Have any of you breeders bred full brother and sisters?
If so how did the pups turn out? Does anyone have an opinion either way, good idea, bad idea, or really bad idea?
This reply was made possible by a jump drive and working nights! This took FOREVER for me to type up so please excuse my typing and grammatical errors as I can't re-do this anymore.
I have not made any brother/sister matings. Ive not done any father/daughter matings or mother/son matings either I have however, made several half brother to half sister matings though with my Pointers and Patterdales over the years. Ive also made a granddaughter to grandsire mating with my Patterdales. The reasoning for making breedings like this is to ultimately have litters that are consistent, not only in type but also in talent. In each of the above breeding scenarios we are concentrating the gene pool. In doing so we are magnifying EVERYTHING in these matings, meaning the good along with the bad. To me, I have never seen a perfect dog. I can always find a flaw in one. It may be as insignificant as markings, but given enough time I can always find a flaw. If linebreeding/inbreeding is the planned course of action, a strong evaluation of the dogs used for brood must be made and they must posses an overwhelming percentage of good traits over the bad.
The way I see it I am concentrating the genes by a half brother to half sister matings but to a lesser extent than using a Father/Daughter mating or Mother/Son mating. As I see it a brother/sister mating will concentrate the genes even more so. As far as if it is a good idea or not, to me it would depend on what family of dogs this breeding was being made from and then just as, if not more importantly, would be what individual dogs are being used to make this breeding. To breed this close just for the sake of making a linebreeding may be a real recipe for disaster, however if you are fortunate enough to have sterling examples of the breed, you can lock those traits down quick. On the other hand, it is my belief that each generation of intense linebreeding/inbreeding that I do paints me into the corner just a little bit more. So why do I do it? I want to replicate the attributes of the key individuals that I have selected as foundation dogs, litter after litter and year after year. Its quite a balancing act although some families of pointers have shown to tolerate this type of breeding more so than others, more than likely because it has been done for over 60 some odd years already making the process easier for some.
This brings me around to another school of thought, our evaluation of what families and dogs we will use for breeding purposes. This point is VERY important and generally drives the purpose for us to linebreed/inbreed. Back to what I said before, I can always find a flaw in a dog however; I can overlook flaws but holes in a dog thats a different story. A dog with a hole in them is, well just that, theyre not complete, theyre missing something. Some holes are genetic, some are man-made and there is a world of difference between the two. A dog that runs off and stays gone as soon as you turn them out, with no regard to where you are whatsoever, is that genetic or mad-made? It depends on each individual circumstance, the dog may have been trained by someone incorrectly and the dog was just trying to put as much space between them and their trainer as quickly as possible. It could be that the dog is just one of those black hearted kind of dogs that just want to GO for themselves. If its a genetic hole, that means I am going to have to continue to deal with that trait, IF I choose to use that individual for breeding. If the hole is man-made, its not the dogs fault, so I dont knock the dog for the problem. The dilemma can sometimes be in trying to determine if it is genetic or man-made, if you are not familiar with the dog. Determining what is a flaw verses what is a hole can easily be a personal opinion. It would be easy to agree that a dog that was inadequate in its conformation which then affected how it ran in the field would be considered a hole. Opinions however may differ when it comes to a dogs tail or their teeth. I personally could not accept a dog that may have a perfect bite but had a bad tail. On the other hand I have bred dogs whose teeth were not considered by most to be perfect. They were undershot, not bad, but undershot nevertheless. In those dogs that I bred, their un-correct bite was the only trait I found to be undesirable about them. Was that wrong to do? Not for me, as I dont require a dog to have a perfect set of teeth to determine whether they are worthy of breeding. For me, I cant see where their teeth have anything to do with them being intelligent, trainable, having a superior nose, a burning desire to find birds or be easy on the eye both running and on point. The only way for me to tell if they are undershot is to physically walk up to them, peel their lips apart and have a look-see. Now if their undershot to the point where their bottom lip is jutting out like their pouting or being able to see their teeth grinning at me, well thats another story, that is unacceptable. At this point in time to my knowledge, I have never had one that bad and if were to show up that bad, I would never let it leave here to be someone elses problem unless it was neutered. Their tails however, I can see that from a distance every time I go outside to care for them or when they are running or when they are on point. So in that thought, again for me personally, their tails have more of an importance than whether they have a perfect bite. A hole vs. a flaw, it will be for you to decide, but whatever you decide be sure and be up front about it, just as I am doing here on this forum about my thoughts on perfect teeth. I tell folks all the time if they are looking for dogs with a perfect bite, they might want to look to another breeder to whom that is a priority. I can say that at least 80% of the dogs residing at my kennel do have a perfect bite, but it wasnt because I was breeding for it!
As I see it there are varying degrees of linebreeding/inbreeding and one tool I use to look at is the inbreeding coefficient (i.c) which is shown as a number/percentage. This number/percentage goes up the more linebred/inbred a dog may be. So for an example let pretend to make a mating of our dogs, King to Queen. In this example lets say that King and Queen are unrelated. A female from this mating, Princess has made the cut and we decide that we are going to breed her back to her sire. The i.c. from this mating would probably be in the neighborhood of 25%. Now lets bred Duke to Queen who are already related say half brother/half sister. Alright a female from this mating well call Duchess, she is the kind of dog we want to bred, so we bred her to her sire, Duke. Now the i.c. could be as high as 35%. Duke and his sister, Lady are chosen to make a breeding. The i.c. from this brother sister mating may be 35% as well. The i.c. will not tell you anything except how linebred/inbred your mating is. It is just another bit of information a breeder can use in the decision making process.
At some point I will make father/daughter mother/son brother/sister matings, as I have no problem doing this type of mating. When I do decide to make this type of mating I will of course feel that it will be a fantastic idea, not just a good one. For the immediate future I dont feel my family of pointers are ready for this type of mating but at some point I will be making some matings like this and they will be as valuable as pure gold to me!
"Your legacy should be that you made it better than it was when you got it."
