for a characteristic. New stock carry one each from each parent. That means you will alter the inner characteristic of the males even if you do not see it from looking at them.

For the most part, the only way is to raise numbers and select individuals that express zero undesired feature or that the feature is greatly diminished. The problem here will be how you will either see it diminish, or how you would know affected males that may not outwardly express this feature. Ultimately if the features cannot be seperated, you may have to keep two mated pens to achieve females with the desired outcome, and males similarly which is done for example in double mated breeds like Partridge Wyandottes.

I hope you are able to understand what I am getting at. If not, I'll have another go at explaining it.

I have to agree with Byhookorchook it would help to know what breed and what trait is giving you problems.
A PM to Andrewchooks would probably help as he has a good grasp of genetics and is very helpfull.
As a general rule it is possible to bring in new genetics to fix a fault and to keep/maintain your original or foundation lines.
It has to be done with care and precision and takes time and patience to be successful.
You have to seek out a source that has the desirable trait fixed and has propotence for that characteristic in the line, it also has to be carefully selected to not damage or compromise any good points or gains you have made in other areas, not just any fowl that has the desirable trait.Otherwise you can find you lose far more than what you gain.
The normal re-action is to seek out a good new male, I don't.
Anytime I have to do this I find the best female with the desirable characteristic and that also embodies all the other highly desirable traits I am working on.
Then I mate her to the best and most suitable male I have to produce a group of youngsters to select from.
This method is slower but I believe much surer in the outcome.
You then have a few choices, you can interbreed siblings, mate the most suitable ckl or plts back into your lines, mate a suitable ckl back to the new hen, then always select the future breeders that show strongly the improvement of the trait you are working on and also maintains the other gains you have made.In this do not compromise or you gain nothing in the whole exercise and have much to lose, rigid culling and attention to detail at this point is critical to your success.
By then keeping and working with a variety of new and old genetics and breeding a good number of chickens it is possible to select from amongst your own breeding fowls that embody all you are working on.
You are able to maintain varying degrees of old and new genetics as you see fit to then not need to go out again for some time if ever.
The quick fix temptation to bring in a male and use him over everything is fraught with danger if he is the wrong fowl, you find yourself with a heap of undesirable offspring and nowhere to go.
By using a female to introduce new genetics you have a small number only that could be useless but if it works you can then take back the new genetics into your flock and it is not a total outcross to your flock but related in varying degrees and also embodying the new desirable trait.
Good luck.

Thanks for the responses.

My goal is to collect what Red Jungle fowl I can and breed a line of morphologically correct birds.

I know pure birds do not seem to exist in Australia, but I want to breed as close as I can.

Combs on hens, yellow legs and incorrect number of sickle feathers in the tail seem to be the biggest faults.

Cheers
Adam

Adam,
You have been provided some very good advice. This can be a lengthy process that will take a number of years.
The process is really about selection of birds with the desired traits and trying to breed from those. It is better to work on only one or two traits at a time in the one mating.
E.g Yellow legs. It is often hard to tell the true leg colour of some adult fowl, as this can be influenced by diet, health, if the female is laying and genetics. Start with your chickens, look for those that have the best colour (or most desired), follow them as they grow. If they are good in most other areas selectively mate with another with the leg colour. And so it goes, soon you will start to see that you don't need to work on the trait and can focus on other traits. There are often indicators in some breeds that help indicate in certain traits are present. E,g in RIR, females with good horn colouring in the legs will generally carry the yellow gene and will pass this trait to her offspring or a Male RIR with a horn coloured spur (not yellow) will generally produce pullets with plenty of horn colouring.
In relation to combs, again look for birds with the best combs as possibe and follow the same process. Note not all will be as required but it is a process to follow to improve the trait. If the combs are too large, look for a male with a small comb, also try to ensure you keep the protien content down a little when the young are starting to mature. It will slow them down a little but can help a bit.
In relation to feathering and an uneven number of sickle feathers, try to select birds with only the correct even number to breed from.
Again it is about selection or trying not to select a trait so it is not fixed in the line. If your current line does not have the desired traits you are after you will need to carefully select an outcross to provide the genetics of the desired traits.

I hope this helps. For more detail you can try a PM to some of the members.

Rhode Red

Presumably, these birds are highly related to one another? If so then there is a high probability that some of the undesirable traits are fixed in this line. If there is no genetic variation (thats what fixed means) then you can not make progress by selection because there is nothing to work with.

I'd suggest that your effective population size needs to be larger. There must be other breeders of Jungle fowl about surely?

If so then I'd suggest that you collect as many different lines as you can manage. As a rule of thumb, a minimum of four pens, each pen having a different line origin, one rooster per pen and several hens is needed. If you imagine the pens being in a circle, in the second year, the best male chick can go to the pen clockwise and the best female chicks can stay in the original pen with a new rooster and any of the original hens that are still good enough to be retained.

That will give you a large enough genepool to maintain your new line almost indefinitely and permit ongoing improvement.

I have managed to, or am in the process of gathering birds from multiple states.

Hopefully they will not be too related. I will also gather what eggs and Chicks I can from wherever I can to start with as large a gene pool as possible.

Cheers
Adam

I tried to buy a trio of jungle fowl in perth but when I got there they were cross breeds I was not impressed I can tell you and I told him. I am still finding it hard to buy them here so I admire you work with them and maybe I can buy some from you in the future

A little update.

My project has begun. I now have 3 roosters and 8 hens as well as 12 eggs in the incubator (never used an incubator before but that's another story).

I will be culling out 1 of the roosters straight away as his legs are bright yellow. the rest will be part of my first years program.

Yay! Good on you, I guess you'll still be looking for a some different genetics somewhere to make up a couple more breeding pens, but that woulds like a good start.