Line breeding is the easiest way to promote certain required points in your poultry. Once you start doing this and creating your own "line" you have much more control over the outcome of your chicks.

The diagram is based on a single pair of birds, each outside line (left and right) will give a high percentage of the origional parent. The sublines will give you the vigour and new characteristics to breed with but will remain linked to the origional parent.

Line breeding can normaly be done for about four generations without loosing too much vigour, then a cross may be done to improve it again. This can be done by using a cockerel from a subline on the other side - ie a cockerel mated from the female side to a pullet on the male side.