Breeding thoughts or Any anecdotal evidence?

[dwalton]

JTG A couple of things come to mind what do you hunt with these dogs and what is it like where they are hunted? Genetically Superior dogs is where I am probably stuck at, how do you find or see such a dog? I have seen some really good bobcat dogs and own some that can cold trail hours old tracks, jump most that they start and tree almost everyone they jump some years all that they jump they tree or catch on the ground. That said I have never owned a perfect dog there is always something that can be improved. I have bred some really good dogs but yet to find the perfect one that is genetically Superior in what I do or in there ability to reproduce. Help me out here what am I missing and how do I get there? I don't breed for color but do breed for toughness, hearth, conformation, treeing, trainability, bobcat minded and brains. How do you get to all these traits in one dog that he or she is superior genetically? Dewey

[pegleg]

Now things are getting more interesting. The very best bobcat dog I ever owned never reproduced better then average pups. It probably had a few reasons. But one was surely finding the correct mate. For me I don't see most of the supposed inbreeding drepression issue. And few of them wouldn't bother me if I did. If my dogs got smaller or the litters were only 2-4 pups so? If they re better dogs I see no issue.
I'm all honesty I feel genetically superior dogs are probably not going to always outshine those occasional freakishly great hounds. But they will always be great hounds that when bred to another will produce the same. They might not be perfect but I believe They re a better step then continual outcrosses. There's so many examples of different types of structured breeding programs out there it's interesting to see the results but people get sidetracked a lot. You can not replicate a breeding program. You can approximate it at best. And you have to carefully consider what species and purpose the breeding program was used. The detailed programs I've studied for dogs were for the most part either very haphazard and focused on few traits or very complex and time consuming. And I have to admit it's expensive and very time consuming to make even a small attempt at really making a lasting improvement in small areas but in order to do a whole "dog" is huge. I've read some breed recipes that took human generations to get close and thousands of dogs. Then some "natural" breeds that just seemed to spontaneously created themselves. I don't see something as complex as a do it best anywhere bobcat dog creating itself.

[david]

[perk]

David, you care correct in the way you read the question, that is why I asked for anecdotal evidence, like what have you experienced... however I have enjoyed the posts and the time ppl have taken to write long informative posts.

Few things behave agreed with few i havent.

I'm glad JTG chimed in because I now have a question for him, maybe a couple.
JTG, 1st do you buy into the notion many have that breeding a top female is more important than the male (I see you breed top male/female together) but do you suscribe to the notion that female is More important?
If so why is father daughter cross the most powerful? Not mother son, which would have mothers genetics 2x
This statement makes it seem to me you find the Sire to be more dominant in traits.
And also how do we know father daughter cross is most powerful, is there scientific data to prove this or just tons of anecdotal data from people over the years
Perk

[JTG]

I'm glad JTG chimed in because I now have a question for him, maybe a couple.
JTG, 1st do you buy into the notion many have that breeding a top female is more important than the male (I see you breed top male/female together) but do you suscribe to the notion that female is More important?
If so why is father daughter cross the most powerful? Not mother son, which would have mothers genetics 2x
This statement makes it seem to me you find the Sire to be more dominant in traits.
And also how do we know father daughter cross is most powerful, is there scientific data to prove this or just tons of anecdotal data from people over the years
Perk[/quote]

No, I do not buy into the notion that the female is more important, especially with a low inbreeding coefficient.

For scientific data, without using the scientific method, it’s is just a theory. If you look at nature, the biggest bull elk, will breed his daughters and granddaughters and his offspring, all breed true to type. You have many more options, breeding several female littermates. There is scientific information supporting each argument.

The female would not have the mothers genetics x 2, depending on, the inbreeding coefficient, her daughters would have around 16.67 of their mothers genetic makeup.

[perk]

Thanks for the response, I'm still a little unclear, I was starting that if you breed son to mother then the offspring would be genetically closer to the dam than the Sire. That was my question as to why sire to daughter was strongest.
Also in nature, don't big bulls breed their past offspring bc they are the dominate bulls and try to breed everything in the area. Some animals strike out from home when they are a certain age and make their own new territory (know foxes do that here) always figured that was God's way of not allowing inbreeding to the point of too small litters or infertility. Or so I always thought

[JTG]

You would have to know, the inbreeding coefficient of all the dogs involved, to determine which would be genetically closer. I thought you were asking how to move forward in breeding.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Evh1U ... ed&f=false

http://www.thefoxwebsite.net/ecology/ecologymating

[perk]

Jtg, thanks again for the information. The website that connected to a book was informative. I appreciate you answering the questions about breeding, and genetics.

However the Fox website is a prime example if how everything on the internet is not always true, one example of this, the site attributes large portions of foxes diets in rural areas to rabbits. They eat may more mice, miles, voles, berets, fruit of any kind, and massive amounts of insects. Early summer you will see red Fox killed on the highway, only because they are traveling the road to eat the dead June bugs hit by passing cars (easy meal). Just an example of how anyone can post anything on a site and the cite something as a resource. Anything on this site could be cited as a source if someone wanted and was trying to use the information to push their views. Then again I see all the info is European maybe back in Europe reds don't eat fruit or bugs they learned that when they got here.

[pegleg]

From what I've seen a father to daughter mating is no different then a mother to son mating. I don't do it as a regular practice but have known a lot of gamefowl breeders that have done this So many generations it's two parallel lines of the same original breeding . only issue there, is bird's DO have a large number of sex linked traits. So there has to be a strong genetic relationship between the original pair to begin with or those sex linked traits have to be planned for. If you want to see wider circular approach to breeding similar to the continual outcrossing often done in hounds look at horses that will give you a head ache and even there it's not uncommon to breed down off one individual as often as they can according to what ever breed association they have to follow.
There's a old breeding practice for hounds that involved breeding one individual to a outcross then breed back to it. Then out cross to another completely unrelated animal the breed back to the original. They did that as often as they could the thinking being the outside genetics had less chance of lining up with other unrelated genetics then those genes continually mixed in by the desired dog. I once did the math on it and it would progress but slowly and you would have to keep a eye on any animals used for breeding not to continue traits you didn't want. And then there's the shear number of dogs this would produce. It would in theory isolate certain traits but you would need to be able to test for or actually see them .

[Goose]

[david]

[Goose]

It is a common practice in the cattle world, you pick your females apart and find suitable bulls that plug up in holes they have, the only difference I see with cattle and dogs is with cattle you can just about figure out what kinda of calves your going to have being 90% of most births are single offspring and if you study the EPDS it's easy to fill in those cracks, I've noticed with dogs being multiple offspring it's harder to pin point...

This is an interesting concept and idea to think about nonetheless...


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[19LittleD99]

Seems to me that it would be great if people could figure out EPDs for hounds. If you could come up with a rating system based on , say , the averages of the litters for nose power, treeing, tracking ability etc. Then breeders could look at those averages and see what cross might give them the best shot at the kinda pups they're hoping for. Just an idea; I've had some experience with breeding cattle and understand how you can try to ''fill in the blanks" with an outcross.
Thanks,
D

[Goose]

[macedonia mule man]

Goose, according to the people that that I have discussed dog breeding with, they say that's a different ball game. Most livestock is bred to improve profit in dollars. They say that is kinda simple compared to dogs because of the record keeping. It's unbleavable how many lbs of pork that are raised with record being compiled on each litter showing fact on all the things they are trying to improve. The things that dog people are looking for are so far apart that it looks like the difference in daylight and dark. If you get 5 different men in a discussion, there is usually 5 different opinions on what it takes to have a good race or catch what it is you are after. I'm sure each man would breed the way he believes in with very little proven evidence. I think that is why only about 2-5% of all dogs that are bred which evey way( Line bred, inbred,out crossed or accidental) turn out to be top notch dogs. I have had had large kennel breeders and back yard breeders tell me that they have a big % rate, but when I got a pup from them they always say that if the pup turns out they would be happy to buy him. If I was having a large % rate of good dogs, I wouldn't need to buy a good one to put back in my kennel. Most dogs breeders are kennel blind .