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Breeding / Re: Wheaten woes
« Last post by John W Blehm on May 24, 2024, 09:03:00 AM »This quote is from page 100 of my Ameraucana Chickens book and expands a bit on Mike's last reply...
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Within each line, practice inbreeding to set desired characteristics, at the risk of inbred depression. Line-crossing between your own sublines of each Ameraucana variety is where you'll see most of the benefits. There are different ways to go about it, but (and I know I’m repeating myself) the most important part is to maintain two or more sublines of each variety.
At one time, I had four of my bantam condos set up with four sublines of buff bantams. I don’t recall, but let’s call them A, B, C & D. The best pullets would be kept as breeders the following year and go into the coops they came from. The best cockerels that were kept as breeders would go over the pullets in the next coop to their right of where they came from. So a cockerel hatched from eggs in coop A would be used over the pullets in coop B. Cockerels from B would go over pullets from C and so on, with cockerels from D over pullets from A. The chicks coming from any of those four sublines represented my line of bantam Buff Ameraucanas. This is one method of linebreeding.