Ep. 72 – How to Breed a Landrace Chicken – with Perpend

A Rotating Rooster Strategy to add diversity to your community’s chicken flocks.

Perpend is back and we are planning on How to Breed a Landrace Chicken.

What is a landrace? It is a chicken that is adapted to your land and your climate.
Autosexing vs. Sex link breeds.
- Autosexing is crossing one breed and sexing the chicken/telling the sex by feather shape or by coloring or spots on the chicks.
- Sex link breeds are a cross of two breeds where the female chick will be a certain color. Many sex link chicks at the farm stores are black in color.
Can chickens from the same brood/flock be bred with each other?

Landrace Chicken – Our Preferences

Chickens that can brood their own eggs (without using incubator)
Cold hardy chickens – breeds won’t easily get frostbite (Ameraucana, Brahma, Icelandic)
Rooster of some other breed.
Flighty vs. a “lap” chicken? (one that will come to you, let you pick it up, or sit on your lap). Which is more resistant to predators?

We also talk about Perpend’s last tweet: “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

Rotate Rooster Strategy to add diversity to your community’s chicken flocks

When it comes time to breed the hens and roosters and incubate eggs or let the hens brood the eggs, the chickens are banded with a color band. The rooster and any new chicks born from that rooster are banded.

Ideally, have three friends or homesteads, each with a rooster and “clan” of chickens. You can also do this by separating your chickens into 3 flocks.
Band the rooster and the new chicks born from that rooster’s flock.
Choose the best chickens and rooster from that clan. Trade/cull the others, or at least separate them from the breeding stock. Don’t incubate the eggs from the undesirable stock.
In the second year, move the banded rooster with the best/desired traits over to the other clan, rotating to a different homestead or to a different flock on your homestead. This diversifies the genetics.

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