How to Breed Chickens: Breeding Basics

How to Breed Chickens: Breeding Basics
by Alexa Lehr | The Pioneer Chicks | April 1, 2025
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Breeding chickens on the homestead is a great way to increase the self-sufficiency of your flock. You won’t need to purchase new chickens if you can hatch chicks that have been bred from your own flock. A flock that consists of at least one rooster and several hens will naturally breed. However, intentional breeding can benefit the homestead flock by increasing desirable traits, decreasing un-desirable traits, and improving flock health/vigor. If you focus on a specific breed, you can even help preserve heritage or rare chicken breeds that are valuable assets to the homestead. In this guide, I will cover the basics that you need to know if you plan to intentionally breed your homestead flock!

What’s Needed for Breeding Chickens?

I like to narrow poultry breeding into two categories: backyard breeding and intentional breeding. Backyard breeding happens naturally in a flock that consists of at least one rooster and several hens. There is no intervention, planning, or special care taken to organize the breeding. While this kind of breeding can still produce birds for your flock, it can also lead to poor inbreeding if left un-checked.

Intentional breeding is when you are breeding your birds for a specific standard. Whether it be your own set of standards (good homestead egg production, natural foragers, etc..) or a breed standard as set by the American Poultry Association. You can get as serious as you want with intentional breeding. It can be as simple as careful linebreeding with the intention of simply improving your own flock. Or it can be taken as far as tracking bloodlines, pairing specific genes, and strict culling for undesirable traits.

No matter where your chicken breeding adventure takes you, you will need a few basic ‘supplies’ to get started:

• a breeding flock
• a breeding coop or breeding pens
• an incubator or broody box
• a breeding plan

When to Breed Chickens:

A rooster will mate with his hens all year-round. However, just because a cock mated with a hen does not guarantee the fertility or hatchability of the eggs the hen lays (more on that later). If your breeding birds are not kept in a controlled environment (climate controlled) then you will want to plan your breeding schedule around the natural breeding time for birds.

Spring is a natural time when chickens become more sexually active. Cocks will pursue hens more frequently and the hens will start laying more reliably as the daylight hours lengthen. Additionally, spring is a natural time for hens to want to brood and raise chicks. The warmer weather is ideal for raising chicks without being too hot, which can cause disease and parasites to proliferate too quickly for young chicks to build immunity.

Spring is when you will more than likely see an increase in fertility rates of eggs laid by hens. Good fertility and hatchability may continue well into the summer months depending on where you live.

The Breeding Flock

Let’s start by discussing the breeding flock. A breeding flock consists of a main breeding cock (rooster) and several breeding hens. The number of hens in your breeding flock should be dependent on your cock. A cock that is active, which is characteristic of light-breed cocks, can handle a flock of 8-12 hens. A cock that is less active, such as cocks of heavier chicken breeds, may only be able to effectively cover 4-7 hens.

Maintaining a properly balanced breeding flock can increase the fertility rate of your flock. If a rooster has so many hens that he can’t get around to mating with them all, he will just choose a few ‘favorite’ hens to mate with and the eggs from the other hens will go un-fertilized.

When creating a breeding flock, you will need to decide if you are going to specialize in one chicken breed or if you are going to crossbreed (mate birds from different chicken breeds to create hybrids). I strongly encourage first-time breeders to specialize in one chicken breed. This allows you to focus on just the characteristics and traits you want in that breed.

You will then need to select a main breeding cock and a flock of hens for breeding.

The Cock:

If possible, start with a main breeding cock who exhibits as many desirable traits as possible. If you start with decent birds in your breeding flock, it will make breeding for desirable traits much easier. However, do keep in mind that even if you get the best stock possible, recessive undesirable traits can still show up in future generations.

When considering a quality breeding cock, compare the cock to a standard that either you have set or that has been set for the breed by the APA (American Poultry Association). The following is a list of cock traits that you should set standards for in your breeding program:

Breeding Cock Standard Traits

• build– angle of tail, body shape, length of legs, wing carriage
• facial features– comb type & color, wattle shape & color, earlobe color, beak & eyes, expression
• weight– ideal breed weight
• feathers– variety, sheen, quality
• legs & feet– correct # of toes, shank/feet color
• quality– no defects or disqualifications
• personality– desirable personality traits
• breed traits– instinctual traits, special breed traits
• health– no hereditary health concerns, overall good general health, longevity

General traits that are good to have in any breeding cock include the trait of being a good flock protector without being aggressive, having good fertility, and having natural foraging instincts. All of these traits can be hereditary and can be passed down to future generations.

One last thing you should consider when choosing a breeding cock is the age of the cock. Young cocks can start breeding as early as 6 months of age. They are often in their prime for the first 2-3 years of their life. In heritage chicken breeds, the viability of a cock should last well into the fourth, fifth, or even sixth year as well. However, as a cock ages, his fertility can decrease.

Start with a young cock who is just entering his prime when you are starting your breeding flock. That way you have the option to use him for at least 2-3 years to establish your breeding program.

Do I need more than one breeding cock?

Once you have chosen a main breeding cock, I strongly recommend that you select a back-up breeding cock as well. The back-up breeding cock can be from the same source as the main breeding cock (uncle or brother) or it can even be a son of your main breeding cock. Having a back-up breeding cock will provide insurance in the event that something happens to your main breeding cock. The one difficulty to having a back-up breeding cock is that he should be housed separate from your breeding flock. You only want to use his genes if you are unable to use the genes from your main breeder.

The Hens:

Much of what applies to selecting a breeding cock also applies to selecting breeding hens. However, instead of selecting only one bird, you can select several hens to pair with the cock. Again, you will want to choose hens based on desirable traits that you want in your flock. Here is a list of traits that are often set for breeding hens:

• build– angle of tail, body shape, length of legs, wing carriage
• facial features– comb type & color, wattle shape & color, earlobe color, beak & eyes, expression
• weight– ideal breed weight
• feathers– variety, sheen, quality
• legs & feet– correct # of toes, shank/feet color
• quality– no defects or disqualifications
• personality– desirable personality traits
• breed traits– instinctual traits, special breed traits
• health– no hereditary health concerns, overall good general health, longevity

General traits of good breeding hens include good egg production, a long production lifespan, natural broodiness, mothering instincts, and good foraging instincts.

You will also want to consider the age of your breeding hens. Young pullets can be used for breeding after they have been laying for 1-2 months. This gives the young pullets time to work out any reproductive ‘hiccups’ that can be characteristic of young layers but not helpful in the breeding flock.

If you are selecting hens from a flock that has been running with a rooster that is different from your main breeding cock, you will want to put the selected hens with your main breeding cock and then wait at least 2 weeks before collecting eggs for hatching. Hens can store sperm from a rooster for up to 2 weeks and you want to make sure that the eggs you collect have been fertilized by your selected breeding cock.

The Breeding Coop

You will want to keep your breeding flock separate from any other chickens you have on the homestead. This allows you to more accurately control their diet, housing, and mating. If you have a second flock on the homestead, you can keep your back-up breeding rooster in that flock.

Your breeding flock should be housed in a breeding coop. The breeding coop doesn’t have to be anything more special than a standard chicken coop. It should provide the basics of protection from predators, protection from the elements, and a safe place for the flock to roost and for hens to lay their eggs. The coop should be spacious and have plenty of room to accommodate that number of birds in your breeding flock.

The breeding coop should also have a spacious enclosure or run attached to the coop. While you can certainly free-range your breeding flock under certain conditions, having an enclosed area attached to the breeding coop allows your breeding flock access to the outdoors at all time. Fresh air and sunshine are essential for a healthy breeding flock.

Here are some features that the breeding coop and run should provide for your breeding flock:

Breeding Coop Essentials

• predator-proof
• proper # of nesting boxes– 1 box per every 4-5 hens
• clean nesting box litter– you don’t want to collect dirty eggs for hatching
• absorbent, easy maintenance litter
• roosts
• droppings boards– aid in keeping the coop clean
• feed
• water
• supplemental light if necessary– may be needed in northern regions when you want to start collecting eggs in the late winter
• covered run/enclosure– allows your flock access to the outdoors no matter the weather
• dust-bath

Should I free-range breeding chickens?

Free-ranging breeding chickens is actually very beneficial for them. Especially if you are raising heritage or rare chicken breeds that you are developing for homestead purposes. It encourages natural foraging instincts and allows them to supplement their diet with natural foods that add nutrients to their diet. If you choose to free-range your breeding flock, you will need to be careful that the flock doesn’t mix with any other chickens on your homestead.

On my homestead, my two flocks forage on opposite sides of the yard. Each flock has a rooster, and the roosters know the boundaries of their territory. They never mix and only rarely do the roosters meet and fight. However, if your flocks are prone to mix, you may consider free-ranging the flocks at different times to prevent mixing.

Breeding Chickens: Nutrition

Chickens who are being kept for breeding need a very nutritious diet. Not only do they need to stay healthy, but they also need to be able to produce viable eggs that can be incubated to hatch into healthy chicks. A cock’s fertility can be influenced by his diet. Likewise, the hatchability of fertile eggs laid by hens is very much dependent on the hens’ diet.

You can buy chicken breeder feed. However, this feed is not often widely available and it is usually quite pricey because is has a higher nutritional value and higher protein content. Thankfully, on the homestead, you can mimic a breeder feed by using natural supplements in your breeding flock’s diet. Start by choosing a layer feed or a mixed-flock feed that is either whole grain or mash. When the feed is in these forms, it makes it easier to add natural supplements to the diet without causing dietary imbalances.

Keep your breeding flock on a complete layer feed or mixed-flock feed at all times. Just prior to breeding season, start incorporating additional supplements into their diet.

Supplements to Use for Breeding Chickens:

Protein– Protein is one of the biggest dietary elements that benefit your breeding flock. Breeding flocks benefit from more protein than what is in a traditional layer or mixed-flock feed. You can easily add supplemental protein to your flock’s diet by giving them daily, healthy snacks that are protein-rich with a balanced fat-carb ratio. My breeding flock gets dried black soldier fly grubs every day. Foraging your birds can also enable them to find natural sources of protein in the form of bugs and grubs.

Check out my post on Protein Sources for Chickens for other options to add supplemental protein to your breeding flock’s diet.

Vitamins & Minerals– A complete feed should have all the vitamins and minerals your chickens need on a daily basis. However, a breeding flock can benefit from an additional vitamin/mineral supplement. Additional vitamins/minerals in the diet can enable embryos to fully develop, which improves hatch rates. Chicks with malformities are sometimes a result of the breeding diet being low in vitamins/minerals.

A simple vitamin/mineral supplement that gets added to your flock’s water is an easy way to ensure your breeding flock gets supplemental nutrition. I add a vitamin/mineral supplement to my breeding flock’s water once a week. I don’t recommend using a vitamin/mineral supplement more than twice a week to help prevent dietary imbalances.

Other Supplements– Other supplements that add nutrition to your flock’s diet can be beneficial for breeding cocks and hens. These supplements should provide additional protein, vitamins, or minerals. Here are some other supplements that can be incorporated into the breeding flock’s diet:

• herbs (parsley, nettles, ashwagandha, etc…)
• kelp
• fermented feed
• leafy greens/forage

Breeding Options for Chickens

Having a breeding plan is what will distinguish you as an intentional breeder and not just a backyard breeder. The following breeding options that I outline will get you familiar with different methods for managing a breeding flock. The breeding options can help you develop a strain of chickens on your homestead that meet your standards or the breed standards that you are breeding for.

These are by far not complete discussions on any of the options. I will be diving into some breeding methods in future posts, but for now, these overviews should give you a good start on how you want to run your homestead breeding program.

One thing that you should be doing no matter what breeding option you use is keep record of individual birds in your breeding flock and their offspring. Here are some details you should keep record of in your breeding program:

• source of main breeding stock (cocks and hens)
• ages and year of hatch for all breeding stock
• what you do with the offspring from every hatch
• any changes to the breeding flock
  • culls
  • related additions
  • outcrosses
• sire and dam of specific offspring if known (pedigree breeding)

Banding birds is an effective way of keeping track of individual birds or groups of birds who were all hatched in the same year. Use different color bands for birds who are different ages or who are sourced from different flocks. Use numbered bands to keep track of individual birds.

Inbreeding (Closed Breeding):

Inbreeding is the controlled mating of brother to sister, mother to son, or father to daughter. Distant inbreeding mates nieces with uncles, grandparents with grandchildren, and so on. Inbreeding often gets a bad reputation because it can lead to poor fertility, low flock vigor, and low hatchability. Inbreeding will weaken the weak, BUT it can also strengthen the strong.

With a good inbreeding program, you can keep a closed breeding flock (no outside blood from other strains or flocks) can rid your breeding stock of undesirable factors found in the very germ plasma of their genetics. Inbreeding enables a breeder to establish a flock, hold to a standard, and manipulate desirable characteristics within the flock.

Using inbreeding will bring to light hidden traits, whether they are desirable or undesirable. Undesirable traits may especially show after several generations of inbreeding. However, once you are aware of those traits, it enables you to cull those traits from your flock.

The inbreeding system is one of the most widely used breeding systems for chickens and is necessary for establishing a new breed or a new strain (line) of an old breed.

Linebreeding:

Linebreeding is a form of inbreeding where you create two lines: one line mates a father with daughters, the other line mates mothers with a son. If you want to create two lines, you will have to have two breeding coops, one for each line. However, you can also just focus on one line, such as having a main breeding cock and only pairing his daughters with him and getting rid of any sons.

Clan Breeding:

Clan breeding, also known as spiral breeding, is when you maintain at least three different ‘clans’ (flocks) consisting of one male and several females. This does require you to have three separate coops and pens for each clan. The first year of your breeding program, each male mates only within his clan of hens. In subsequent years the males are rotated through each clan to mix genes.

Pedigree Breeding & Compensation Breeding:

Pedigree breeding entails pairing one cock with one hen to create improvement in the offspring. This method allows you to create specific pedigrees for every bird that you hatch. You can breed several pedigree pairs at the same time as long as each pair is kept in its own pen.

Pedigree breeding can be used as compensation breeding. Compensation breeding is when you mate a generally superior male with a superior female whose strongest points are the weakest points of the male. Compensation breeding allows you to mate opposites to correct faults or mate ‘like to like’ to produce dominant traits.

Outcrossing:

Outcrossing is when you breed a dam (hen) or sire (cock) from someone else’s strain of a particular breed that is not related to your flock (line). This can help establish greater vigor if inbreeding starts to take a toll on flock health. However, outcrossing can also re-introduce undesirable traits into your flock that you had previously bred out.

One way to carefully use outcrossing is to introduce new blood through the females in your flock. Getting an outcross female to add new blood to your flock allows you to experiment with just her offspring to see if there is an improvement made from the outcross. If you used a new blood male who sires prolifically, and it turns out he has undesirable traits in his genetics, the outcross can ruin your line since all the hens are producing his offspring. However, outcrossing a male can be helpful for correcting flock wide defects.

How to Get Fertile Eggs

Once you have your breeding flock established, their coop properly furnished, their diet nicely supplemented, and a breeding plan in place… it’s time to start breeding! Breeding chickens means you want to collect fertile eggs to hatch. You can then use an incubator or a broody hen to hatch the fertile eggs.

You can’t know for sure that an egg is fertile without cracking it open and looking at the blastodisc on the surface of the yolk. If the blastodisc looks like a bulls-eye then the egg is fertile. If it just looks like a fuzzy white dot, then the egg is not fertile and it will not develop even if incubated. It is a good idea to start checking eggs for fertility about 2-3 weeks prior to when you actually want to start collecting hatching eggs. This gives you time to monitor fertility rates and make changes as necessary.

There are certain factors that will influence the fertility of both your breeding cock and your breeding hens. I won’t dive into these factors right now, but here’s a basic list:

Factors That Influence Fertility:

• Diet– A complete diet that is rich in protein and vitamins/minerals will help improve fertility rates.
• Age of Hens & Cock– Use cocks and hens who are in their prime to optimize fertility.
• Inbreeding– Improper inbreeding can lead to infertility in cocks and hens.
• Environmental Stress– Environmental stress, like cold stress, heat stress, or crowded living conditions can have negative affects on fertility.
• Disease– Disease can cause a cock or hen to become infertile.
• Frostbite– Severe frostbite, especially on cocks, can cause them to become sterile and unable to fertilize eggs.
• Season/Weather– Collect eggs during prime breeding season to increase the chances of good fertility. Cocks are most active during the spring and summer, which will result in the hens laying fertile eggs.

Fertility is not the only factor to consider when collecting eggs from your breeding flock. You also want to consider the hatchability of the fertile eggs you collect. A fertile egg may start to develop during incubation, but the embryo may die early-term or late-term. Hatchability refers the rate at which fertile eggs develop and success of developed embryos to hatch.

Factors That Influence Hatchability:

• Diet– A complete diet that is rich in protein and vitamins/minerals will help improve hatchability rates.
• Age of Hens– Eggs that are laid by older breeding hens have lower hatchability rates.
• Egg Weight– Eggs that are too small or too large for the breed often have poor hatchability.
• Shell Thickness– Thin shelled eggs or eggs with odd shells may inhibit the development of the embryo.
• Porosity– Eggshells that are very porous will allow the contents to evaporate faster, which is not good for pre-incubation storage or developing embryos.
• Egg Storage Conditions– The ideal storage conditions for hatching eggs is a location that is cool (but not freezing) and humid. If hatching eggs are stored in warm, dry conditions their hatchability may decrease.
• Egg Storage Length– Hatching eggs that are stored for a long period of time before being set will have lower hatchability. Hatchability rates decrease significantly in eggs stored for longer than 1 week.
• Egg Handling– Hatching eggs that are handled roughly, jarred, or are collected in cold or hot conditions may have decreased hatchability.

With a basic understanding of what influences the fertility and hatchability of eggs, you should be able to manage your breeding flock properly so you can collect eggs that will develop and hatch into healthy chicks! For what to do next, make sure you check out these articles:

• How to Care for a Broody Hen
• What incubator is best for hatching chicks?
• Incubating Chicken Eggs Part I: Storing & Preparing
• How to Make a Plan for Incubating Eggs & Hatching Chicks

Resources that you can check out for more information on poultry breeding include Genetics of Fowl by F. B. Hunt and Fundamentals in Poultry Breeding.

Breeding Chickens on the Homestead

Breeding chickens on the homestead is a great way to naturally replenish your homestead flock while at the same time striving towards quality and vigor in your flock. If you are focusing on a rare or heritage chicken breed, you can help improve and preserve that breed for future generations. Chicken breeding can even become profitable for your homestead if you get into selling hatching eggs, chicks, or grown-out birds! Hopefully this basic guide to breeding gave you a good understanding of how to start a breeding program on your homestead!

For more tips on how to keep your breeding flock healthy and raise them naturally, make sure you join our modern pioneer newsletter community! You can also reach out to use with any questions you may have!