Mastering Poultry Breeding: Creating Your Own Strain with Kenny Troiano
In this episode of The Poultry Nerds Podcast, we welcome expert breeder and poultry genetics specialist Kenny Troiano to explore the process of breeding and developing your own strain. If you’ve ever wanted to establish a flock that is uniquely yours—consistent in type, performance, and quality—this episode is a must-listen!
We discuss the fundamentals of selective breeding, linebreeding, culling, and maintaining genetic purity, along with common mistakes breeders make and how to avoid them. Kenny shares his years of experience in helping poultry enthusiasts develop birds that can be passed down for generations. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced breeder, this episode is packed with expert advice to help you take your flock to the next level.
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Carey: 0:00
So today we have been able to get probably one of the most knowledgeable breeders there is out there. We've got Kenny Troiano, did I say that right? Troiano, close enough. I'm close. Okay. So we've got him here today and we're going to talk about different types of breeding. And how all that stuff works. If you don't mind, tell everybody how they can get in touch with you and all that good stuff.
Kenny: 0:30
I'm the owner and founder of The Breeders Academy. And so I teach Breeders from all over the world, how to breed, how to create strains, how to improve their strains, how to maintain them. You can get ahold of me at www.breedersacademy.com. If you wanna message me and ask me about, ask me a little more about the website and everything you can go to my email address breedersacademy@gmail.com. So that's how you get ahold of me. Alright, cool.
Jennifer: 0:59
But, and you have your own podcast every Monday, right?
Kenny: 1:02
Yeah, actually the podcast itself is on Monday, and then we do a live show on Fridays. And they're both called Bread to Perfection with my co host, Frank Bradley and my wife, Nancy.
Jennifer: 1:14
Yeah. How is Nancy? She was in a boot, wasn't she?
Kenny: 1:17
Oh, that was last year. That was maybe, actually that was like a year and a half ago. She what'd she do? She hurt, she did. She hurt her her leg and she ended up in a boot for a few months. That was a horrible time. Yeah. But she's a major part of the show. She has always been a part of the show because Frank and I, We tend to, we try to simplify as much as possible, and we tend to miss some things because, the curse of knowledge, we think that everybody knows where we're at, what we're talking about, what we're trying to get across, and then Nancy's there to always put us in our place, make sure we're getting the message out properly, ask the questions that the, she thinks the followers would want to know, so she's vital to our show. I don't think we could do it without her. She
Jennifer: 1:58
keeps you grounded. She does. I
Kenny: 2:00
mean,
Carey: 2:00
I've listened to several episodes and my brain would just start to go. And then she would ask the question that I was thinking and I was like, yes.
Jennifer: 2:10
And then Kenny comes in there and he's you're messing up my outline. Quit boxing all around on my outline.
Kenny: 2:17
Yeah, she tends to jump in and distract me in just a way that, so I lose my train of thought, but she's valuable and we need her and it all works out,
Jennifer: 2:25
yep. It's the benefit of being married for a long time, right? 43
Kenny: 2:29
years.
Jennifer: 2:30
43?
Kenny: 2:31
42, but we've been together for 43.
Carey: 2:34
Yeah.
Jennifer: 2:34
Awesome.
Carey: 2:35
Congratulations. Yes. Appreciate that. People, my wife and I just celebrated our 20th. And people, it's sad that it blew their mind, but a lot of people, they don't know people that have been together that long.
Kenny: 2:49
Yeah, I see that a lot, but pretty much everybody in my family and her family has pretty much stayed together. It's not something we even think about, so it's a, no, it's not hard. It's just, you got to compromise and get along and understand each other and talk, talk, we have no problem doing that. I'm Italian. I can talk all day,
Jennifer: 3:10
to pick your brain and expose people to some breeding methods, some myths and some good points and just different vocabulary.
Kenny: 3:20
Great.
Jennifer: 3:21
All right. So where do you have a preference on where to start? You want to start with all the myths we see out there, or do you want to start with definitions?
Kenny: 3:28
Whatever questions you think your followers need to know. Just go wherever you want to go. Absolutely.
Jennifer: 3:35
Can you breed a son to its mother?
Kenny: 3:38
Absolutely. There's a number of ways to do that, too, and there's a number of reasons to do that. For instance, like if you want to, let's say you have a hen that you bred to another cock, they're not related, so you're producing hybrids, but you want to make a family out of that. And to get more, let's say they, they produce offspring, but the offspring are not quite better than the parents. So you would breed the son back to a mother to get more from the mother. And you would keep doing that until you get offspring that are better than the parents so you can move forward. And another reason would be in a line bringing situation where you're trying to clone that mother. So you'd be bringing not only to her son, but to her grandson and great grandson. So a lot of people are afraid of inbreeding and line breeding and they go towards what we call in and inbreeding, breeding to aunts and nephews and, uncles to nieces and cousin to cousin, I can't talk all of a sudden, cousin to cousin, because they're afraid of the inbreeding, afraid to create deleterious genes and detrimental defects. And they're afraid of what it's going to mean. They're afraid they're going to get too close and have problems. And to me, I want to get as homozygous as I can. I want to. Get them as close as I can and then weed out those problems as I go. But no I try to breathe as close as I can to get that homozygous state.
Jennifer: 5:03
How many generations do you think you can go before you start running into problems?
Kenny: 5:08
It depends on the it depends on the birds you're starting with. Some can take it a little bit longer. Some have issues that you're going to have to deal with. See, the one thing that we talk about, like in the Breers Academy, is that how do I want to say this? That you don't want to line breed something that's not ready to be line bred. Because not every bird should be line bred. Cause the whole idea is to clone that bird. And so there's a cleanup process we use in the founders program that actually gets them to a point where you can start line breeding them. And as far as backcrossing, I only want to breed to the parent until I get offsprings are better than the offspring. Better than the parent. So if I'm breeding that close back to the parent and I start seeing problems, that's when I stop. Because I, I have no problem pushing them to the limit to see how far they'll go. Once I hit that limit, I discard that. generation, and I go back one, and then I move on from there.
Jennifer: 6:08
So what if just Nancy down the road goes to Tractor Supply, buys a bucket full of chicks, and throws them out in her backyard, and just lets them multiply? How many years can she do that, you think, before there'd be a problem?
Kenny: 6:22
Along, you can go a long time that way.
Jennifer: 6:24
Like a whole lifetime?
Kenny: 6:26
The thing is if you're putting a lot of birds together and you're basically flock mating them and you have a number of roosters being bred to a number of hens, the chances of them getting too close to where they're starting to see issues would be longer than you'd ever know. Okay? You just wouldn't get there. Because there's so much genetic diversity. The problem is you want to, when you're breeding or inbreeding or line breeding or breeding close, like a close family. The idea is to get close, to get them homozygous, but knowing when to stop is the important part, okay? You'll get there sooner that way than you would just breeding crosses and mixed birds and things like that,
Jennifer: 7:04
so the people that just want to hatch because they're addicted to hatching and just like all the pretty egg killers and the pretty birds in their yard, they don't really have to worry about depression and defects.
Kenny: 7:15
The only time they'd have to worry about that is if they're Using or working from a small number of birds. Then you start to deal with what they call genetic drift. That's when it gets tight, and then it goes in a direction. And it's, sometimes that direction works in your favor, and sometimes it doesn't. If you're dealing with a lot of birds, then I would never worry about it. I really wouldn't.
Jennifer: 7:38
Can you define genetic drift for me? Yeah,
Kenny: 7:41
when you have, let's say you have a flock of birds, or like my strain, my Maximus line. And all of a sudden a disease or something comes in and wipes out a good number of them. And I'm only left with a small, let's say a couple pairs or maybe a cock and a couple of hens from that whole flock that whole strain that forced me to go in a direction that I either didn't want to go or where it's going to, where it benefits me. So what happens is you take, you're taking genes from a larger family. Condensing them into a few birds and that's going to change the direction where they'll go now rather than where they were going to go. That's basically genetic drift. It's that change of direction due to a low number of birds from a larger flock. If I go to Kerry's farm and I buy a trio for him or a pair. Now, if I am able to get a really good pair from him, then I've got, and I got a really good sample of his flock, then I'm going to go in a really good direction. I'm going to create. A great strain. I could probably, I have the opportunity to make something better than even what Kerry has on this farm because he's dealing with a larger number of birds. But if Kerry sends me a couple of birds that are basically crap, excuse my language, then I'm going to go in a really poor direction no matter what I do because of genetic drift. Yeah it's taken birds from a larger flock, a small sample, and then going in a, and then starting from there and going in a, possibly in a different direction. It either works for you or against you, depending on what you're using and your skill as a breeder.
Jennifer: 9:17
Interesting.
Carey: 9:18
The important thing is a really solid foundation flock, like where you're starting. That's what I'm hearing is the most important thing about keeping that clean and getting towards that homozygous bird quicker, if you will, is starting out with a really good quality set of birds.
Kenny: 9:42
Starting with good seed fowl is priority, but if you don't know how to select them and breed them. and create a strain from that and then it doesn't matter. Yeah. So it's, there's, it's starting with the right birds, but having the knowledge to know what to do with them after that. Because even from the best birds, they're going to show variation. They're going to show some genetic diversity. And if you don't understand what to do about that or recognize it, you're not gonna be able to create a strain.
Carey: 10:11
Got it. And that makes
Kenny: 10:13
sense.
Jennifer: 10:15
What about sibling mating? What's your thoughts on that?
Kenny: 10:17
Sure. Yeah. That's a great way to fixate the line, lock in the genes, clean them up. It's a, we don't think of it as a method. We think of it as a tool. It's a great tool. We, it's one of the methods. We have three phases of the Founders Program, six stages, and that's one of them. That's one of the stages and we use that actually in the cleanup process.
Jennifer: 10:41
It's a good way to find recessives, right?
Kenny: 10:44
It's a good here's what happens is when you breed two birds together that are brother and sister, you're going to expose the good, the bad, and the ugly. Okay? You're going to get good ones. You're going to get some mediocre and you're going to get some real bad ones. That doesn't mean anything. It's doing its job. That's what you want to see. And if you're hatching as many chicks you can manage and afford from that. Then you're going to have a good selection and you can move forward with what the ones we call our standouts, you, if you've done a coaching call, what you've done, listen to enough of our shows, we talk about that a lot is you usually we them down to the top 10%. And then from there you pick the standouts and you move forward with that. Yeah, you're going to get some of the Bad recessive, not all recessives are bad, but you're going to get some bad recessive. You're going to get some deleterious genes. You're going to get some detrimental defects. You're going to get issues that you want to make sure you weed out. The one thing I would say, if you're thinking about breeding from the sister is to make sure that the brother and sister are good representatives of their breed. That's important because if they have faults, you're going to perpetuate the faults. So they got to be as good as they can be, otherwise I wouldn't breed them. You don't want to breed it, inbreed everything. You want to inbreed the good ones, so you can clean them up and move forward with them.
Jennifer: 11:58
Yeah, I think that's something that we forget is that while we're picking out all the good traits that we want to Passed down that we also have to look at their faults because those are going to go to we tend to look at the positive And not always think about the negatives.
Kenny: 12:17
The thing is even from the best birds. You're always breeding to The standouts and they're always, no matter how good they are, they're going to show some variation and you just got to understand which are good and which are bad, which you want to exaggerate and what you want to call out. You know what I mean? So yeah, it's just name of the game, actually.
Jennifer: 12:37
Is clan mating and spiral mating the same thing?
Kenny: 12:40
It's basically, yeah, it is the same thing, just two names for the same brain program. That's an interesting one, which I think is ingenious if used properly. A lot of people want to use it for the wrong reasons. They want to use it to create a strain or to improve a strain. I think it's a great maintenance program. Because, What you're basically doing is you have at least three clans. You can have more, but you have to have at least three, three clans and Basically is what you're okay What you're doing is you have the hens from each clan which stay in those clans and then all the offspring from them stay in Those clans as well and you're moving your best roosters over one clan each generation It's a great way to maintain genetic diversity, but only in a family that's well established and don't have any issues And they're already repeating themselves, they're uniform, consistent, they have repeatability, predictability, and you're not getting any surprises. If you're doing it to create a strain, it's the worst thing you can do, because you're, you just never get there. Because you're actually, you're creating more genetic diversity, all you're doing is you're trying to manage the variation the best you can. But what's happening is how do I want to say this? Oh, I lost my train of thought. Okay, it's all about the numbers with clan mating. So let's say you want 12 hens per clan. You have your main roosters, you're moving from clan to clan. You keep some spare roosters on the side just in case. The only way you're improving them is by culling. Because you have to keep the numbers. So you're keeping your best 10 or 12 hands per clan, and then you're culling out the worst ones. You don't make the progress you think you're going to make from that. It's not very fast. So I always tell people, if you're going to do a clan mating system, that's fine with an established family, but you want to keep another line on the side for your improvement program, and then you move your best bird from your improvement program into the clan mating system, and that'll help improve that. So a clan mating system has its place. It is ingenious for what it does. But it's terrible for creating a strain or improving a strain. It's a great maintenance program.
Jennifer: 14:58
I can see that because you're keeping all the hens and, but you're really only keeping one male from each pen.
Kenny: 15:05
And that male is being rotated from pen to pen each year. Okay. And you definitely don't want to do it with a mixed flock. I think you're going to create a strain. You want to have a, you want to have a family. You want to have, you want to establish family. We tell people in the found, in the Breers Academy, when you're using the Founders Program, that once you get to stage six, You want to there is a rotational program in that, and then you'll start over. You can also keep the clan mating family on the side where you can keep a lot of extra birds. Okay. You have your best birds for your improvement program. Use a clan mating as a maintenance program. And then all your production comes from that program, not the improvement program. That makes sense. Yeah,
Jennifer: 15:51
it just means more chicken math and more pins is what it means.
Kenny: 15:54
More pens. A lot of chickens live in for someone. Do you really want to do that? Are you really up to doing that? You're really able to maintain that many chickens, but it's a great, it is a great method, but a lot of people don't understand it and they use it for the wrong reasons. They think it's the beginning, middle and end of a brain program. Of maintaining your strength. A lot of people think of line breeding the same way. They think of it as its sole thing. Like it is a breeding program. Like it's middle, it's like the beginning middle end of a breeding program. That's just the cloning process. That's one method of a breeding program. A great breeding program has multiple methods that represent the whole program. If you think an inbreeding is a breeding program, no. You think line breeding is a breeding program? It is not. Clan mating? No. It's not a brain program. It's a method for maintaining your strength. But it's, it will not, it's like we say, you look at selection, that's a, you select a progressive strain, you cull to maintain it. That's the only way you can maintain a clan mating system is through culling the numbers, because you have to maintain the numbers. When you have that many numbers, some of those birds aren't going to be as good as others. How are you going to improve a family when there's birds that are not as good as others in the same clan? When you look at the Founders Program, we're only breeding to the standouts. It's the standouts that progress the family, not the whole flock. It's like when you breed a bunch of birds and you're trying to create a family, you don't breed to all of them. You breed to the best ones. And that's usually a few of them. At a time.
Jennifer: 17:32
Yep.
Kenny: 17:33
Yeah.
Jennifer: 17:35
What about double mating? Can you explain that?
Kenny: 17:39
Double mating is a nightmare. I don't agree with it. I don't like it. I know why some people use it for people who show birds that are all about the color and trying to match. their birds to the standard, it's a necessity. I get it. But when you're trying to create a family or improve a family, it's the worst method you could ever use. Matter of fact, if you're following the standard of perfection, which I have a bunch of them here and you're trying to make it in the shows, you can't help but double mate because most of those breeds, to maintain the colors that are, they're listing in these, in the standard, have to be double mated. They just do. Not very many of them can be bred true just by breeding the cock to the hen. They all have to have a cock's line, a stag line, a hen's line, a pullet line to get the colors they want. And you have to understand that breed. You have to understand your fowl so that you know which cock and hen to breed together to get the color you want. Is
Jennifer: 18:33
it like a pattern thing?
Kenny: 18:35
It's not exactly a pattern thing. It's more like some okay. Here's a good example. This happened to us. We I raised American games for the most part But we were raising we wanted to raise Welsumer because they have there's a certain, the color about them There are certain things that kind of represent it What the kind of things I like that the same things I see in American games when it comes to color that party color and I finally got some birds and hands were a beautiful partridge color. The Cox had nice black breasts with the red hackle and everything. They're beautiful. Birds had good station, good carriage, good body, good confirmation, good type. And then after a few years, I start knowing the notice. The coloring was getting away from me. And the hens were losing the partridge color and going foxy on me. And I tried like hell to get that color back because the cocks were looking really good. And I was culling all the cocks that were showing mottling in the breasts. I finally talked to a friend of mine who raises them, he said they had to be double mated because it's the hen, the cocks with the mottling in the breasts which gives you the proper hens. And when I found out that it had to be double mated to maintain that color, I just got rid of the whole bunch. I was not going to do that. That was not something I was going to deal with. I only know a handful of people that can do double mating properly, and they are really good at it. Jack Dodd, he's a old English game, Bantam breeder. He really understands it like nobody I know. And some people, they just struggle with it. And this was, according to Brian Reeder, this was the big con, is that a lot of breeders knew that's what had to happen with some of these breeds, and they did it on purpose because they knew which hens had to be bred to which cocks to get the color they want, and they were winning all the shows. Yeah. Okay? It's something that should've never started, but now it's there and there's nothing you can do about it. Red pile's one of those. It's a, if it's a blood pile, they breed true, but a normal red pile is the, it's from breeding a dominant white to a light red cock. And you get that pile color in the cocks and you get white hens with some salmon in the breasts. Okay unless you're holding on to some reds on the side and some whites on the side to manage that color, eventually the hens are going to lose that salmon in the breasts and even the cocks are going to get lighter and lighter. So you have to double mate them every now and then to bring the color back. To me, that's just a nightmare. I won't do it. I'm sorry.
Jennifer: 21:15
I'm no expert on the blue black splash, but would that be A way of double mating where they have to keep putting the black back in to keep the blue true I don't fully understand blue. I don't
Kenny: 21:25
know that breed that and i'd probably have to refer to brian reader on that one Matter of fact, there's some colors. I know american games like the back of my hand for the most part A lot of the domestic chickens. They are difficult They're complicated, and Brian has a great handle on that, and him and I are, he's working with me on that, which is helping, and I'm getting a handle on some of them, but I don't know them all, if that's what they're doing to maintain the color, it sounds like double mating to me.
Jennifer: 21:51
Okay, so back to the Wellsummers, because everybody likes the Wellsummers for those dark eggs. To keep the hens, the partridge color, they have to basically create this pen over here to get the pretty girls. And then to keep the boys how they're supposed to look, they have another pen over here just to breed boys out of. But you never really mix the two.
Kenny: 22:15
It's not so much that, it's knowing what colors that are produced produce the other color. Like I was saying, I had no problem getting the black breast, black breasted summers that I wanted and got them going good. I was losing the hens and he told me to get the hens right. I needed to breed them to a cock with modeling in the breast. The red modeling they show sometimes, which I thought was ugly. And that he said, that will give you the partridge in the hens. So yeah. It's not about keeping a pen of this and a pen of that. It's just knowing what's produced is that this color, who actually looks ugly, doesn't represent, represents his breed, bred to the right one. We'll give you the color and the cocks that you want, you know what I'm saying? It's just a, it's a game and it's a magic trick that you use to get the cocks. And there's a magic trick that you get to get the hands, but you can't bring them together. I think you've got the right
Carey: 23:12
colors. I think it's knowing which defect offsets which to create the desired outcome. That's probably the biggest challenge in all of that.
Kenny: 23:24
That's a good way. Look at that. Actually. Yeah, I would call all those birds, but then I'd be shooting myself in the foot. Yeah.
Carey: 23:31
You'd call them all and then you'd be like, that's what I did too. I needed that bird. Cause that would offset this, which would give me that. And then you're back to either scrapping the project or trying to figure out how to get those again. Yeah. That's a nightmare.
Kenny: 23:50
Sounds like one to me. I won't go that direction. I don't really teach it. I don't think you can. How do you, how can you create a strain that can't repeat itself? How can you create a strain that's uniform, that's not uniform, consistent, and repeatable? To me that's not a strain. That's not a pure family. To me the definition of a pure family is one that is uniform, consistent, repeat, it repeats itself, and it's predictable. You don't have that, you don't have a pure family. How are you going to get that with a family you have to double mate? That's just my opinion. I'm not fond of it. You know what I mean? I get it. Okay,
Jennifer: 24:23
so what about single mating?
Kenny: 24:26
Single mating I think is important when you're creating a strain because you need to know who the parents are. Okay, group mating is great for just producing a lot of birds. That's what we do when we're clan mating. Okay, but when we want to know who exactly who is the mother and father of that particular Offspring and I want to know that for every bird on my farm, then I will single mate everything I can move the cock around but as long as I'm keeping records of who he's bred to And I know exactly who the mother and father is of every egg on that in those boxes, then I'm good to go You know, you
Jennifer: 24:59
move the male around
Kenny: 25:00
If I need to, depending on my brain program and depending on my lines, like I have three lines of the Max's line and I've got three lines of the black pearls, and then I've got a couple of the single rail. So those are all specialized families. It's a program I use the founder's program. But they're all single made it. Yeah.
Carey: 25:20
See, that's why I think trap nest should be a more common thing than what it is. Because if you put one rooster in to a pen with a few different hens, you obviously know who the father is. And if you have trap nest, you'll know who the mom is because you take the egg out and label it with whatever the leg bands are. You're good.
Kenny: 25:43
It's true, but it doesn't come. It doesn't go without any problems. I've,
Carey: 25:48
I've used them. I've used other
Kenny: 25:49
people, broken eggs, stressed out hens and you don't get out there in time. They die because of the heat. It's a mess. So although it's a good way to do it, if you can manage it and you're good about getting out there often to collect the eggs and mark them and stuff, and you're using incubator fine, but then you got to find a way to separate them inside the incubator too. So there's issues with it.
Carey: 26:10
There's a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah, but it's an option. Yeah, pros and cons to everything. Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer: 26:18
Yep.
Carey: 26:18
So tell me this with lime breeding specifically, if you do it correctly, How many generations can you get out of that? Again,
Kenny: 26:29
it depends on the quality of the birds that you're line breeding. That's why we have a cleanup process in the Founders Program, because it does get you to a point where you have birds that are what we call worthy of cloning. And that's the key. Do they represent their breed? Are they free of defects? Are they healthy? Do they have the right type confirmation color? So if they're, if they have everything you're looking for, and they're a good quality bird, you can go pretty far. I'll push them as far as I can. Usually I tell people try to get them to 7, 8 or 15, 16. That's your goal. Now every now and then you might come short of that. You might get to three quarter. But if you can go even further than that, great. Because again, I want to get them as close as I can. As soon as I run into problems and every bird is different, you never know what that's going to be. That's when I stop. I call those birds, go back one generation, then I move forward. So it's not something, there's no set line. Every bird is different. Some can go farther, some can't. Clean them up properly and go pretty far.
Carey: 27:28
All right, I have one last question. And this is a question that I see so much and it just makes me cringe. And, but I want your opinion on when should or how often, if at all, Should you bring new blood into a program?
Kenny: 27:50
I want to hear what Jennifer says first, after the way she just reacted.
Jennifer: 27:55
The only reason I think you need new blood is if you're looking for a gene that doesn't exist, that you have to bring in physically. Other than that, you should be able to just do what you need to do with what you have.
Carey: 28:10
I was going to say, if you're looking for that defect that you accidentally culled, that, that should be the only time you should even consider that because, I would think, and I may be wrong, but I would think it'd be just like starting all over.
Kenny: 28:25
You are starting over. Okay. If you have an established family, I want to say this with a caveat. I would never add outside blood. Take a chance of screwing them up. Okay. If I thought I needed to do something like they're lacking something or just not getting there for some reason, I would never mess with the foundation line. I would create a subline and do all my experimentation with that line. That line never touches the other line. So I picked the best bird I can out of my foundation, breed it to this new bird, create a whole separate line using the Founders Program. That's the way I would do it. Using the Founders Program, create a whole separate line. See where that goes. And just keep breeding them, generate generation after generation and see if they start showing things, if they start going in a bad direction, they start getting sick, they start showing defects, whatever it is. And you can take the chance eventually to bring that line into the other one. I don't recommend that though. A lot of times what happens is that subline usually doesn't pan out like you thought it would. And if it does, and it's better than the foundation, then that becomes your new line and you get rid of the found, the. The other foundation that becomes your new foundation. Now, the only time I would even think about breed, breeding hybrids or adding new blood is in the very beginning when you're trying to either obtain your seed foul or you're trying to create your seed foul. Now in the Breeders Academy, we have a program called a gene chopping program, basically. And it's not exactly what it sounds like, but it's it does bring in different birds from different places to acquire different genes. But there's a process to it. Okay. It's not a matter of because see what you have to do is you have to manage those genes as you go, because if you don't manage them, you're going to lose them as you go, because every time you had new blood, it changes them. But I can tell you one thing. If you had new blood, even if it's better than your birds into your foundation line, It's not going to improve them, it's just going to change them, and you have a chance of bringing in genes that you didn't want, hidden recessives, deleterious genes, detrimental defects. And a lot of people think that they can take a bird and breed it into their line to refresh. You're not refreshing anything, you're changing them, forever. 16th infusion method. So what happens, because what they think they're doing is they're bringing in a bird to your family, you breed it in, and then you breed your birds into the offspring, each generation, until you feel like you only have one eighth of it, or something like that. It doesn't work like that. Genes don't work like that. And if you look at the way meiosis works, when you bring in new blood into a family, in the cock and hens chromosomes, Combine and they wrap around each other and they will do two divisions. But when they separate in the first division, they actually leave parts of each other on each other. They swap parts. Okay. Then they go through recombination and then they divide again. into four separate gametes, which makes them unique. So now you've got unpredictability. You don't have repeatability. You've lost uniformity and consistency. So you've changed the family. Now you're dealing with hybrids and you're basically starting all over. Now, a lot of times when you bring birds that even match them and have the same monogenic traits like dominant recessive, you can almost get away with it because they're just genes. But what about all the polygenic genes? All the polygenic traits, now you've got multiple genes you're dealing with. And whenever you change polygenics, when you add new blood, you change them. Because the only way to improve polygenics is from an established family, inbred family. And you breed to the highest intensity over many generations to actually improve that polygenic trait. So when you add new blood, you disrupted the gene pool, the genomes of those birds, and now it's all over the place. And now you're starting completely over. And it's the polygenic traits that are more important than even the monogenic traits. Because polygenic traits are your form and function traits, okay? And those don't happen overnight. It takes many generations to, to improve them, intensify them and get into a point when they're repeatable. Yeah, it's real important.
Jennifer: 32:52
That was a big answer,
Carey: 32:54
man. I just, I love it. That was the absolute best explanation of don't do it because, a lot of people say don't do it and they can't accept. Because it's going to you're starting over. It's going to mess up. That was an in depth explanation as to why and it's very important. So that was very awesome. I appreciate that.
Kenny: 33:20
Yeah, I hear all the time. They think they can bring in new blood to infuse them and improve on them. Refresh them. And he's just from, meiosis alone, we see it doesn't work. Just the nature of polygenic traits, we know it doesn't work. Don't want to change them, because now you're starting over. The fact that they're all unique now. They're all different. You gotta start, you gotta figure out the few that are good, hopefully, and then create a whole new family from that. And I've had so many members come up to me and say, this is a family from my great grandfather, okay? And I only infuse new blood every five years. I go, they're not the family of your grandfather anymore. They've changed quite a bit. Trust me, I don't care how much they look like that family. They're not the same thing, at all.
Jennifer: 34:07
Alright, I have one last question, since he got his. So what about culling? Can you be a breeder and not cull?
Kenny: 34:16
It's impossible to breed, create a strain, improve a strain without culling. It's just something you gotta get used to. If you're not willing to cull and cull hard, and sometimes it can mean a lot of birds, then you're just not ready to be what I would call a breeder. Because if you're just putting birds together, producing offspring, to me that's not breeding. That's just Mass production, that's a completely different thing. So I know some people are just so it's so hard for them to, and I get it. I don't want to call birds. It's the worst. I hate it. I'll put the, I'll put it off. Sometimes I'll stick them in another pen and I'll keep feeding them for two weeks before I finally call them sometimes, because I don't like it either. It's the best thing you can do for the family. Overall. The nice thing about us with chickens, we can eat our coals. Dogs can't. I know they have a bigger issue with it, things like that. But no, you gotta be willing to call and you gotta be willing to call hard. And and any defects that are expressed, if you're bringing to them, if you're tolerating them, you're going to perpetuate them. It's just going to make it worse. And boy recessive, they can sure add up. They can sure. It can duplicate and to the point when all your whole family has that same defect. I've went on people's farms and they said, Hey, can you help me select my brood fowl and set up my brood pens? Sure. I'll come over. It's what I do for my members sometimes. And I go over there and I'm looking down, I'm talking to him. I see a bird with. Duck foot. I'm like, oh wow. Okay walk over here. I see a hen walk by me Oh, she has duck foot both toes. I go. I told him to stop talking. Let's just walk around Let me look at your birds. I could not find a bird on this farm that didn't have duck foot
Jennifer: 35:52
How
Kenny: 35:55
do you fix a family when you can't find at least one bird that doesn't have duck foot? You have to bring in outside blood to do it now. We're going to change them Yeah, but it's also important to understand that there's a difference between a monogenic trait a monogenic defect versus a polygenic trait, or polygenic defect. Now if I have a monogenic defect, Like a recessive trait, let's say duck foot would be a good one. Then I'm just going to, if I can I'm going to call it and just not deal with it and breed to the ones that don't have it now, if I have a polygenic defect let's say squirrel tail crooked breastbone. Now I don't like it. But I'm going to try to find the birds that have the best tail and the best breastbone. But if I don't have it, I can, I have some that do have it, but some are better than others, then by bringing to the highest intensity, I can improve that over time to the point where I don't see the duck, the squirrel tail or the crooked breastbone. So understanding which Defects are detrimental and which are just, problems I have to work with is the difference because some people, they look at them as the same thing and they're not, so it's,
Jennifer: 37:08
and sometimes it works to your benefit to keep your coals set aside for just a little while now, I have a larger farm and so as I'm sorting out the younger males, I look at them and I just throw them out in the yard. And just go eat bugs, make sure your bones are good and solid, so when I make bone broth later, you taste good, and, I have these big giant birds and it takes months and months for them to mature, and I pulled up to the barn, I don't know, maybe about three weeks ago. And I'm looking at this bird and he had been out running free for, I'm going to say, four months or more, and I'm just looking at him and looking at him, and dang it if I didn't put him back in the breeder pen, I didn't
Kenny: 37:50
give up.
Jennifer: 37:51
I was like, you have exactly what I was looking for.
Kenny: 37:54
That hurts. Yeah. A beat. And I look at my birds so closely, when I go from pen to pen feeding them, I take the time. I don't just throw feed and walk by. I look at that bird for a while and I was like, why do I need to keep you? Show me why I should keep you, and I'm looking for problems because I do not want to feed birds that are, I'm not going to breed to, and I'll be out there and Nancy will walk up to me and she'll start talking to me. She looks down, hey, why is that bird out duck toe? What? I've been feeding this thing for months and you're telling me, no oh my God, that makes you think, oh my God, what else am I missing out here? You know what I mean? Like you said, sometimes I'll keep birds. Like I have a bunch of hens out there that I'm seeing issues with, could be color. It's mostly color out there right now. And I'll mark them and I'll keep them come getting eggs from them. So when they're done laying eggs, then I'll go ahead and call them. So I'll hold onto them until the end of that, until they're done doing that, but roosters, if I see a fault or I see a defect, I'll call them. I see any sick birds. I'll call them as fast as I can. I don't vaccinate. I don't medicate. I don't use, any aids. I don't supplement them. I don't do anything if they can't live on my farm. I don't want them. They're not meant to be here. I give them the best feed. I can. I've had a couple of nutritionists. Look at what I feed them. We worked out of because what I want them to do is go to the different feed stores and say, okay, this is what's available. A lot of people can't go and have their feed made by a manufacturer or mill. By what's on the shelf, what can I put together in its proportions to develop a feed that works great? And I've been using this feed for a long time. So anybody I've given it to it's worked for them and so I've been doing that so I don't do anything extra if they Can't survive on my farm with the feed I'm giving them. They're not meant to be here. That talk about strict calling That's how strict I am. You come down sick. You're gone
Jennifer: 39:47
Preach into the choir here, so he calls me ruthless because I just look at him sideways and you gotta go.
Kenny: 39:54
No, I think that's important. I think it's important not to tolerate anything,
Jennifer: 39:58
because epigenetics
Kenny: 40:00
is a funny thing. It works in your favor and sometimes it can work against you. And the environment will allow some genes to be expressed. They weren't expressed on another farm. And if you select it to the, like I said, a lot of them are polygenic. select to the highest intensity for that trait, then I'm going to make that trait a permanent feature of the, of that family. Okay. But I have to be careful what I'm allowing to be expressed. So another way to look at it is if I took birds and send it over to Carrie. I know he's like back east somewhere he's going to get different traits out of my birds that I never saw here because of the difference in environment. The way he feeds them, the way he, the environment in general, the weather his farm management can have an issue on it. That's going to allow certain traits to be expressed that I wasn't seen here. The histone modifications, the DNA methylation, they all take effect. One works like a knob. One works as a switch, which means it's going to either change the intent intensity of that trait, or it's just going to either block it or allow it to Show that wasn't showed before. So yeah, those are really important and feed feeds a big issue with that too, But if they're not meant to be here, I won't tolerate it. They're gone
Jennifer: 41:18
Mm hmm. We have greatly enjoyed our conversation.
Kenny: 41:22
Yes, we really have awesome Yeah, anytime. Let me know.
Jennifer: 41:26
Yes, you're welcome back anytime you want to
Kenny: 41:28
thank you. Yeah, no problem
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