Evolution of chickens.

Okay, I haven't posted in a while not that I have anyone subscribed, but anyway. On to chickens.

I got the idea that I could breed a more primal predator resistance back into chickens. My logic here is that if I don't do that much to protect my flock from predation, other than reproduce and enhance what would be their natural habitat, they would re-learn natural defenses to predators.

I could do this by breeding my own chickens from commercial stock but with little intervention as far as protection growing up. I would have to supply them with a brooder, food and water early on but after they got out on their own I would pretty much let them fend for them selves. By doing this, the ones that still have a good roosting instinct, for example, and would still roost in trees would have the gene that was lost by the ones that got eaten by roosting on the ground, thereby eliminating the bad genes. 

Roosting and brooding are two of the main survival instincts that have been bread out of chickens, especially brooding. You can't hardly find a commercial hen breed that will tend a nest of eggs and hatch any chicks. I have a couple chickens that prefer to roost in a tree rather than their chicken house. I let them roost and range wherever they want. (Although they prefer the chicken house on cold nights.) They know where their nests are and always come back to lay their eggs.

I am not sure if by trying to breed natural predator resistance back into them I will just breed all around wildness. By doing this I might make it impossible to find all their eggs because they have laid them in nests in brush piles. I suppose we will see what happens. I am working on an incubator and deciding on what chicks I want to buy.