In this episode of Bred to Perfection, we are discussing Genetic Drift, and the effect it can have on our strains. Genetic drift is a force of nature that contributes to the evolution of species, but can also have an effect on the evolution of our strains. In fact, it can change the direction of your strain with a blink of an eye through a sudden change in the number of birds within that strain, and change the frequency of their alleles over time. Your ability as a breeder, will and can determine what that strain will become. One thing can be certain, that strain will be different than they were before. There’s a lot of great nuggets of information that I know you will not want to miss.
Genetics
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.