Welcome

An Introduction to 'The Art of Breeding with Brian Reeder'

Welcome to my new substack. Some of you may know me from my work with Poultry, possibly through my books ‘An Introduction to Color Forms of the Domestic Fowl’ and ‘An Introduction to Form and Feathering of the Domestic Fowl’, or through my writing on poultry through various websites, blogs and magazines. Others may know me from my work with daylilies, possibly through my website, Sun Dragon Daylilies or through my blog, Daylily BReeder. However, my personal interests and influences are much broader though than just chickens or daylilies, and throughout my life I have worked within many areas. I would say that my main focus has always been the biological sciences - natural history, genetics, breeding, domestication, hybridization, permaculture - but I also am an artist, a history fanatic, and am deeply influenced by both art and philosophy. All of my interests come to bear on everything I do.

Whether you know me or not, I hope you will enjoy this new substack. To begin with, I am setting this substack up to share a wide range of articles I have written over the years on both chickens, daylilies, and breeding in general. I have a lot of those and it will probably take several months to share all those here. If you know me from only chickens or daylilies, then you may find much with my writing about the other that is applicable to your interests, as all breeding programs have more in common than not. Once I have shared all my previously written articles, I will then begin to offer new articles, and I will also likely branch out into a broader range of subjects that reflect all of my interests.

For my entire ‘internet career’, going back to 1997, I have worked to keep each interest in its own niche, following the dictum that you have to find a micro-niche and stick with it, but the older I get, and the more I see just how interconnected all of my work and interests really are, the more I understand that trying to keep them each in its own little box is a fools errand. I don’t have time and I’m not doing it anymore. So from now on instead of trying to work with a ‘daylily niche’ or a ‘chicken niche’ or any other niche, I am backing up to take a broader approach that takes the eagle’s-eye view and includes my full body of interests. My hope through that is to help you see how your entire life interconnects, allowing you to take a more holistic approach to everything you do.

So to begin, allow me to introduce myself a little more fully.

• My name is Brian Reeder. I have been enamored of plants and animals, as well as art and history, since I was a small child and have long been obsessed with the art of creating new looks in plants and animals through selective breeding and its historical precedents.

• Growing up on a farm, I was exposed to domestic animals and plants from my earliest years, and knew early on that I wanted to work with plants and animals. I didn’t know that in those exact words, of course. I just knew that there was something appealing and endlessly fascinating with domestic plants and animals, and with the natural world in general.

• I spent much of my childhood keeping a wide range of animals and growing various garden plants, but there were four types that always held my interest most strongly: Chickens, Daylilies, Goldfish and Snakes. Those are the four groups I have worked with the most. I bred chickens and goldfish from childhood, and I also grew daylilies from early childhood. I began to keep and breed snakes in my teens years, and finally began to breed daylilies in 2008 when my work with poultry genetic research came to a close.

• Starting in the early 1990s I began to set up and document a range of genetic research experiments with poultry, and that led to me working with immunogenetics - genetic disease resistance - as my major focus. As I was working with crossing various breeds and varieties of chickens in pursuing the immuno-genetic research, this allowed me to also investigate the genetics underlying the many color varieties of chicken breeds. In time, that work made me question the origins of chickens and led to a program of projects looking at the hybridization of the various junglefowl species, which in turn led to me pursue research with hybridization between various species, and even genus, of North American Colubrid snakes as model organisms for both the hybridization of the junglefowl species, and the subsequent domestication of those jungle fowls, which in turn led to chickens. Throughout all of this I was playing with various breeds of goldfish, making test matings to understand how their phenotype genes work.

• Along the way, I have dabbled with a lot of other plants and animals, and I have been obsessed with learning about genetics, both specific and general. From early childhood and throughout all the research work, one of the main things I was dabbling with was growing daylilies. I have grown them since I was about 6 years old in the 1970s and had been adding new cultivars every few years.

• Throughout that time I was observing them, observing changes, both in the flower and the plant as new looks emerged and the tetraploids became more popular and readily available. I also noted over time that many lines were becoming increasingly inbred, manifesting as various deleterious traits. By the time my research work with poultry was winding down, I had been thinking about breeding daylilies for nearly a decade, so I embarked on that project in 2008 and have never looked back.

• In the daylilies, I have replicated both immuno-genetics work and visual phenotype work, as I had done with chickens. As garden daylilies are of hybrid origin, this too falls in line with my previous research. Hybrid garden daylilies, as a gene pool assembled initially from the hybridization of various Hemerocallis species about a century ago, are still in the early phases of their domestication process.

• But the science is not my only motivation, nor the only area where I draw inspiration. I am also an artist, and have been my entire life. I was very fortunate to be raised by women who encouraged my interests, both in the sciences and the arts. My mother bought a set of encyclopedias for my brother and I when I was very young and I devoured them, especially the sciences and the arts. That exposure to culture allowed me to see far beyond the confines of my local cultural environment, and has colored my manner of interfacing with life since. In short, I crave knowledge, art, beauty and an interface with the natural world, both as an artist and as a scientist.

• Later, when I was around ten years old, I discovered the Dune series of science fiction books by Frank Herbert, and they reinforced many of my interests - genetics, breeding, mythology - but those books also introduced me to another area of interest that would deeply influence me throughout my life and color my approach to everything I do: Philosophy, and specifically philosophical Taoism. Later when I found permaculture in the 1990s, I recognized that the underlying principles of permaculture are deeply Taoist in nature, seeking to utilize natural setting and systems to create a balance that is sustainable and doesn’t deeply degrade the environment.

• So what I hope to bring to you with The Art of Breeding with Brian Reeder here on substack is knowledge. Specifically, knowledge of how to apply genetics and other sciences to animal and plant captive breeding programs, but also how to apply a sense of art and philosophy to your breeding programs. Something I have found over the years is that I have a good ability to discuss genetic concepts in a manner that makes this information accessible to hobbyists without a science background. My books on poultry genetics are good examples of this, as they take the complicated subject of genetics and distill it down in such a manner that hobbyists can access it and make use of it in their breeding programs. I hope to make these concepts easy to understand, applicable and actionable in your own life, whether you are a PhD or have a third-grade education. Everyone can use these tools, because, at the end of the day, our ancient ancestors did most of the heavy lifting in domestication and breed development, and they didn’t know what a gene was. They just selected what they wanted.

• I plan to post one or two articles each week until I run out of previously written articles. I will mix both daylily and chicken articles so that if you are only interested in one or the other, each week there should be at least one article specifically for our interests, but I hope you will take the time to read all of the articles, as they all deal with breeding and selection.

• I am excited to begin this journey, and I hope you will benefit from your time here on ‘The Art of Breeding with Brian Reeder’ substack.