If you truly want to get as far ahead of the game as possible…your best bet is to save your money, find a breeder that has a family of birds that best fit the standard of their type, and only from a breeder that will tell you and has enough lineage of birds on their yard to show you. The main aspect that can hurt you is not knowing what faults are in that family. If you want a particular color that you can’t get a trustable breeder close by, then it may be that you just need to start with as good of fowl as you can of the variety you want.

Truly, you’re going to run them through the founders program and mold them yourself, but when having the option to start with superior fowl, I feel you should always choose the later.

You can be looking at one singular family, but if they aren’t truly locked in for their traits or if they are true to their type, you can see superior or non superior fowl. Don’t think of this as finding fowl that show some of what you are looking for, but think of it rather as finding fowl that overall are far superior.

It is important that you start by obtaining/buying the best seed fowl to start with. Yes you may only use them one time, but if you were to correctly breed and manage from on after that first pair, you will have a life time of birds. Once you have birds, you wish you only had good birds. The key is, again, start with as superior of birds as you can.

Yes you only need 1rooster and 1hen to begin, but if it were me-restarting all over with no fowl- once I knew what variety (color, etc.) and located the breeder and family of fowl I wanted, I would actually spend $2000 to buy 1 brood cock and 1 broodhen that are perfect, and then I would acquire as many pullets and stags as you can from that exact family, further more-from that exact line. Moving birds from one yard to another, no matter if you’re down the road or across the country, the birds will change over time, sometimes they will have genetic triggers or certain ones may show signs of weak immune system to your area. Just don’t throw in the towel. Your goal should be to find your 1 perfect cock and 1 perfect hen to start with. If you get lucky enough to be able to start more less right away into breeding your 1broodcock and 1 broodhen great. Your stags and pullets are your protection plan. I want to be clear though, for $2000 make it worth it. Look on their entire yard multiple times. Your biggest tool when doing this is looking for defects. You will find defects on their yard, maybe one…probably more. If you find someone with 1-2 strains and they never add blood, and their fowl shows few defects at all, and they are the type and variety you are looking for…$2000 just saved you a lifetime. It may seem like I’m crazy, but you would never regret starting your seedfowl from superior fowl. They need to be the best bird of their family. You should pretty much be talking the breeder out of his own broodfowl…breeders will practically give their culls and defects away once they are getting down to what they want for themselves, don’t be the one that pays hard earned money and waste your time starting with any defects or culls.

I wish the best of luck to you and your fowl future! Would love to know what type/variety you are interested most if you had to have just 1.