EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

back in the olden days you could ask the average old timer about breeding closely related dogs and most would say it makes crazy and deformed dogs etc...etc...

after reading many articles over the years...and breeding mutts as a kid and purebreds as an adult I have developed my personal theories on some of these ideas/reasoning...

closely related animals have similar genes and more alike when sire and dam are bred...that is why they look the same, act the same, hunt the same and so on...each parent passes on one gene and quite a few of these match up as the same...the lack of diversity in these paired up genes makes for a weaker immune system as they become more alike over a few generations...most purebred pups won't make it past 3 months without worming's and vaccines...that alone would be enough to discourage the old timers from breeding too close...back then there were no vaccines...

so the old timers believed in outcrossing and just breeding good dogs that weren't related or even of the same breed but they tended to look alike or maybe hunt alike...so if they did breed a certain amount of like to like then they would lose some of the pups but the ones that survived were the ones who lived to hunt and breed...

some scientist's say that when selecting correctly the lack of diversity is not a big problem because one should select the very healthy ones...there is some truth to that because out in the wild there is quite a bit of inbreeding but mother nature tends to do an excellent job of culling the inferior...she does not make mistakes so the strong survive to live, hunt and breed...coyote etc...etc...

some of us with the purebred dogs do all we can to save the whole litter because if they all live we can sell a few of these stem winders and make a profit especially if they have some great dogs in the pedigree...thus more inferior dogs produced to carry on with the inferior genes...

when I was a kid I bred some of the throw aways that were thrown out on our country road and there were no such thing as taking them to the vet and no worming and most lived and hunted...hunger is a great motivator for a pup to hunt...with 9 kids in a family there were no such thing as table scraps...

like Justin said on the other thread...just trying to start some conversation...getting a little slow so thought I would throw this out there...  :D
 

I have never done any line breeding but I do have a ? I have a male dog I really like. I recently bred him to a female that's a decent dog. Well I ended up with 5 male pups off of them. But I recently picked up a female pup off of the male dogs sister which would be his niece. What should be my next steps. I'm thinking breed him back to his niece and then when them pups come and start going breed one of them females to one of the 5 other pups I have which would be half bro x half sister crosses or would this not be good

I think line breeding is when you have an excellent male and cross him to his daughter then grand daughter then great grand daughter. So if you look at the pedigree it goes in a line. Not stating facts just what I have heard. Supposed to be some good information on the texas A&M website. You can use a mother and son but think it could produce more birth defects that way.

Bo Pugh, do you have any pedigree information on your dogs? I'd like to try and help you answer your question.

Cajun and YELLOWBLACKMASK what route would you go w the best pups out of that father daughter cross ?

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If you had a genetic map of your dog it wouldn't be marked with "daughter" "uncle" or "grandmother" . . . those are just terms we made up to explain our family relationships. They have no bearing on livestock breeding and therefore it makes no sense to assume that uncle X niece or mother X son can determine the positive or negative outcome of any mating. Words like inbreeding and linebreeding have little, if any, real merit. They merely help us describe things in conversation. If I breed a yellow lab to a yellow spaniel the genes that control coat color are the same and act in the manner that most breeders associate with inbreeding. If I breed, for example, a long legged, gritty, cold nosed Redbone to a Walker who is identical in those departments . . I am in effect inbreeding for those traits, regardless of the fact that the dogs are absolutely unrelated for practical purposes. Historically, less was known about genetics and many superstitions played a greater role.

Obviously, the best source for like genetics (and desirable, similar traits) is in closely related dogs. But selection is the most important factor. If you and I each take a male and a female from one litter and breed them bro X sis for three generations . . we can achieve vastly different results. You pick the darkest colored, poorest performing pups from each of your litters and I'll pick the lightest, best performing pups from mine. On paper the pups will be bred so closely as to seem like clones. In reality . . they are practically unrelated (yours from mine). Selection trumps method of breeding. For the record, culling is but one manner of selection. Keep the best, remove the worst.

Think of your method, whether it be outcrossing, linebreeding or inbreeding . . like a paint brush. They are tools. And in the end, you can not blame the brush for the color that your house ends up. The dogs you have chosen dictate the color.

Another thing (IMO) that bogs some people down is the concept of a breed. Breed has no practical use to a breeder of performance animals. The Blackmouth is a perfect example of this. You have under the heading of breed the Mississippi tree dog variety, The 100 pound Carnathan dogs and the Texas stock dogs. To breed one strain to the other is going backwards for creating similar traits in your dogs. If you breed BMCs and you find a line of Lacys that are of equal size, hunting style, grit, range, etc . . . you are better to breed to that family than to some other family of BMCs that are less similar in trait. A family of bear catching Plotts is going to be closer of trait to a family of bear catching Walkers than they are to many other families of Plott who have been used exclusively as competition coon dogs and may no longer possess the grit or bottom that you desire. Breeds on the whole are irrelevant to your breeding program. Families are more important. If you can't find a suitable mate (or trait) within your family . . find a family of dogs who are as close to yours, performance wise, as you can. Or one that will give you what you are trying to gain while giving up as little as possible from what you already have.

But that's just how I see it.

If you had a genetic map of your dog it wouldn't be marked with "daughter" "uncle" or "grandmother" . . . those are just terms we made up to explain our family relationships. They have no bearing on livestock breeding and therefore it makes no sense to assume that uncle X niece or mother X son can determine the positive or negative outcome of any mating. Words like inbreeding and linebreeding have little, if any, real merit. They merely help us describe things in conversation. If I breed a yellow lab to a yellow spaniel the genes that control coat color are the same and act in the manner that most breeders associate with inbreeding. If I breed, for example, a long legged, gritty, cold nosed Redbone to a Walker who is identical in those departments . . I am in effect inbreeding for those traits, regardless of the fact that the dogs are absolutely unrelated for practical purposes. Historically, less was known about genetics and many superstitions played a greater role.

Obviously, the best source for like genetics (and desirable, similar traits) is in closely related dogs. But selection is the most important factor. If you and I each take a male and a female from one litter and breed them bro X sis for three generations . . we can achieve vastly different results. You pick the darkest colored, poorest performing pups from each of your litters and I'll pick the lightest, best performing pups from mine. On paper the pups will be bred so closely as to seem like clones. In reality . . they are practically unrelated (yours from mine). Selection trumps method of breeding. For the record, culling is but one manner of selection. Keep the best, remove the worst.

Think of your method, whether it be outcrossing, linebreeding or inbreeding . . like a paint brush. They are tools. And in the end, you can not blame the brush for the color that your house ends up. The dogs you have chosen dictate the color.

Another thing (IMO) that bogs some people down is the concept of a breed. Breed has no practical use to a breeder of performance animals. The Blackmouth is a perfect example of this. You have under the heading of breed the Mississippi tree dog variety, The 100 pound Carnathan dogs and the Texas stock dogs. To breed one strain to the other is going backwards for creating similar traits in your dogs. If you breed BMCs and you find a line of Lacys that are of equal size, hunting style, grit, range, etc . . . you are better to breed to that family than to some other family of BMCs that are less similar in trait. A family of bear catching Plotts is going to be closer of trait to a family of bear catching Walkers than they are to many other families of Plott who have been used exclusively as competition coon dogs and may no longer possess the grit or bottom that you desire. Breeds on the whole are irrelevant to your breeding program. Families are more important. If you can't find a suitable mate (or trait) within your family . . find a family of dogs who are as close to yours, performance wise, as you can. Or one that will give you what you are trying to gain while giving up as little as possible from what you already have.

But that's just how I see it.

What Barlow says in the second paragraph, I have seen firsthand. My Buddy in Fla. breeds Straight Swampland Plotts originating back to Leroy Haug's line of Plotts. we were at Plott days last year & ran into a man from Michigan who bred straight swampland plots. We examined pedigrees from both. From Grandsire & great grandsire almost all the dogs were identical. The dogs my buddy had were in the 45-55# range. This other guys dogs were all in the 70-80# range yet they all had the same ancestors. They were evidently bred for what works in their country.
  I made a 1/2 sister cross to  her 1/2 brother & my buddy got a female. He took her & bred her to her 1/2 brother & I took a female from that cross. That female was accidently bred to her full brother. The first 2 crosses produced about 80 percent top dogs with a couple of culls along the way in the second 1/2 to 1/2 brother-sister cross.  All dogs bred had three things in common. Nose, speed & grit. The cross with her full brother had the speed, nose, but just what I call average gritty. Good dogs but not what the first 2 crosses were. All the dogs in these crosses were pretty straight weems bred & linebred before the 1/2 sister-brother crosses were made.
 

This is just my belief and method. People are gonna breed however they wish to. As for the TERMS inbreeding, linebreeding and outcrossing . . I didn't say they have no place. I merely said that they work for reasons other than the common perception. They work because closely related dogs often have the most in common. It's the genes they share that make it work. Not the fact that they are mother to son. By this same logic . . any shared genes between two mated dogs will double up that factor regardless of family relation.

And I didn't mean to suggest everyone should only cross breed their dogs. I was trying to stress the fact that we are generally breeding for traits. When breeding for traits you want to mate two dogs who have the same desired genetics and will therefore pass it on to the next generation. That two dogs are brindle and called Plott does not make them related or mean that they will pass on like traits (other than brindle). The point in breeding tightly bred dogs is to gather like to like and strain out outside or unwanted genetic markers. It is never as simple as blending blood or breeding one dog to one other dog. You are matching a million genetic markers (in sperm) to a million genetic markers (in an egg). What we call inbreeding increases our chances of matching up like genes and you are absolutely correct in saying it is the most effective method. But if my dog from Breed A is pure dominant for any single trait and your dog from Breed X is pure dominant for that same trait . . . they will only pass on that trait and every pup in the litter will possess that trait. On the flipside .  . if we have littermates and they each have different genetics for say eye color or ear length . . though they are bro X sis . . it will not achieve the intended purpose and is in fact, an outcross to a different eye color or different length of ear.

People believe that the term "linebred" dogs relates to "better" dogs.

You can take two sorry dogs and tightly breed them from now to eternity and your going to end up with nothing more than a BUNCH of sorry dogs.

The purpose (In my mind anyhow) of tightly breeding dogs is to reproduce what you start with.  Although slight "corrections" can sometimes be made by outcrossing, for the most part if your trying to fix things by use of linebreeding then you started with the wrong dogs and your wasting your time.

Let me know how that pup you got from Scott's breeding works out for you. Just FYI that pup is 3/4's my stuff.