Choosing A Young Cockerel for Future Breeding

Ex-contract poultry farmer and several times national industry award winner Andy Martin from UK Countrystore takes a look at which cockerels you should consider keeping for breeding next season.

Okay, you've hatched a good few birds and now they're getting older, it's easier to tell the boys from the girls so now you want to select the right males for breeding and re-home or fatten the rest up for the pot. Which ones do you choose? Hopefully this article will help steer you in the right direction.

Firstly have a look at the beak of the cock. If it is longer and more curved than it's brothers then the chances  are it will grow at a faster rate throughout it's life. A longer beak will increase the likelihood of tears to the back of the females head. Normally these heal quite quickly but can become infected and cause discomfort, so it's best to not have it happen in the first place. Scratching and scraping on stones as it pecks around should help keep it down but if your chickens are mostly kept on grass then this will be less effective.

You can trim the beaks with special clippers and these are very good when used by an experienced handler. Somebody who is not used to handling a wriggling bird may do more harm than good. Beaks are is like the nails on your fingers, cut them properly and there is no pain involved, cut them to short and it hurts. Burning with a hot steel is possibly the best method but should only be done with a specialist 'Lyons' machine and a trained person. The only pain the birds feels is the discomfort of the little puff of smoke getting in their eyes.

Check the length of the spur and rear claw as these can get very long after a time and again can damage the bird's outer thighs and back. It's hard to envisage the birds that are going to have longer of each of these in later life, but both can grow very fast indeed on birds that showed little signs of growth in their early weeks. Both can be shortened with a hot steel / trimmers but this must only be done by an experienced person.

If you are hoping to have fertile eggs from your birds all throughout the laying cycle of the hen then the following must be considered. The feet of cocks must have smooth skin like babies fingers and straight toes. Although this does not affect the bird's fertility it has everything to do with fertilising the female.

Clean, smooth feet are less likely to develop rough areas that in turn grow over smoother parts of the claw and trap muck and faeces causing infection. I have seen hundreds of cockerels which would be perfectly good long-term breeding birds if only they had had better rearing conditions on drier litter. One of the main areas muck collects is in the webbed part on either side of the middle toe. This is a haven for all the muck of the day to collect in.

Most importantly though, to get fertile eggs throughout the length of the female's laying cycle is straight toes. If sounds daft but this is vital to keep the females fertilised. As both sexes get older the fertility of each drops and the hatchability will naturally drop but it is noticeable from around 40 weeks if the females are not getting fertilized. I've seen this many times on commercial breeding sites where a good crop of eggs will show a dramatic drop in hatching and this has been caused by poor feet.

The reason is that those with straight toes at a young age will more likely have straight toes when they are older and these are vital for balancing when mating. As a bird increases in age, the joints in its toes grow and any defect is emphasised. Slightly bent toes at a young age become ‘knarled with toes growing at an angle' (just like an old persons fingers) when older. When the cockerel touches vent to vent with the female he has to balance very carefully or the connection will not be made and the female will not be fertilised.

This defect is not so important in younger males but will cause a serious drop in fertility in the eggs of older breeding couples and as the eggs of older hens will produce larger chicks, it is well worth being aware of when selecting the right males early on.

If you take these factors into consideration when making your selection at a young age then you will greatly increase the chances of having a good supply of fertile eggs from your females throughout their lives.

One final note I'll add is that over the period that I reared & bred hundreds of thousands of birds, I found certain similarities between humans and poultry. One of them is the breeding ability of the cockerel. Pick up a middle aged cockerel and inspect his vent and those birds who have scratched wattles and scruffy feathering from fighting and are a wee bit leaner will have worn the feathers away from their vent through constant mating. Those who are carry a little more weight, constantly preen themselves and strut around crowing the most will have a lot of feathering around their vents showing little sign of mating. Hmm.....