If you’re happy with hybrid layers or buying an occasional batch of broilers to raise, you don’t need a breeder flock. But if you wish to hatch eggs and raise chicks, you’ll need to maintain a breeder flock. Flock owners who hatch eggs include homesteaders who enjoy producing their own meat and eggs, exhibition breeders, and preservationists who work with endangered breeds. Creating a Breeding Plan People who collect and hatch eggs may be divided into two camps: breeders who emphasize quality and what you might call propagators or multipliers, who emphasize quantity. Both groups hatch a lot of chicks. For the propagator, getting lots of chicks is the goal. To the breeder, a large number of chicks is merely the means to an end. The more chicks you have, the more heavily you can cull; the more heavily you cull, the better the quality of your flock. The only way to improve your flock and maintain its quality is through a well-thought-out breeding plan that includes the following considerations: • Begin with the best chickens you can find. • Establish a long-range goal. • Cull ruthlessly to meet that goal. To have consistent results in your chicks year after year, your breeding flock must include only chickens of a single breed. Your results will be inconsistent if you hatch eggs from a flock containing different breeds or commercially crossbred chickens. The birds in your breeding flock should be healthy and free of deformities. They should be reasonably true to type, meaning that each bird is of the correct size, shape, and color for its breed. Cull any chicken from your breeding flock that doesn’t measure up. Culling The quality of a small flock can degenerate rapidly if you make no effort to select in favor of health, vigor, hardiness, and good reproduction. In pursuit of your breeding goals, keep only your best offspring and get rid of the rest, even though the rest may represent a large percentage of each hatch. How severely you need to cull will be influenced by the quality of your foundation flock. Unfortunately, you can’t do much to ensure you’re getting the stock you want, except to seek out someone who specializes in the strain you’re interested in, has worked with it for a long time, and freely offers details about its back ground. Once you acquire your foundation stock, developing the birds to meet your goals is a matter of mating and culling. Cull against birds that develop slowly, aren’t energetic, or might otherwise be described as unthrifty Cull in favor of birds that show some improvement over their parents. In addition to visually inspecting the birds, manually examine each one for skeletal irregularities or deformities. Any bird that doesn’t measure up should go into the frying pan, the freezer, or the compost pile. If you’re raising exhibition birds, select breeders according to guidelines in the Standard. The best age to cull cocks for show is 8 months. Pullets are at their best when they’re ready to lay their first eggs, at 5½ to 7 months. Cull a laying flock for quality and quantity of eggs and the size of the hens. Choose meat birds with short shanks and compact bodies. In all cases, cull in favor of good temperament; it’s no fun to raise chickens that are wild or downright mean. Although you’ll hear all manner of advice on how to cure meanness, the only sure cure is to get rid of aggressive birds and breed for good disposition. After the first generation, start culling problem breeders so your flock will include not only good birds but also those that transmit their good qualities to their offspring. Pay the same attention to cocks as to hens. Optimizing Fertility Although an egg must be fertilized in order to hatch, not all fertilized eggs hatch. Eggs fail to hatch for many reasons, not all of which are easy to determine. One possible reason is that the embryo died before incubation began. Commonly known as weak fertility, this event may have nothing to do with fertility at all but may be due to deficiencies within the egg. Low fertility may result from inbreeding, which creates uniformity of size, color, and type but also brings out weaknesses, such as reduced rate of laying, low fertility, poor hatchability, and slow growth. Inbreeding doesn’t cause these problems, but it concentrates them the same way it concentrates favorable traits. More likely to play a significant role in low fertility are management factors, such as: • The flock is too closely confined. • The weather is too warm. • The flock gets fewer than 14 light hours daily. • The cock has an injured foot or leg. • Breeders are infested with internal or external parasites. • Breeders are too young or too old. • Breeders are stressed. • Breeders are undernourished. • Breeders are diseased. • The mating ratio is too high or too low. Mating Ratio The ideal cock-to-hen ratio is influenced by the cock’s condition, health, age, and breed. On average, the optimum ratio for heavier breeds is 1 cock per 8 hens, although a cock in peak form can handle up to 12 hens. The optimum ratio for lightweight laying breeds is 1 cock for up to 12 hens, yet an agile cock may accommodate 15 to 20. The mating ratio for bantams is 1 cock for 18 hens, although an active cockerel might handle as many as 25. An older cock or an immature cockerel can manage only half the hens than can a virile yearling. Too many cocks cause low fertility because they spend too much time fighting among themselves. Too few cocks cause low fertility because they can’t get around to all the hens. If you have one cock and more than half a dozen hens, chances are he will favor some hens and ignore others. Because cocks play favorites, it pays to periodically switch them. The more cocks you have for switching, the less likely you are to experience inbreeding problems; it’s far better to have chicks sired by several cocks than hatch the same number of chicks from one sire. In addition, by keeping extra cocks, you avoid the risk of losing your rooster and being without one. If your flock is small enough for only one cock at a time, house the extras in separate pens or cages. Ironically, cocks are less likely to fight if you keep three or more together instead of just two. If you use several cocks at a time, rotate them as groups, rather than individuals, to avoid disturbing their peck order. If you lose one cock out of a group, it’s better to risk a possible slight drop in fertility than have a drastic drop due to peck-order fighting caused by bringing in a replacement. Flock Age Maximum fertility and hatchability generally can be obtained from mature cockerels and pullets. Most cockerels reach maturity around 6 months of age. Early- maturing breeds may be ready to mate sooner, whereas late-maturing breeds may not be ready until 7 to 8 months of age. Comb development is the best indication of a cock’s maturity. You can start collecting hatching eggs when pullets are about 7 months old and have been laying for at least 6 weeks. Eggs laid earlier tend to be low in fertility, and those that hatch are likely to produce deformed chicks. As time goes by, fertility and hatchability improve and level out by the sixth week of laying. After about 6 months of laying, fertility and hatchability begin to decline, gradually among bantams and more rapidly among the heavier breeds than among lighter breeds. Industrial broiler breeders are kept for 10 months or less, compared with 12 months or more for layer breeders. Whether it’s better to hatch eggs from hens that are more than or less than 2 years of age depends on your goal. If it is to improve the health and vigor of future generations, hatch from older hens. Two-year-old hens that are laying well must be relatively disease resistant and are likely to pass that resistance to their offspring. On the other hand, a slight but significant decline occurs in hatchability after a hen’s first year and continues as the hen ages. After the second year you’ll see a greater percentage of early embryo deaths and failure of full-term embryos to hatch. If you do breed old birds, take special care to avoid stress in the breeder flock. Chickens may become stressed by harassment from animals or people, changes in the feed or feeding schedule, and a shortage of or change in the taste of their drinking water. Hens are more easily stressed than cocks, and older birds of either sex are more strongly affected than younger ones. Optimal Number of Hens per Cock
Breeder Housing Breeder flock housing plays an important role in the fertility and hatchability of eggs. Facilities with environmental variety offer a cock privacy to mate undisturbed by other cocks. Excessive fighting among cocks may be a sign of poor facility design, since cocks that are lower in the peck order have no place to hide from dominant birds. Floor space for the breeder flock should offer a minimum of 3 square feet per bird for large breeds, 2 square feet for smaller breeds, and 1½ square feet per bantam. Include one nest for every four hens, and frequently change nesting material so eggs won’t get soiled or cracked. Housing should protect the flock from extremes of climate, since sudden changes can cause a decrease in laying or fertility. During the early part of the season (late winter), provide 14 hours of continuous light to stimulate both egg and semen production. Feeding Breeders Assuming your breeder flock is healthy and free of both internal and external parasites, good nutrition is the most important factor in promoting fertility and hatchability. Poor nutrition may arise because rations are poorly balanced, insufficient, or nutritionally deficient. The main cause of poorly balanced rations is feeding breeders too much scratch grain or other treats. To ensure the proper protein/carbohydrate balance, reduce your flock’s grain ration about 1 month before the hatching season begins. Unbalanced rations, particularly those with excessive protein, can lead to gout, a condition in which uric acid crystals are deposited in joints or on internal organs. See that your breeders get enough to eat for their size and level of activity, and for the time of year. Feed either free choice or often, so those lowest in peck order get their turn at the feed hopper. Examine each bag of feed to make sure it isn’t dusty, moldy, or otherwise unpalatable, causing your chickens to eat less. Periodically weigh a sample of cocks and hens. Weight loss of more than 10 per cent can affect reproduction. Underfed cocks produce less semen, and underfed hens don’t lay well. A hen’s diet affects the number and vitality of her chicks and the quality of carry-over nutrients they continue to absorb for several weeks after the hatch. Nutritional deficiencies that may not produce symptoms in a hen can be passed on to her chicks. ‘What you feed the breeder hen therefore also affects her chicks. The same ration that promotes good egg production doesn’t necessarily provide embryos and newly hatched chicks with all the elements they need to thrive. Lay ration contains too little protein, vitamins, and minerals for the proper composition of hatching eggs and high hatchability Feeding lay ration to a breeder hen can result in a poor hatch or in nutritional deficiencies in the offspring. The older the hen, the worse the problem becomes. To improve your hatching success, feed your flock a breeder ration, starting 2 to weeks before you start collecting eggs for hatching. If you’re lucky, you’ll find breeder ration at your local farm store. Be sure it’s fresh, and use it within 2 weeks of the time it was mixed — even if you feed your flock the best breeder ration in the world, nutritional deficiencies will result if the feed is stored so long that fat-soluble vitamins are destroyed by oxidation. In areas where breeder ration is not available, the closest alternative may be game bird ration. If you can’t find either ration, 6 weeks before you begin collecting hatching eggs, toss your flock a handful of dry cat kibble daily, and add a vitamin/mineral supplement to its drinking water. The problem of ensuring adequate breeder flock nutrition is compounded if you hatch early in the season, before your hens have access to fresh greens. If you live in northern area, you can measurably improve your hatching success by delaying incubation until your breeder flock has access to plenty of forage and sunlight. Next: Hatching Eggs |