Common Gamefowl Breeding Myths

We roundup most breeding myths that we observed from people we meet. It is common for beginners to believe in such false assumptions. Though it is funny to say even some experienced breeders still have this false notions about breeding.

Hen Contributes More Genes to the Offspring

Many beginners believe this myth, these includes people who says they are about a decade of experience of breeding, at least they thought what they do are called “breeding”. On animals reproduction, including gamefowls, and most reproduction of plants, Parents always passes a random 50% of their genes to the children (offsprings). 

Hen Contributes the Gameness of the Male Offspring. 

This myth is identical to the one above except this one is specific to gameness. As we had mentioned before, the genes is always passed in a 50-50 ratio.

Breeding Them Yourself Saves More Resources

Most gamefowl enthusiasts tends to think that they will save money if they are the ones to produce the chicks and just wait for the chicks until fighting age.

The thought of “the reason why gamefowls is expensive is time” is a usual idea. This idea makes any enthusiasts jumps to the breeding regime without thinking the other resources needed for the whole breeding activity.

With professionals likes business analyst, there is a thing that they call “total cost of ownership” they anticipate and evaluate all the foreseeable cost of the project before they decide if it is good to go or not. To those who want to venture in breeding, we deeply suggest that you do so with the following things. Also the following things will make you assess the pricing of your gamefowl products.

In real sophisticated breeding there are many resources that most beginners not thought about. The things beginners overlooked are .

Maintenance of the Bloodlines

Given the breeder is lucky to have a couple of bloodlines that nicked. After several years without proper maintenance breeding of these bloodline, these bloodlines will eventually be gone. If the breeder then made the proper maintenance breeding of the said bloodlines, after more several years, these bloodlines will require outbreeding to new bloodline before they maybe inbreed again.

 Another thing is the  reserves, bloodlines must have reserve stocks so if ever those that are used are, hopefully not, will be lost due to illness, accident or theft. Those reserves continue to consume resources but not actually used, adding additional expenses to the activity.

Furthermore, breeding must go along with selection. The initially produced broodstock usually don’t pass the screening as a brood material, sometimes you will just get a few with several generations. You are spending resources for future broodstock that you don’t even know if will come. Specially if you are doing intensive inbreeding.

The maintenance of the bloodlines will require such expensive resources that beginners don’t easily foreseen.

Bloodlines Needed

As the sports of cockfighting is evolving to tougher competition. There are also bloodlines, different bloodline, that will be bred for infusion. Such as Whitehackle, Albany or any bloodline that you think will add what the current broodstock lacks in order to stay or get on the top of the sports. Whitehackles and Albany are common to be  infused for purposes of size and gameness, some use them for other purposes.

The thing is you just need them once. What will the breeder gonna do to them? Maintain them? Maybe the breeder won’t even need them for about a decade or so. Fight them? Purebreds aren’t advisable to fight in the big events, particularly these kind of bloodlines, maybe in some low level. So these other bloodlines that you need to infuse will add a huge resources to your expenditures, at the first place acquiring them is expensive.

Facilities

Facilities for broodstocks are often overlooked too or doesn’t thought about at all. The broodstocks along with the reserved materials needed the same facilities. So you are doubling the required facilities that you initially thought of. Furthermore broodstocks needed to be ranged whenever they are not used, adding to the cost of ownership 

Objective’s Prerequisite –

Often beginners are focused to the objectives such as sales, winning percentage, cash prize, or/and maybe title or glory that they forget what must be done to achieve the objectives. In psychology this is called “the money illusion”, where one is daydreaming about what he will do after he get the goal. Acquiring knowledge and skills about breeding is a must before jumping to the breeding activity. The research, the plan and implementation until you get it right adds a good amount of expenses, and it also takes time. It is a tough competition out there, not everyone is lucky enough to get it right the first time.

The above list, most of scenarios, will make the breeding more expensive.

Y Chromosome Makes the 50% of the Chromosomes in Females

Because usually sex-linked traits are discussed in magazines, and of course utilizes sex chromosomes. False assumption get into beginners that y chromosomes makes 50% of chromosomes in females. We had encountered this once, it is funny that a breeder thought that by breeding back the females to the father (the source of the x chromosomes) produce males with all  chromosomes belong to the father

Sex chromosomes is just a pair from the total of 39 pairs

Multiple Time Winner is the Best Brood Cock

Yeah sure it won multiple times so it got good genes in him. Most multi time winner is a multi-crossed bred battlecocks meaning it pocess a good combination of traits. And because it possess combination of traits, you can’t predict (mostly) which trait will be passed to the child at any given time. If he has a perfect combination and ratio of intelligence, speed, power and gameness.

In every single offspring, just two of the above traits will be passed also the ratio will not be perfect as with the father. Even worse if the multi cross battle cock gets paired to a multi cross hen the resulting offspring will be with different combinations and ratio of the perfectly combined and proportioned traits.

This is why multi-cross broodcock often don’t result to higher winning percentage. As you surf more with the breeding section of the site you will get more and more information about breeding and will see a clear picture about breeding principles, methodology and best practices.

Cross bred pair to cross breds is a bad starting point of breeding. It would be just a matter of time that the breeding system will collapse.

Hens are Monogamous even for a Season

Some believe that hens breed with just a certain cock in the yard. If the hen got lose and mated to a cock in the cord area, many had thought that the hen will solely mate with the particular cock, so they just let the hen loose and in their records they put the particular cock as the father. Such action and belief will ruin your breeding record and therefore your breeding program too.

Chickens are not monogamous, males and females, including gamefowls. Chickens do some insurance for the continuity of their breed(change the term breed). For males, it is pretty obvious that they behave to mate with many hens. For hens, they will look to the most dominant cock in the flock and mostly mate with it to father her offspring for more chance of survival but will mate with other cocks as an added insurance that she will be fertilized. So breeding activities should be done in different pens.

Hens wont Lay Eggs Until Mated.

This is very common to beginners. Some would even ask why the hen laid some eggs even not mated yet. When the hen is healthy enough to make eggs it would then make eggs hoping it would be fertilized. So mated or not, as long as the hen is healthy enough it would make and lay eggs. Just like for humans, if in good health and in right age, almost monthly they release eggs wating to be fertilized.

Henhatch are Better than Artificially Hatched

It is a common notion that hen hatch are better than those incubating artificially because of faulty incubators or wrong incubator management. Many had resulted to battery incubating hens instead to maximize a bit the productability. But in fact if quality incubators with right management, artificial incubators outperforms hen hatching, both in quality and productibility.

The Materials must Mate Once a Day

In many beginners they mate their hens once a day as they thought that it is required to do so. Mating once every 3 days will be optimum for the broodcock as well as the hen. If doing artificial insemination it would go down to once every 6 days. A good amount of sperms can survive in the hen for a week and there are also some researches that says sperms can even survive  for two weeks.