Re: Increasing the size of poultry

Ginny wrote:
Hello everyone,

A few months ago I purchased a trio of Silver Grey Dorkings. Now all
the poultry books mention them as a massive bird but as the
Australian gene pool is closed, size is suffering and my birds are
about average weight for a heavy breed although colour and most other
traits seem to be correct. Egg weight is only average too.

How does one breed size without introducing new blood from another
breed? Will selective breeding help here? I only intend to incubate
and breed from 60gm+ eggs but am unsure if this is
wise/necessary/useful.

Its a very good start to stablise and maybe improve egg weights

It will be hard to improve your flock with such small numbers but a over
simplistic route could be as follows
My suggestion would be to get as many trios from as many different places as
you can.
Identify everyone with leg rings
House your cockerels apart from the breeding birds -- dispersed amongst your
laying flock of whatever is useful here if you do not want to keep solitary
cockerels.
Rotate your cockerels around the flock - leaving 2 weeks between each to
clear the hens out and then select the best eggs of the next two week to
incubate.
Rinse and repeat with all cockerels
Wing tag the offspring
Weigh the offspring through the growing season
Select the quickest and biggest hens and cockerels of that generation and ID
their fathers.
Take the best hens and put them to the best previous generation males
Take the biggest hens you had from the previous generation and put them to
the best cockerels of the current
Don't breed from any of the smaller / not up to scratch ones. and preferably
cull them ! as if you sell them you are in danger of adding the poorer
quality birds into someone elses gene pool.No breed needs to have more
replications of birds that are not up to scratch --- I am completely aware
that that is almost impossible but I have seen/heard of the decline of so
many good breeds in the UK and heard of them elsewhere simply due to the
fashion and the false idea that to "save" a breed one needs to replicate it
whatever the standard of the birds and then disperse the offspring as much
as possible with absolutely no consideration of the selection processes. And
this is being encouraged by Breed Socs who can get very ansty about folks
who have enquired about utility qualitites. I have been shocked at some of
the conversations I have had reported to me.

There are other ways to achieve the aims I am sure but this has certainly
worked for others to improve the qualities you want in a table bird in a
small gene pool within the confines of a domestic situation .
- a good amount of meat on the bird without too large a frame once killed
out
- this meat to be in place by the time they are 18 weeks old - after that
and it progresses to boot leather
- maintain a good egg size for effective incubation
- maintain a tolerable egg number - 150 plus per year for useful incubation
and selection

Its time consuming and requires a lot of organisation but its rewarding

--

regards
Jill Bowis

Pure bred utility chickens and ducks
Housing; Equipment, Books, Videos, Gifts
Herbaceous; Herb and Alpine nursery
Working Holidays in Scotland
http://www.kintaline.co.uk


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