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Location: Indiana
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quote:

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Originally posted by elvis
my question is this,
why are there a small handfull of breeders that just seem to have some kind of sixth sense when it comes to makeing good crosses?

Ive known 1 particular walker breeder for 20 yrs who seems to be able to make outcrosses on his line of dogs and almost always has an entire litter of above average pups. He then keeps a female from that litter and either crosses it back to his foundation stock or he may make another outcross before comming back to it. Then he may make a half bro/sis cross or has been know to cross a full bro/sis.
I am fairly certain that he has no education in the field of genetics(or anything else for that matter) and is just as lost as i am when yall start useing those genetic terms, and would roll on the floor laughing if i tried to explain the red ball green ball theory to him.

Im not at all saying you guys dont know what your talking about, obviously you do, but it just seems to me that a select few have a god given gift of knowing what cross will work or not regardless if its linebreeding,inbreeding, or total outcrosses.

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If that breeder was to oucross one of his outcrosses...what then? Filial degeneration takes over and the overall average of his pups begins to diminish....

By constantly going back and doubling on his foundation, he prevents that degeneration from happening.

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Elvis,

I have always said that dog breeding was as much an art as it was a science. In fact, my point has always been that science simply proves what all of our old time breeders have been practicing for years.

Good dog breeders know their stock. They usually have an almost intimate knowledge of their breeding stock and offspring. Science says we should know our stock as well as possible. Good dog breeders are usually super selective in what they use as breeding stock. Science says to increase the average dog we need to increase our selection. Can you imagine your budding using a cull female?

I have simply been using science as a means to support what your buddy has naturally been doing for years. What I usually post on these breeding post truly isn't any different from the practices you are are familiar with.

One of the reasons I do post quite a bit about breeding is I see an awlful lot of people making bad breeding choices based on ill conceived notions. One example is who should I breed my female too question on a message board. Has your buddy ever consulted a message board for his breeding decision?

I believe your example of your friend isn't really any different than many of the practices that Joe and I try hard to understand and to share with others.

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Larry Atherton

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I have a question. Why are the color of walkers, on average, so much more uniform and basic than BLueticks? Now, i know there are walkers that are odd colored. Joe, you have several that way. But when you look at walker dogs in general, advertised or in person or whatever, theres a really really high percentage of them that look the same. Red headed, blanket backed. That simple. But when it comes to blueticks the color variations are so different. In one litter you'll likely have 3 that are all dark blue, 3 with big black body spots on a light blue background, 2 that are light colored almost like a walker dog, and 2 that look exactly like a Black and tan except for a little blue ticking on there belly or chest. Why is this?

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Sheep,

The answer is in the complexity of the genetics that drive the bluetick and even the redtick dogs...

First off...walker colors are driven by a genetic sequence, called the spotting pattern. The pattern that you describe is called the "Irish pattern" and it is a varitation of the "spotted" pattern. "Most" walkers these days have two copies of this Irish pattern, which gives them the blanket back and tan head....it's not always been that way, but some folks have bred walker dogs with this in mind, and won't breed to an "open spotted" dog...to ensure that they get Irish pattern pups.

The "ticked" dogs, also carry a spotted pattern which gives them the large blots of color. There are sereral different variations of the spotted patter, from nearly no spots....to the Irish pattern which covers most of the body in a darker color.

With ticked dogs, only the areas that would normally be WHITE are affected by the ticking pattern. That "ticking" is not really "ticking"...but rather is more correctly identifed genetically as roan....well known color pattern in both horses and cattle.

Ticks are small "dots" of color, while roan is defined as two or more hair colors intermingled...

So, the answer to your question is that your beloved blue dogs carry a more complex genetic code for coat color...they have both the spotting pattern, and the roan patter where other dogs would have white.....

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thanks Joe, that explains it.

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Interesting discussion.

IMO, prepotency is overrated. If I breed a female to a male and I'm hoping that the pups are mostly like him, then perhaps I shouldn't be breeding that female at all.

I want the pups to get 50% after each parent. Getting the right 50% is another story....

The other thing is that breeding anything, whether its corn, cattle or coondogs involves the same principles that man has used for hundreds of years. Someone will say that you breed cattle only for beef. Thats oversimplified, but its true. Just like we could say we only breed coondogs to tree coons.

Coonhound breeders are just so backward and so far behind that when someone comes along and uses sound, junior high school breeding principles, it looks like they are some kind of genius. Chances are, they don't even really realize what they are doing, they are just instinctively doing it. Getting in the right genetics sure helps them look smarter, too.

Breeding is more than just mating the right male with the right female. Someone has to be capable of really evaluating the traits and abilities of each and I don't just mean a nite hunt record, pedigree, or what ol' so and so says. If the right 2 get put together, then there's a litter of pups. Now, someone has got to spend some quality time on those pups and again the evaluation process has to happen so the next cross can be planned. Or, if the pups are worthy, then their traits need to be known for the next generation.

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John,

I don't disagree with you at all.....

Knowing genetic principles, at a junior high school level or above, does not make it any "easier" to be a successful breeder.

But I think you would have to admit that the FOUNDATION of successful breeding is selection. Certainly not the end all and save all...

If we breed cattle for beef...someone has to feed and care for the calves...they have to be able to establish a feed to gain ratio....and they have to be able to evaluate the offspring for the betterment of their breeding herd....

I for one dont have the resources to keep every pup born here at my place....I might be better off I I cut down on breeding and focused on that....a thought that has crossed my mind on multiple occaisions....

Prepotency is over rated, when you are looking at one parent or the other to "cover up" for the other parent...and it's bound to fail. But if you had an entire line of prepotent reproducers, and you could settle on the traits that are important for you to reproduce, theoretically at least, this would be the way to ensure continued breeding success....

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I agree about keeping every pup. We have a more flawed system with coonhounds because the only real reliable way to evaluate, for selection, is more touchy-feely than based on any facts.

Cattle breeders have a mind boggling number of statistics, hard core facts, to base selection on. These numbers won't change too much because of who owns the calf.

This is where it may get to be a little bit of an art, like Larry was saying. For me, I can't keep more than 1 pup from a litter and do it justice. But I do try to keep 1 from every litter. I've kept 2 from one litter and it just doesn't work.

So, this means I am evaluating pups that go to a variety of different type handlers. Which means I am not only evaluating pups, I am now evaluating handlers, to see how they are affecting the genetic makeup of the pup, for better or worse. The more complicated it gets the more we rely on instinct and gut feeling.

Its a miracle anybody produces a pup that can tree a coon but the principles of how to do it are there if we can make them work for us.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Larry Atherton
Elvis,

I have always said that dog breeding was as much an art as it was a science. In fact, my point has always been that science simply proves what all of our old time breeders have been practicing for years.

Good dog breeders know their stock. They usually have an almost intimate knowledge of their breeding stock and offspring. Science says we should know our stock as well as possible. Good dog breeders are usually super selective in what they use as breeding stock. Science says to increase the average dog we need to increase our selection. Can you imagine your budding using a cull female?

I have simply been using science as a means to support what your buddy has naturally been doing for years. What I usually post on these breeding post truly isn't any different from the practices you are are familiar with.

One of the reasons I do post quite a bit about breeding is I see an awlful lot of people making bad breeding choices based on ill conceived notions. One example is who should I breed my female too question on a message board. Has your buddy ever consulted a message board for his breeding decision?

I believe your example of your friend isn't really any different than many of the practices that Joe and I try hard to understand and to share with others.

---

Last edited by elvis on 10-11-2008 at 05:12 AM

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The only part about this i hate is listening to Joe about the subject will get you depressed!!!!!!!! LOL LOL Basically, it doesn't matter what dogs you breed, they get sorrier and sorrier from one generation to the next!!!!!!!!!!! Something about "filly degeneration"..............

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Not to Preach on John Wicke but he also Kept and trained the Entire Litter untill he was confident he could pick out the "Keepers" but he also had the Remaining Started pups to sell or Cull ..

He then Bred on the good ones ..

But I don't think he ran a Second Line to breed back on when needed.. So I gess he lost it..

Now Dave Dean did run 2 Seperate Lines plus kept the Good ones Close to him to breed back on ..

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This has always been a subject of great interest to me, and the only thing I really know for sure is that I don't know anything about dog breeding. There are a few things I have noticed about dogs reproducing though. #1. It seems that rarely do you see a stud dog that is from a dominant historical stud ever go down in the history books as huge as his sire. and a dominant reproducer have sons that ever reach the level of dominance of their sire. However it seems that so many times you will see the next big thing come from a daughter of that historical sire. One example I always used in my breed, Black and Tans, was Tenn. Fiddler, even though Fiddler produced many good pups and had many good sons that achieved some level of success at reproducing none ever reached the level or had the impact that Fiddler did, however a daughter of Fiddler produced Ozarks Screaming Bo who was possibly the next big stud after Fiddler. Look at Nocturnal Nailor, his mother was a daughter of Houses Lipper. Now I know that Houses Lipper produced Wagner's Stylish Lipper who was probably very close in reproducing ability as his sire and that Rat Attack has met or surpassed his sire, Sackett Jr., in fame and reproducing, so this tells me that nothing is written in stone. #2. there seems to be a trend of dominant reproducing females passing on that dominance to her daughters or at least one of them. Again an example in the Black and tan breed has been Gr.Nt.Ch. Bailies Ozarks Patsie who produced Gr.Nt.Ch. Fox River Mandy who produced Gr.Nt.Ch.Bauer's Kansas Jewell all being top reproducers. Just look at Gr.Nt.Ch. Abbott's Big Horn Daisy who had a whopping reproducing average of 62.86% who produced GR.Nt.Ch. Abbott's Nocturnal Jodie which has another whopping 64.86% average. It just seems that you can track reproducing abilities from mothers to daughters and on down the line.

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quote:

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Originally posted by smokey7
I have a question. Why are the color of walkers, on average, so much more uniform and basic than BLueticks? Now, i know there are walkers that are odd colored. Joe, you have several that way. But when you look at walker dogs in general, advertised or in person or whatever, theres a really really high percentage of them that look the same. Red headed, blanket backed. That simple. But when it comes to blueticks the color variations are so different. In one litter you'll likely have 3 that are all dark blue, 3 with big black body spots on a light blue background, 2 that are light colored almost like a walker dog, and 2 that look exactly like a Black and tan except for a little blue ticking on there belly or chest. Why is this?

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