Preparing for the Breeding Season
Jeremy suggests some ways of preparing for and ensuring healthy, early, chicks from your breeding stock.
Home > Chicken Breeding & Genetics
Articles and guides about breeding chickens and their genetics.
Articles are grouped in topics as follows:
If the noise of a male bird crowing isn’t going to disturb your neighbours, then you might want to start breeding chickens.
There are several reasons we breed from our chickens: to produce birds to show, to increase the size of our flock, to sell fertile eggs or birds, to improve our bloodlines or simply to enjoy incubating and hatching your own chicks.
You will find some articles below to help you start breeding and some more advanced topics on selecting birds for the breeding pen and making your own line of birds and fixing specific traits into your line.
Once you start chicken breeding, (and believe me, it can be very addictive hatching chicks!) you will soon be selecting birds for the breeding pen. You may not realise it, but by selecting birds, you are applying genetics which will affect the future generations of birds you hatch. If you want to improve your understanding of poultry genetics, we have several basic articles to help you get started with this complex subject.
From the beginner’s guide, to choosing equipment, housing, feeding and choosing the right type of birds for your setup, these articles should cover all you need to know to get started raising backyard chickens!
Jeremy suggests some ways of preparing for and ensuring healthy, early, chicks from your breeding stock.
If you are considering breeding chickens for sale or expanding your flock’s size, then one of the most rewarding ways to do this is by
If you are familiar with showing and breeding then you will almost certainly recognise the reference to a ‘line’ or a ‘strain’ and this becomes immediately
Following on from Making your Own Line of birds, Laurence Beeken looks at how to fix specific traits into your line and how to introduce fresh blood when necessary.
Whether you are an experienced poultry breeder or relatively new to the hobby, there are some common factors which have to be learnt in order to
I have read with great interest the breeding articles by Stan Simister (Creating a Strain), Derek Alsop’s response and more recently, Robin Ramus’ Federation Interview
Genetics can be a complex subject, but these articles explain some of the principles in a non-technical manner.
Anyone writing an article on the subject of poultry plumage has to begin with the 2 pigments that account for all the beautiful colours and
When learning about how Gold and Silver genes work in poultry, it can be very gratifying to realise that much can be made of the sex-linked
Black crossed to white? A common question in relation to breeding is: what will be the outcome of crossing a black to a white fowl? The answer
The word ‘gene’ is enough to put many people off when it comes to poultry articles. However, let me assure you, I don’t intend to
The lavender variety of poultry is very beautiful. The effect is born from the lavender gene being present in a black fowl and reducing the quantity
As I alluded to in a recent article on the subject, there are many factors that got me interested in colour genetics of poultry. One of
My first flock of hens were some Warren Browns, and were essentially spent stock from a local egg producer. My first cockerel was a traditionally
Crossing genetically gold and silver birds can result in a useful sex linkage. Still, it only works one way around, and there are often questions about the offspring they produce.
Autosexing breeds are pure breeds of poultry that have different coloured male and female young as day-olds.
When assessing your rearing stock and noticing an obvious fault, it can be very disheartening. An otherwise-fine specimen is ruined for show and breeding. However, If
Many years ago, a group of scientists in Cambridge discovered that certain characteristics are passed down from parent birds to their sons and not their
If blue birds (genetic code Bb) are mated together, they throw a percentage of ‘off’ colours in their progeny (youngsters), the probability being 25% blacks
The A-Z of all 93 standardised breeds plus information on Hybrids which are ideal for beginners.
General articles, guides, and information about raising backyard chickens at home or on an allotment.
Articles about incubating, hatching eggs and brooding your baby chicks.
From finding ex-battery hens to caring for their extra needs during Free Range retirement.
Articles on breeding chickens, including more advanced topics on the genetics of poultry.