Just Some Food For Thought

[Steve Neumann]

Suki, you still cull weak/nonstandard birds when you landrace.  You just don't line breed and let the birds select their mates instead of selecting birds based on compensating for faults.  You definitely will get more variance from such breeding, BUT you also get birds that are vigorous and good layers, and some of those birds turn out great.  As far as crossbeak goes, far more people get beak problems out of line bred birds than flocks with lots of genetic diversity.  Same for many recessive genetic faults.

[Suki]

Thanks Steve for the followup.  That's the problem -- the cock picking his mate.  Like humans they have favourites.  I free range my birds and have seen this quite often, that's why if I really want a particular coupling I put the two or three in a pen for a week or so.  S~