Breeding Selection into the Future Flock

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:04]Hello, my name is Mandelyn Royal and today I'm making a couple of tweaks to my little project pen and I want to show you why and explain some stuff about chicken genetics and project breeding and stuff like that.

[00:00:22]So, here in the center is my best male for my Chantecler and American Bresse hybrid winterized Bresse project, I guess you'd call it, because the American Bresse are really prone to having massive combs and wattles and that's no good for northern winters. It's really good for heat tolerance but for winter, not great. So, I'm kind of exploring my other options because the purebred Chantecler they were dual-purpose but gosh, it took them quite a while.

[00:01:01]I didn't see really good dress weights until they were 8 months old and that really limits your cooking options once they get to be that age.

[00:01:12]Plus, it clogs up pen space and drives up your feed conversion rate and you know, they're a great hobby bird but for my intensive purposes I think I can squeak them into something a little bit different that more reflects the American Bresse and everything that I love about them.

[00:01:33]So, in front of me right here these guys are all F2 themselves and I'm going to go into the F3 without breeding back to the pure American Bresse or the Chantecler. I'm going to explore where they're at and what they're telling me and test what they're capable of.

[00:01:57]That F3 generation in a hybrid project, it's going to be a Pandora's Box. It's going to be a can of worms best case. Depending on the birds that were behind them in the lineage. So, to do this project, I only used the best of what I had to make them have higher odds of better accuracy and desired traits cuz the whole point of breeding is to package all of the desired traits into singular birds so that you can begin to have consistency and you can begin to have expectations on how your birds are going to perform, how they're going to behave, and how they're going to breed themselves forward in the next generation. Cuz I am my own breeder. I don't buy from anybody. I recreate my own and over the decades, I've learned having some standards is really key.

[00:02:59]Having a plan is really key.

[00:03:03]That's a whole other side quest video and a whole bunch of other topics that come into play in that regard. So, anyways, let's talk about these birds in front of us and what we love and what we don't love and where they might be headed from here.

[00:03:20]So, I'm dual-purpose. My extra cockerels have a spot in my freezer and I love that flexibility of producing as many as I can, feed and house appropriately and we don't buy chicken.

[00:03:37]>> [laughter] >> We don't get Cornish Cross at the store.

[00:03:41]I don't raise any commercial type hybrids to get meat faster. This is my method and I want my cockerels to be of dinner consideration relatively early cuz it helps with my pen space allotment, it helps with my feed conversion, my feed bill.

[00:04:01]An early harvest of what you know you don't need is actually really efficient and it makes this whole thing work.

[00:04:10]Cuz if you're going to hatch your own eggs, you need to know at least half of those chicks are going to be boys.

[00:04:18]Nobody wants them unless they're useful in some regard.

[00:04:23]And you can't get any more useful than dinner.

[00:04:26]So, I want to see fast growth. I want to see broad chest. I want to see fleshy birds that have really good quality of life and can get out and do their little chicken thing. Cuz if they're a keeper, you'll want them to be healthy and happy for a really long time so that you can keep breeding from those better birds.

[00:04:49]It keeps the whole thing moving forward.

[00:04:53]So after my little disclaimer there.

[00:04:57]This male is the only one I have right now who's of breeding age that best reflects what I'm aiming at.

[00:05:08]So, he has the winter proof comb and wattles very understated.

[00:05:14]>> [laughter] >> Blue feet, white feathers mostly. He has a little bit of yellowing in here but I'm pretty confident we can clean that up in time so long as I'm careful in my breeding selections.

[00:05:28]>> [laughter] >> His proportions, his angles, his tail set, the slope from the back end of the tail his body width everything checks out.

[00:05:41]But he's super short in the back.

[00:05:44]I want to see more body length to better complement the proportions.

[00:05:51]So, over in my breakfast club, I found a hatch mate of his and she's just kind of been hanging out doing her own thing.

[00:06:01]She has a rose comb and that rose comb is equally nice for winter.

[00:06:10]She is very long in the back.

[00:06:14]>> [laughter] >> She's pretty well tightly feathered.

[00:06:17]Like her physique, exactly what this looks like, is exactly what she feels like. And I think she's really going to complement him a lot.

[00:06:28]But I know better than to put all of my eggs in one basket and so I want some other females involved to help flex things out and give me some more options.

[00:06:37]And so I have a younger one these two are coming up on a year old but this lady, she is only 7-ish months and she is almost the ideal of what I'm going for. So, because she is it >> [laughter] >> she has a cushion comb, really tight wattles, excellent leg color, nice tight feathers >> [laughter] >> long enough in the body.

[00:07:08]I like her a lot.

[00:07:10]So, she's also going to be in breeding consideration.

[00:07:14]>> [laughter] >> But I really have high hopes on this rose comb girl.

[00:07:19]I'm going to pull her out and we're going to talk about what she feels like but for now, let me tell you what they weigh.

[00:07:26]She weighs 7 lb 8 oz. She is the biggest bird in this lineup right now.

[00:07:34]He is 7 lb 3 oz so she's 5 oz heavier. I think that's going to go really well.

[00:07:43]She is 5 lb 8 oz so that's a 2 lb difference between that pullet and this hen.

[00:07:53]And the most significant differences between them >> [laughter] >> is she got the cushion comb and white ear lobes and she got a rose comb with red ear lobes and I'm wondering what kind of substance she's going to continue to add to her physique over the next, you know, 6 to 8 months or so.

[00:08:14]We'll find out.

[00:08:15]>> [laughter and crying] >> But let me go over the proportions of this female cuz she she's great.

[00:08:25]Let me get set up for that and we'll talk about her details.

[00:08:30]Okay, is this setting correct? All right, it looks like we're a go.

[00:08:35]Sorry, I lost my voice all last week. I got a new phone. I'm still learning stuff. But now, let's talk about this big, beautiful girl.

[00:08:48]Oh my goodness. I know, it's fine.

[00:08:51]So, she's actually being pretty chill all things considered cuz she was plucked from a free-range environment living her best little feral life.

[00:09:03]But now I need her.

[00:09:06]I need her to see what her offspring are going to do for the betterment of the flock.

[00:09:14]Now, when I started her head you see how wide that skull is? You cannot see an eyeball.

[00:09:22]This is a beautiful head that speaks to the kind of body she could have just based off the skull.

[00:09:32]This is nice. And then we get to her comb.

[00:09:36]It's a rose comb technically and I love how clean and pointy the back end of it is.

[00:09:45]She's going to give me some good stuff to work with, I believe. Her beak it's the right color. I want it to be white with a little a little blue. Blue's good. Brown, brown is bad. But she's white with a little blue tint to it, so that's accurate. So already her head and her comb and her beak is nice. Her earlobes are red.

[00:10:14]So I need to look for white earlobes in the offspring to keep the breast side of things well expressed.

[00:10:25]Now, moving beyond this, when I first picked her up this morning, she feels heavy. I didn't know it was going to be 7 lb 8 oz heavy, but 7 lb, that's a lot.

[00:10:40]Now with her being 7 lb 8 oz, that puts her 1 lb heavier than what the breed standard wants. But the male is on the low end, so I'm hoping some offspring give us balance.

[00:10:59]Now, a main consideration for dual-purpose birds is their chest, because the chest is where all the breast meat is. That's the white meat. Most people want to have more white meat than leg meat. I understand that. I'm one of those people.

[00:11:18]So she checks that that box. It it's she feels as good as a purebred hen can feel. And if you haven't gotten your hands on enough birds to know what that really feels like, I strongly encourage you to handle them and start to recognize that feeling. Because once you get it, I mean, you're done. It it it's amazing when it works out correctly.

[00:11:50]So one of the main things that I like about her, in addition to her temperament, cuz she's being so good, is her length.

[00:11:59]Now body length starts right where the tail is and right where the neck is. And when I put my hand on her, she is every single bit of a full hand down to the tip of my middle finger and then some.

[00:12:18]It's a lot.

[00:12:20]The transition from her back into her tail, it is so smooth and so tightly feathered. She presents that what you see is what you get kind of physique.

[00:12:36]I need to show you what she's doing right now for temperament. Oh my goodness.

[00:12:41]>> [laughter] >> What a good girl.

[00:12:46]All right, stand up a little bit.

[00:12:50]>> [laughter] >> She is so good.

[00:12:53]But this right here, this flushing, and then if I can get her Can you stand up?

[00:13:00]You can move around. You've got free choice here, Missy.

[00:13:04]>> [laughter] >> But she's got a lot of width in there.

[00:13:10]Now, the major ding about her is that bent inner toe, but I can fix that by making sure who she's with does not also share that same thing.

[00:13:24]Oh, look at that transition there.

[00:13:26]>> [laughter] >> She is so amazing.

[00:13:32]And you wouldn't even know it unless you knew what you were looking at.

[00:13:36]Her back end bone spacing, I didn't quite get to that yet, but earlier this morning that was a full like three almost four fingers.

[00:13:45]Let me see your pelvic spacing.

[00:13:49]I'm also kind of checking for obesity, because she is so heavy I worry she might have too much fat.

[00:13:57]Where's your pin bones?

[00:14:00]There they are.

[00:14:01]>> [laughter] >> Easy three fingers wide.

[00:14:05]She is a very well put together bird and a very well proportioned bird.

[00:14:11]And I really think she's going to compliment him a lot.

[00:14:18]>> [laughter] >> And his temperament, he's such a good boy. But there's that width in between the legs.

[00:14:27]That's where all the breast meat lives.

[00:14:29]If they don't have width in there, you're not going to have a good carcass result. If they're narrow, if they're skinny, if they're pinched up, if they're otherwise [laughter] not great in that underbody, you're not going to have good meat results. But I think these two birds, I think I'm going to hatch every single egg she lays this year.

[00:14:56]Well, yeah, yours too.

[00:14:58]But your egg size needs to get a little bigger, Missy.

[00:15:02]She is also super cute. But her eggs are only like 54 g right now, so I haven't set anything.

[00:15:12]Cuz I want my egg size to be 58 g and above for setting.

[00:15:17]I don't like it when they go past like 70 g, cuz it puts too much moisture in the egg and you have to adjust your humidity settings.

[00:15:26]So I'm going to keep her in here with food, water, etc. to identify what kind of egg she's putting out. It's the last piece of the puzzle that I need to know.

[00:15:40]What is her egg like? Is it big enough?

[00:15:43]Is it the right color?

[00:15:45]Is the shell texture good? Is it conducive to viable hatching eggs?

[00:15:51]So she's going to stay here for a second to clear out from the male she was with, show me her egg, and then I'm going to put her with him.

[00:15:59]And cross my fingers. Cuz these guys hatched at the same time. They're both about a year old.

[00:16:06]And uh testing out what comes from them, I don't know. We're going to hatch and see.

[00:16:14]But this is very promising.

[00:16:17]All because she's awesome.

[00:16:19]And he's okay.

[00:16:21]All right, let me get these guys situated and get on with my day, but I'm pretty excited to see what happens here.

[00:16:30]So more on this later. Feel free to like and subscribe.

[00:16:34]I'll try to teach you everything I think I know.

[00:16:37]>> [laughter]