Harold Brown Hatch Grey stag by RA Superfly Gamefarm If we have a multi-time winner in our farm, more likely than not, we will make it a broodcock upon its retirement from fighting. A sound decision or not? Often, our stand is that we are looking for good fighters, fighting ability being one of our major selection criteria. Now that one is available, why not take advantage of it and allow it to produce winner-progeny? Right. We fight stags and cocks, hence, we are very much interested in game chickens that fight well and win fights. A winner himself, our chicken should be able to pass his abilities on to the generation that will succeed his. How would our winner fare as a broodcock? Would he be that prepotent as to be able to throw winners everytime? Now his value as a broodcock depends to a large extent upon what are in him. Heres the summary - the more bloodlines in him, the less valuable he is as a broodcock. Agree or disagree? We are all entitled to our opinions and claims based on our experience, but in general, the fowls prepotency diminishes with every increase in degree of crossbreeding. This is because of the so-called gene segregation - the more heterozygous the parent, the more that he is gonna throw off-types because of the segregation of genes in each chromosome pair that are for different types of a particular character. What we are saying is that the more crossbred our broodcock, the less valuable he is as a breeder because of his tendency to throw less uniform progeny as far as characteristics are concerned. If the broodcock is a two-way cross, he is better off as a broodcock. He should be able to sire a good number of progeny to his likeness. Now, is there a way to lessen the effects of gene segregation so we can increase the percentage of good progeny out of using our cross-broodcock? This, we will discuss next time... - See more at: nowcrowing/2014/10/using-battlecrosses-as-broodfowls.html#sthash.waHsiwkA.dpuf
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 19:47:40 +0000
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