GENETICS

[The Old Man]

  Sometime ago I had an accidental brother/sister breeding. I intended to dispose of them at birth but got to thinking their sire and dam were 50% Gantte and 50% weems, so the pups were still 50/50 so I kept a couple of them, the parents litter were all above average and well balanced in traits. When they were 7 mo old I took them hunting and they started with a bang, no backgrounding, no training at all and from the first smell they went, and ran up to the end. I was pretty impressed, normally pups that young with no experience get thrown out of a long fast race due to not having learned to negotiate the terrain. They just beat themselves up with the extra effort to stay with the front. Just before they were 9 mo old they overheated while out of pocket, one of them died and the other was ruined. 
 This got my curiosity up, so I looked for genetic info in general and was surprised to learn that a bro/sis cross has an COI "coefficient of inbreeding" of 25. It went on to say that most all "purebred dogs" in any one breed had a very similar COI to the bro/sis cross. That surprised me, and I don't know if it is correct or not, but I had previously ran a pedigree of a dog I had through a COI calculator, and his number came back 21. Now if I'd sent dna off on that dog and had it ran I suspect his COI would have proved higher than 21, because he was from a 60 year closed breeding program, and the dna would have shown a much deeper genetic profile than I had fed in to the calculator. When I ran the ped through the calculator it had said the more gens I put in it the more accurate it would be.
  Now according to some of the pro's and registries any COI over a 10 is a danger to the breed?? It doesn't all add up for me, look at coyotes, wolves, dingoes. Dingoes are very well adapted apex very physically adept and supossedly started from a very small gene pool. Somewhere between 3500 and 5000 years ago in Austrailia, their mitochondrial dna after several hundred dogs tested was over 90 % traceable to one female.
  Historically inbreeding itself does not cause problems in the offspring. The presence of undesirable recessive genes being magnified causes problems, but if you happened to have very clean genomes to start with you could get a lot farther without ever experiencing problems.
Just something to think about, I found it interesting. I am not promoting bro/sis crossing, just ever trying to better understand how genetics work.   

[The Old Man]

 Now I'll spill the beans on one of my opinions I have come to believe. We often talk about recessive genes in a negative fashion, and they can be. When 2 recessive genes link they present as dominant, they don't become a dominant gene but do present as such, so if it is an undesirable trait it "is" detrimental.
  I believe the reason "linebreeding works" is because there are recessive genes that carry desirable traits as well, and when we line breed a few generations along with very selective culling, we get the desirable recessive genes more often in the same place on the genome therefore linking to produce the desirable trait we are after. This is strictly my opinion and it is based on observation not scientific proof.
  The prepotent reproducer we occasionally come across, the one that produces well regardless of what you breed them to are those that are absolutely genetically dominant for those traits we are after.

[Cajun]

  Hi Clue. Like you I also had a accidental brother sister cross. The sister was a above average dog and the male was I would say average at best. There were several dogs on my yard that I would have bred before I would have bred to that male but thats the way it went down. When the pups arrived I gave them all away but one female. At a year old that female was doing everything she was supposed to  be doing but not any better then a couple other pups her age. anyway I sold her. Her and another male out of that litter ended up making outstanding dogs. The male got killed around 4 years old and the female led a long life as the guys best dog. So now I have followed the rule if they are both top dogs, I do not care how close they are bred.
   Getting back to recessive genes I had not had a buckskin or Maltese dog in 20 years or so. I had this female Trumpet who was 3/4 my breeding and low and behold she started throwing both. Those recessive genes will stay hidden for a long time until the receive a match from another recessive gene. As you know both Maltese and buckskin are recessive to brindle in the Plott breed. Thats kind of weird because I believe Buckskin is dominent over brindle in Blackmouth Curs. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[The Old Man]

 Mike, I don't actually know which is dominant, but I don't consider brindle to be a BMC trait even though I see some that are considered BMC's that are brindle.  This old strain of them I have never produce brindle, or red but I do get a few that are black with yellow trim, and some of them are nearer to tan than true yellow. I am biased on that statement, and I say that because if this strain had thrown brindles once in awhile I would have accepted it as a BMC color. Way back there once in awhile there would be one that was a sandy bluish color and they'd have a blue nose and muzzle. 

[The Old Man]

  Man I'm not positive but "I think" genetically speaking brindle is a pattern, and buckskin is a color, and there are marking alleles as well, they are different alleles attached at the same loci, dictating color, pattern, and markings independently. Allowing say, a saddle back brindle dog with or without white markings, or a solid colored dog with no markings, or a solid brindle dog etc. That stuff gets over my head so I'm not positive. 

[t-dog]

Everyone has their opinion and I’m not anyone to say who’s right or wrong, like Clue said, mine is based off of experience. I have friends that consider themselves “purists” and others that believe in doing whatever works or whatever it takes to “improve” something by their standards. Myself, I did whatever it took to produce what I was looking for. I don’t believe in the purist mindset for the simple fact that we have I don’t know how many task specific breeds in the world today and they were all created by selective breeding. Natures breedings work because they aren’t influenced by man. Humans base decisions on different things like color, type, speed, size, sentimental attachment, etc etc. Mother Nature is only has one criteria and that is survival. The dumb, the non instinctive, and the poor immunities, etc all get weeded out naturally. In this selection process other things usually accompany the successful survivors that lead to a certain physical type, maybe a certain color, size and more. My dogs were originally a Treeing Walker/ Catahoula cross. The hound was bred in and bred out more than once. Mathematically, the hound is very low, but because of the way we’ve approached our selective breeding, we get a lot of hound colored/patterned pups. Even though they are colored or marked like hounds they typically have high and tight cur builds.  We get a high percentage of pups that are bawl mouthed or at least have big bawling locates. I feel like they have above average noses. They are like most breeds and families in the sense that some want to find the first scent they smell and others will pass on a cold track to go look for hotter. I have a physical type that I prefer and the longer we do this the more consistent it comes. These are some of the differences but as a whole they very similar in disposition, intelligence, working style, business minded, size, etc. My biggest breeding strategy is that I try to breed to a litter and not an individual. If I consider a dog to be breed worthy as an individual, the next criteria they have to meet without fail is that a very high percentage of their litter mates met or exceeded MY expectations. I believe this and consistent selection of like characteristics is what has helped me continue these dogs for as long as I have.  Related dogs are usually going to be more similar than non related as a whole. So stacking those traits begets more of the same USUALLY. If I’ve outcrossed, the chosen outcross was as similar to my dogs as I could get with the exception being I wanted them to be stronger, maybe even excessive in an area where I thought my dogs were weakest. For example I wanted to freshen my blood up and my buddy had lost all but his old male dog out of a line of dogs he had. His dog was really nice and very similar to mine except I felt mine needed more bite and my buddy felt his was too gritty. The cross was outstanding and we got a very good happy medium with the bite without changing anything else about either side. Out of 5 pups, all 5 made really good dogs. One female didn’t have the bite that the other 4 had and she wasn’t used in the program but was an asset hunting wise. The female I used for the outcross was a prepotent female. No
matter what I bred her to she produced some nice dogs. She’s a staple in my family of dogs. While that particular outcross is also a big factor in my dogs she’s even more so because even the dogs that aren’t influenced by that outcross carry her in the pedigree. So stacking genetics is key to success in my opinion. Mother Nature has proven it. We’ve had some half brother/sister matings and had good results. I won’t lie though, they were accidental. My friend has a gyp that just had pups the other day. That gyp is a half brother/sister mating and she’s bred back a dog that is her cousin on top and bottom more than once. It’s really heavy back to that old gyp I was speaking of. That old gyp marked a lot of her pups with a particular white spot on the back of their necks. Some of these pups have that same mark. I’m curious to see how they turn out.


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[The Old Man]

  Thomas, seems like we have had similar experience with the exception of I have single breed dogs and you have crossbred dogs. But we have followed a similar process, and you took the original crossbred dogs and made them into their own family with your linebreeding program. In reality your hound/cur cross is no different than breeding to a different strain of single breed dogs.

[t-dog]

I agree Clue. The biggest difference in yours and Cajun’s lines vs mine is other people would like y’all’s. Mine just suit me lol.

Genetics are a funny thing, just when you think you have it figured out, you figure out you don’t. My dad has had game chickens all his life. I grew up watching and listening to him about what he was trying to accomplish and how he went about it. Birds and mammals have some differences when it comes to reproduction, but there are a whole lot of things that parallel each other too. One thing he always told me was that whatever you put in is ALWAYS going to be there, good or bad. He said you can breed away from it by selection but it is still going to be there. He said it may not show up again for a long time but eventually it will and it’s usually at a time when you can least afford it to. So I’ve always considered the shortcomings of dogs in the sense of could I deal with or accept that short coming if I got more dogs with it. For example some of my dogs can be shy or sensitive. If you are a heavy handed handler, they might not work well for you. I don’t mind it so much because it seems to accompany a willingness to please mindset. If I have a dog that starts trashing for some reason, it’s usually easy to break them without having to be hard on them. It’s better for me and them. I also consider that if I breed to one that is sensitive. I sure won’t breed two that are sensitive together. My Ava gyp is sensitive. If we are hunting and someone goes to getting onto their dog, she will come find me. All I do is rub her on the head and reassure her that she isn’t in trouble and she gone hunting. I feel like my dogs have been bred for hogs long enough that breaking them from hogs is a lot harder than other game or cattle. I think the sensitive, wanting to please trait is a cur thing. Most hounds aren’t that way. They do what they do for themselves and because it’s what they want to do whereas the curs want to do it as much for you as they do themselves. Both mindsets have their advantages and disadvantages. Another thing I have noticed about my family of dogs is in the females. My dogs are usually consistent in the sense of working. When they perform they usually give a consistent performance each trip. With my females though, they will be rocking along and then all of a sudden throw a wrench in their performance. Not necessarily sorry but definitely not on their game, and sometimes yes they are sorry. This is usually an indication that they are fixing to come in heat. I assume their hormones get stirred up and throws them off. I can almost guarantee you within a week or two they are going to be in after that. I don’t know if y’all’s lines are like that, but in a certain way I like it because I know to start watching. Again, genetics have created the consistent pattern. Another thing my dad taught me was in watching his baby chicks. Sometimes a hen would have a clutch of chicks and one or two of them would always be chirping. It would always be the same ones doing and for no rhyme or reason usually. He would tell me, that chick is a cull. Something isn’t right with it. He was right too. Those chicks were usually the first to get sick, the ones that were wild natured and nervous, or just didn’t perform in any way comparable to the others. I believe you can see these type things in dogs as well. Sometimes an old hen will peck and fight at those chicks that are off because they know they aren’t right. Dogs will also separate pups that have something wrong with them. I definitely pay attention to how my gyps interact with their pups.


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[The Old Man]

  I don't believe it is possible to really figure it out to the absolute, they tell me there are in excess of hundreds of thousands of possibilities in a single mating. I'm surprised we can get as good of percentages as we often do.
  I have some that are extremely hardheaded and some pretty mild mannered in both breeds. But the majority of them will for quite some time bark through a bark collar here at home. I lay that off to being high drive, like if I hook up the trailer or move the truck and trailer or ring the bell to call up the horses the dogs are gonna raise cain. My wife has to go out and settle them down anytime I load part of them and drive off.
 

[t-dog]

When you say it like that it sure makes it sound like a crap shoot.

My dogs are pretty good about giving in to the bark collar, even my bulldogs. They all let it rip when I go hook up the trailer or keep barking when I only load some of them. I think they settle down pretty quick after I’m gone though.


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