Oak Ridge
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Indiana
Posts: 6168 |
Sheep,
I'm a firm believer that the close the dog is in the pedigree, the more influence that it has...and just because a dog is repeated in the pedigree does not mean that it will have a whole lot of influence. Prepotency and filial degeneration come into play in a pedigree....
Prepotency can best be defined as the unusual ability of an individual or strain to transmit its characteristics to its offspring due to dominant genes. Genes contain DNA. DNA serve as the basis of heredity. Without getting scientific, genes transmit hereditary characters by specifying the structure of genetic material. It is what people are referring to when they say he’s a chip off the old block or the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, etc. Let’s say a child who was separated from his father at an early age meets his dad when he’s twenty years old. The twenty year old notices that both him and his dad have quiet dispositions and frequently smile. These can be said to be inherited traits. These tendencies come from genes containing DNA which predisposed them to have quiet, amiable dispositions.
Filial Degeneration can best be explained as the tendency of an individual of a line to revert to the average of that line. What exactly does this mean? Well a good illustration of this would be if a family of three generations of short, unattractive people gave birth to a daughter who grew to be both tall and pretty. Filial Degeneration would dictate that this tall pretty girl would probably give birth to short, unattractive children. This is due to the fact that the preponderance of her genes contain DNA coded with the short unattractive blueprint.
Now, knowing that an individual of a line has a tendency to revert to the average of it’s line gives us something to work with. We can strive to establish a line of high performance prepotent dogs. How, you ask? Well if we start with proven dogs, breed youngsters from them and cull severely(by cull severely I simply mean to NEVER breed them), we will be left with proven dogs who are bred from proven dogs. The dogs remaining in the breeding pool, after the culling process, are those that inherited the desirable characteristics/genes from their parents. With each generation bred and culled you are narrowing your gene pool.
What you are doing in effect is increasing the probability of future youngsters inheriting the genes responsible for the desirable characteristics of your foundation pairs. A dog receives 50% of its genes from it’s sire and 50% from it’s dam. When you breed from a pair of winners versus a pair of winless dogs, you increase the likelihood of producing winners greatly. Lets break it down. Say you place 20 balls, 4 red, 4 blue, 4 green, 4 yellow and 4 black in a bag. Now, you can reach into this bag and extract two balls at a time. Red balls are the designated desirable balls. Two reds win. One red with any other color also wins. Two of any other color, or combination of colors, other than red lose. Now if after every draw you throw away the non-red balls and place the red ones back in the bag, you are increasing the probability of getting a red ball with each subsequent draw. After every draw and disposal of the non-red balls you are increasing the percentage of red balls to the total amount of balls. Eventually you will be left with all red balls and each and every draw will be a desirable draw. Now substitute red balls with desirable genes and substitute draws with youngsters. If you cull the losers (non-red balls) and only put the winners (red balls) back in your kennel, you are increasing the probability of getting desirable genes passed on to future youngsters. The name of the game is limiting the gene pool.
In the world of coon hound breeding, we have hung our hats on breeding a winner to a winner. We breed our desirable male, to our desirable female, unrelated as they may be. We take the desirable offspring out of that cross, and we breed them to a desirable dog from another line. The very best we can do is to revert to “average”. We are not removing the non-red balls from the bag! We may have just as many red balls as when we started, but we have just as many non-red balls as well.
By making use of filial degeneration, and selective breeding dogs with only the desirable characteristics of their parents, over time you will increase the level of “average”. If in one case average is characterized by 50% of the pups from any single cross making good dogs, and with selective breeding, and making use of filial degeneration, you raise the level of average to 90% of any litter being good dogs, you are well on your way.
__________________
Joe Newlin
UKC Cur Advocate
Home of Oak Ridge Kennels
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10-06-2008 08:28 PM
