Another fact many breeders of domestic chickens (which includes ornamental, general purpose breeds, as well as the commercial breeds and strains) don’t know is that all chickens that exist today owe their very existence to the Gamecock. All chickens today have a percentage, be it very small in most cases, of gamefowl blood running through their veins.
GAMEFOWL COULD VERY WELL BE THE SAVIOR OF ALL CHICKENS
Today, there are many breeds of fowl that are in danger of genetic implosion, where the gene pools are losing their genetic variation. Many ornamental and commercial strains are heavily inbred. Because of this, they have become less resistant to disease, and lack the constitutional vigor needed to survive a serious outbreak, such as an unknown virus.
ANOTHER CHICKEN FUN ZONE
Welcome to the Bred to Perfectionpodcast, a show for the serious breeder. Join Kenny Troiano, and his wife, Nancy, as they talk about the breeding and raising of gamefowl and chickens, and the issues that affect breeders like you.
Breeding Better American Games
If we look at what Mendel learned from studying pea plants we can also see how this affects certain characteristics in chickens, such as pea-combs are dominant over single-combs. A pea-comb cock crossed with a single-combed hen will result in pea-combed offspring, but only in the first generation. But if breeding is continued, such as in the case of inbreeding or line-breeding, using the pea-comb offspring, bred back to their parents, this would give you, in the second generation, a mixture of pea-comb and single-combed offspring. Although the resulting offspring all came pea-combed, they now also carry the recessive trait for single-comb.
6 “Need to Knows” – before beginning your breeding program
Welcome to the Bred to Perfectionpodcast, a show for the serious breeder. Join Kenny Troiano, and his wife, Nancy, as they talk about the breeding and raising of gamefowl and chickens, and the issues that affect breeders like you.