By Kenny Troiano
Copyright © 2020 by Kenny Troiano/Maximus Troy Publications
As many of you probably know, American Games are incredible fowl, but are known to have numerous weaknesses. These weaknesses are recessive faults that are caused by genetic impurities that are passed down from generation to generation.
Although these weaknesses exist within the bloodline, if you make sure to cull the defective individuals and breed only to the highly superior individuals, your fowl will improve.
How severely you may need to cull will all depend on the quality of your foundation. In the beginning, you may have to cull to the bone, so to speak, that it may seem as though you are eliminating the majority of your flock. This is the reality of breeding; improvement is made through the process of selection and culling.
Know your fowl well: In order to cull properly, you must spend a great deal of time studying your chickens. You will need to watch and observe your fowl carefully. It will be impossible to be a good judge if you don’t know your fowl well.
A Zero-Defect Policy: You cannot improve your fowl without practicing a “zero-defect policy.” This must be your primary goal. To improve your fowl, it is very important to understand that any individual that shows defects also shows that it’s not worth keeping, and should be eliminated. When a breeder culls properly, and intensely, the family improves very rapidly. He is then, and only then, on the road to great success.
Set Your Standards High: Good breeders are those who have set high standards for their fowl, and all of them are strict cullers, for this is the key to quality control. They systematically eliminate individuals which do not meet their minimum requirements, in terms of the qualities that they consider important. And they cull anything that shows the slightest of defects. They accept “ZERO” defects.
You’ll find that breeders, such as these have an easier time than most when it comes to selecting their best fowl, as the majority of their birds are all quite good. Nothing less than perfect all the time.
The Offspring Should Always Be Better Than The Parents: If you breed fowl that are not as good as the parent stock, then you have bred culls, it’s that simple! To improve your family of fowl, the offspring should always be better than their parents, every year! If not, then you are going in the wrong direction.
We all have an attachment to the fowl we hatch out, but it is the smart breeders that survive and the sentimental breeders that go broke. All the great breeders cull ruthlessly, while the unsuccessful ones keep everything they hatch.
Culling should be rigorous at all times, but particularly in the beginning. Your breeding goals should consist of keeping only your best offspring and getting rid of the rest, at any age, even though it may be a large percentage of each hatch. Cull, at once, any runts, weaklings or malformations that appear in the hatch.
Later on, when they’re fully feathered, go through them again. “Don’t spare the axe”! As one of my mentors used to tell me, “faults are expensive. Sometimes the best remedy for fowl that are sick, weak or have any defects, is in fact, the axe. Get in the habit of swinging that axe fast and accurate, and as often as possible. Keep the good ones, and eat the rest” This is good advice. In time you will be rewarded with fine sturdy, dependable stock.
After the molting season, sometime in late November/early December, take the time to inspect all your stags and pullets. This is the time when you must really look them over well, not from a distance, but in your hands. One by one, look them over very carefully, and remember, there’s no profit in feeding faulty and defective birds.
How the old-timers cull: A good friend of mine, Tony Saville, was telling me how the old breeders of long time past used to cull their fowl. Whenever they would go out to feed their fowl, they would fill their bucket up with feed. They would go out and feed the chickens, and when they returned they would always have a culled chicken in the bucket, which they would cook up for their evening dinner. Every day they would force themselves to cull something during feeding time. This way they were able to keep their numbers down, and also make sure that by the end of the year they were left with nothing but the best!
