Re: Increasing the size of poultry

Thanks again Jill, you really are a fountain of good info.

I have started keeping laying records for the two hens - very difficult as the crows are having a field day and the season is so dry there is little or no greens for the birds. I have incubated about a dozen of the bigger eggs and we are eating the smaller ones. All the chicks are early featherers and I have wingtagged the ones from the biggest eggs, the rest I am watching their growth rates and intend to eat. I am getting fertile eggs from another breeder in the next month or so all being well but air freight plays havoc with the hatch if the plane's cargo area is not pressurised.

The trio have leg rings as instructed. All the chicks are from one pairing as the two hens produce slightly different eggs so relatively easy to identify at this stage. I have used the egg and ID records I put up on the MSN group files page (excel format) so hope they are detailed enough. I copied the basic form from some old US Ag dept Historical Docs from the 1900's converted to .pdf that I downloaded. They print out on a 4"x6" index card.

I am unsure how many eggs the hens are laying but the main hen seems to lay about 4 eggs in 5 days so not a prolific layer. The other is just a pullet so still getting into the swing of things (I hope). At least the rooster is working!

Ginny

Jill wrote:


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

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