Breeding Pure Breeds of Chickens.

Breeding chickens is of course a fairly straightforward process, you put a good cockerel in with some hens and providing both are fit and healthy and your cockerel is fertile, he will mate with the hens regularly and before you know it, you have fertile eggs. There are a few other things to consider though if you are hoping to show your birds or hope to improve the standard of the breed of chicken you have chosen.

Getting good results can take years, breeding top birds doesn't happen overnight but hopefully this article will give you some ideas of where to start.

Start with the best stock.

Start with the best stock you can get. This makes life somewhat easier if you are starting with good examples of the breed. Once type is established, it is common for inbreeding to be practised within the flock. There are many hatching eggs being advertised on sites such as ebay that boast eggs from unrelated cockerels and this is great for introducing vigor into a bloodline but introducing a new mixture of genes doesn't guarantee your chicks will grow up to look similar to their parents! By using an unrelated cockerel for breeding, even if he looks perfect, you could find chicks resemble their grand parents or great grandparents. This is especially true for breeds with mixed ancestors and these days, it's very hard to find real ‘pure breeds'. Who is to say there hasn't been a cross with another breed a few generations ago?

Inbreeding.

By inbreeding within the flock, you are combining the same genes and therefore will produce the same characteristics over and over. Faults will appear as well as desirable characteristics and these will appear much more than if you were using an unrelated cockerel but being selective with the birds you breed with will reduce these faults year on year. After a number of years of breeding and selecting the characteristics you desire, your strain will start to take shape and if you've been careful with your selection you should be getting pretty close to what you set out to achieve.

If you are interested in breeding show quality birds then 21st Century Poultry Breeding by Grant Brereton is vital reading and reference material and I would highly recommend you read it.

All Photos on this page are Courtesy of poultry photographer Rupert Stephenson.