How to breed cross a very good chicken genetic?
Importance of Crosses
Nowadays we are well aware of the benefits to be had from cross-breeding chickens and hybrid vigor. Almost without exception our commercial table birds and layers are hybrids and cross-breeds. The science of genetics was only established by Gregor Mendel, an Augustine friar, and scientist, in his pea experiments between 1856 and 1863 — a few years before this piece was written in 1899 by Edgar Wallace.
It should be remembered that this was an age without fast communications worldwide and new sciences took time to become commonplace. Even Charles Darwin was unaware of Mendel. In any event, Mendel’s work and its significance weren’t properly recognized until the 20th century where it explained many of the mysteries of cross-breeding chickens with dominant and recessive genes, F1 and F2 generation, etc.
You will find a strong tendency on the part of the average poultry keeper to mix up his birds. If he gets a flock of fowls that begin to look alike, ten to one he will buy a rooster of a neighbor for a dollar of some entirely different breed, and the result will be that the next fall he will have a whole poultry show on his hands.
Concerning Crosses
There is a popular belief that crosses lay better than thoroughbreds, and the method of procedure is to mix up the birds as much as possible.
This whole subject of crossing needs to be better understood. Some good must come from crossing, or it would not be so universally practiced.
Where does it come from? It comes from the invigoration that always follows the introduction of new blood. The cross-breed pullet lays better than its mother because it is larger and stronger it can eat and assimilate more arid stand the strain of egg production better.
The average farmer’s flock is constantly running out. He does not breed from his best. The introduction of new blood counteracts this tendency. Consequently, the farmer is converted to a belief in the superiority of the cross.
But when you go beyond the first cross when you crisscross, as they say, you strike another tendency the tendency to reversion. The mixing of blood results in bringing out ancestral characters. The criss-cross is not far removed from the red jungle fowl, and there inevitably comes a drop in egg production.
All the valuable results that come from crossing can be secured by the occasional infusion of new blood from a male of the same breed as your own, and the breed may be kept purer. It is not necessary to introduce new blood oftener than once in two years.
Suppose you send away for a cockerel this fall. The first mating will be with birds with which he is entirely unrelated. Next fall mates him to the best pullets of his get, and take the best cockerel to mate with the hens in the other breeding pen.
If you find a strain of birds that you like follow along with the breeder, getting a male from his yards every two years.
Breeders for fancy points breed in and in, and have a chart of matings that is as intricate as a bicycle road map. It is impossible to produce show birds that will win in the hottest competition without in and inbreeding.
But the reader of this book has no necessity to resort to any such procedure that is if he is after eggs first and not feathers and frills.
Breeding Chickens to Increase Egg Production & Utility General Rules
This article, Breeding Chickens to Increase Egg Production & Utility General Rules, is based on Edgar Wallace’s article in his 200 Eggs a Year Per Hen: How to Get Them from 1899. It is just as relevant today and hopefully of use to readers who wish to try breeding chickens for themselves.
One example is you may wish to take a pure breed that has been selected for style and conformation and then increase egg production.
One example is you may wish to take a pure breed that has been selected for style and conformation and then increase egg production.
The Three Laws or Principles Underlying Reproduction
Breeders now recognize three laws or principles underlying the whole subject of reproduction.
1. Inheritance.
By inheritance means the tendency of parents to repeat themselves in their offspring and to resemble their parents. It is because of this law of inheritance that anything like scientific breeding is possible.
If parents did not have a proclivity to repeat themselves in their offspring and if offspring did not have a proclivity to resemble their parents, the breeder might well abandon his task as hopeless.
2. Variation.
By variation is meant the tendency of offspring to differ from the parents. The infant is never an exact copy of the father or mother; it possesses an independent individuality of its own.
Thus the product of A and B is never A or B, even AB or BA; it is AB plus X; in other words, there enters in an unknown element to influence the result.
This law of variation makes it possible to improve the species; the parents may be so mated that the offspring will be better and stronger than either one of them.
3. Reversion.
There is a propensity to go backward as well as forward to return to some primitive type. Where mating is indiscriminate the tendency to reversion is very strong.
Breed From Your Best Chicken
We have now reached the point where it is possible to formulate some rules for breeding. The first is this: Breed from your best chicken. By best chicken, I mean chicken that will best enable you to reach your ideal.
If your ideal is beauty breed from chicken that will give you beauty; if your ideal is utility breed from chicken that will give you utility. We now see why having a show chicken and an egg chicken in the same specimen is so difficult.
If your ideal is a beautiful breed for The breeder must sacrifice somewhere either on the scorecard or the egg record. It is possible to have a good looker and a good layer in the same chicken; but I do not believe that it is possible to have a chicken that will win in Boston, New York, or Chicago, and at the same time lay 200 eggs a year.
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