Best to best or Family breeding?

[Balkanboys]

As the reader may be well aware, there are differing opinions on breeding models. What works best?Which breeding is paramount: best to best or family breeding? Best to best implies breeding the best male available to the best female. Family breeding connotes also breeding best to best, but there is an emphasis on staying within a group of dogs that are related. Thus, they are a "family" of dogs. Out crosses are only made for very good reasons.
The strength of a bloodline can be greatly weakened by mating to an unreliable dog or bitch.However, while the bloodline may be weakened, the quality of the pups might still be good if the combination were a lucky one. It will be important to breed offspring of an outcross back into either the sire or the dam's line.Inbreeding intensifies all qualities, whether good or bad. Remember that!!So you must bred the best and cull the rest!!
If most of the characteristics are good, inbreeding is an excellent way to obtain uniform type, since each parent is dominant principally in the same qualities.

ADVANTAGES TO FAMILY BREEDING

The idea is to husband and guard the desirable genes.the breed itself is a sort of "family," in that all individuals are related to some degree.One of the advantages is that you know all the ancestry. No compromises have been made. There are no skeletons in the closet. Family breeding can be done by one individual or by a number of different people.
Not content with simply breeding a family of great dogs, breeders can actually eliminate health problems and physical faults in a family of dogs. The close breeding that is used in family breeding brings Recessive faults to the surface. In other words, there will be more defective dogs, at first. But continually removing such individuals from the Gene pool over a long period of time (numerous generations) will eliminate the genes that produce these defects. Only rare mutations will produce any blind or deaf dogs or dogs susceptible to certain ailments. This is certainly a desirable feature of family breeding. Truth to tell, it will work in Outbreeding programs, too, but such efforts will be much less effective there, as there is a dilution of the effect because of so many dogs—and all it takes is one maverick breeder to reproduce a defective dog to throw the undesir-able characteristic back into the hopper.
One of the best features of family breeding is uniformity.The drive in dogs will be more consistent, as will ability. It is not for no reason that time-honored breeders kept their strains closely bred. After achieving a high quality line that bred true, any individual would be foolish to make an Outcross and incorporate the progeny into the Strain. However, I think a lot of those old-time breeders were blinded by the power of Inbreeding. It is a powerful tool to achieve uniformity and to purge a Strain of physical defects, but it is not the only path. I am sometimes confounded that I spent so much time writing to debunk some of the myths of Inbreeding and then discover that some breeders think that it is the only way to breed. There are, in fact, some problems with family breeding.

DISADVANTAGES OF FAMILY BREEDING

One of the main problems of family breeding is that you need lots of time to establish a Strain. I am often amused at young breeders who claim a Strain when they have only bred one or two generations of dogs. Technically, a Strain consists of at least eleven generations. If you are going to do family breeding, the smart thing is to start out with a quality line. But there are other disadvantages, too.

You need a lot of dogs in order to family breed. By that, I mean that you will have to maintain a lot of dogs. You can start out with just a pregnant dog and breed her to the best male. But you should be able to Keep all the progeny. That is the basis of all Selective Breeding, family model or not, you must raise up a lot of dogs and then breed only to the very best individuals. The secret of success is not mere addition, but subtraction, too. The individual dogs that don't measure up don't have to be euthanized, but they must be removed from the breeding program.
If you are going to do family breeding, you need to know yourself enough to know that you are in the Game for the long haul. You also need a place where you can maintain a lot of dogs.In any case, family breeding will never come to fruition for you if you are not one of those who are in the breed for a "life sentence," so to speak.
The most infamous drawback to family breeding is that many breeders use the bloodlines to justify breeding a couple of weak dogs. In fact, I would guess that more weak dogs have been deliberately bred based on the idea that the quality of the family would ensure some good pups. Well, it usually does, but such practices certainly weaken the line.
Another problem with family breeding is that the line can undergo a weakening. It doesn't have to happen, but it is one of the characteristics of Inbreeding that there is some sort of degeneration, from a loss of fertility to a loss of vigor. Very careful selection can prevent this from happening, but very few people are able to be that selective.

OUTBREEDING

The fact is that people have produced some fine dogs from Outbreeding. That way you can breed best to best on a much wider basis, so the "best" is likely to be very good, as it just may be the very best dog in the country. At least, the sire may be, as some of the best dogs are often purchased and placed at public stud. People who use this system may be interested in working with a smaller group of dogs, and they are probably interested in quick results. They start out by getting the best female that they can attain and then breed to what they perceive as the best male. They may choose to only raise the females. The one that turns out the best is, in Turn, bred to the best male available. Some of the best stables of dogs that I know were produced in that way. The important point here is that good judgment must be used in selecting the studs. However, the very fact that some our all-time best dogs were not family bred, strictly speaking, and may even have been called "scatter bred" is testament to the fact that out-breeding can work, too.
One of the main problems with Outbreeding is to verify the pedigrees of dogs that are used in the breeding program. It does no good to breed to an outstanding individual if he is the exception to his ancestry and he is down from a passel of decent dogs!In family breeding, the common mistake is breed to a couple of weak dogs that are down from good dogs that are tightly bred. In Outbreeding, the most typical error is to breed two great dogs that are themselves poorly bred. And then, the perpetrators wonder why the pups are only average—or worse!

COMMENTS

That fact is that breeding dogs can be a tough row to hoe irrespective of which model you choose. And most of us use a little of both.It takes experience to develop an eye for the dogs enough to evaluate them well. Also, it takes some time to get to know individual dogs by experience or reputation so that a pedigree can be properly evaluated. The time was that it was almost possible to know every good dog in the country, but that time has long passed.

In the final analysis, either Inbreeding or outbreeding-or both-can be effectively used by a breeder who is motivated and has a good knowledge of these dogs. There are drawbacks to family breeding, and I have mentioned just a few of them. It is nevertheless one of the most powerful tools to producing good dogs.

[Balkanboys]

Breeding toward a Family

What does it mean to have a family of dogs?

“ To me this means the individuals are fewest outcrossed of a breed of dog. This can be shown once accomplished many ways. It is True and I think few can dispute the fact that when a breeder hones in on a particular family of dogs the individual dogs will start to show more consistency and the breeders yard will start to transform from dogs with many attributes to dogs with more consistent look and temperament. At this point many modern breeders start to understand the TRUTH they have in their family of dogs they are creating or better yet RE Creating. If the family of dogs the breeder started with has few outcrosses to other familys of dogs and has been culled at that time to eliminate the weak the outcome from backwards breeding to remove the outcross familys will result in the breeder honing in on the family they desired.”

Do Pedigrees Show the Family?

“ It is true that some dogs today show more of one family then another and we can see this by several things. One way to see this is using the pedigree to show the dogs with the fewest outcrosses, if we can trace a dogs lineage back to the once KNOWN purer family dogs then we can also see which dogs of today have the fewest outcrosses to other familys.”

Why did the familys get crossed if Purer familys are better?


The idea was to Keep what they had and not to loose it and in turn they were also Culling the outcrosses from their familys to get more consistent dogs with a certain look and character. This breeding took years of culling and inbreeding to create a pure family of dog,but when the dog lack something,they had to OUTCROSS their stock to gain what they haven't before.

What Family was the Best or was the Cross the best?

The proof of the familys was determined in the box and the results have varied in time. The Early Colby dogs like Kager and Pincher were very Strong Powerful built dogs and their winning record is proof of their ability as a Pure Family. Many Irish Dogs had similar winning Records. The matching of familys is the matching of One Style into another or one mans understanding against another. Breeding and pedigree shows what family the breeder is breeding toward and his charges will show that style.

Its also known that familys have Strong Points and for some familys it seems their strong points were the strong character,drive,gameness,stamina etc while for others those Strong Points reffers more at physical appearance(strong & powerfull bodies). That's why,Crossing of a known family with another one could create a NEW FAMILY of dogs.
So this begins the Experiment phase of the familys and now NEW bodies emarge,new colors emerge, new character emerge, NEW FAMILYS EMERGE.

Familys I believe are created around what suites the breeder the best, if a breeder is known to be a better show-man I would tend to say he would favor the heavily on the roughness of the bullier type dogs. The opposite type person sets their sites on creating their family around the lighter type dogs,but with strong character & very good stamina.

Will Crossed family dogs reproduce the same as what made them when bred together?

No, not consistently. Yes the genes could line up in certain individuals from a cross to a cross to produce what your Pure family dog to your other pure family dog was but we are talking percentages and consistency and to do this correctly a breeder has to understand what Familys were used to create the dog he desires.For this we have pedigrees and pictures or maybe even videos that we can study to understand what each family looked like, what their character were ext. We also can see what family combinations worked best and were proven to work best for the guarding,personal protection,the shows,depending on the breeder's choice.

Do I have a family pedigree or one mans name shown a lot on my pedigree?

The first topic of this conversation was < what does it mean to have a family of dogs > and this to me means that a family is the dogs with the fewest outcrosses to other familys of dogs. So if we see one mans name many times on a pedigree we associate that with a family of dogs and this may or may not be the truth, just because the mans name shows up many times on a pedigree we cant say that is now a family of dogs we can only say that he has bred a lot of dogs. So to me the only way to tell if you are breeding toward a family of dogs is to first have a starting point with the dogs. Once you have selected a lineage of dogs to work with you can use Inbreeding and Line Breeding to breed toward the desired family of your choice because the modern dogs are more or less a crossed family dog today, but it would only make sense to start with a lineage of dogs that you have researched to show the fewest outcrosses to the UNDESIRED FAMILYS you tend to cull from your breeding anyway.

Once I have a lineage of dogs NOW WHAT?

When a breeder has what he has shown to be a lineage with the fewest outcrosses to the undersired familys they can Inbreed on the Male that shows them the best characteristics of the family they are trying to re create. The Old Timers Crossed it to gain an advantage over a style while the modern breeders have to breed totally opposite, we have to breed backwards to get our familys pure so we can cross it to what has proven to work in the past. So now the breeder selects his male and he breeds this male to the closest relative that shows the same desired characteristics of that family.

Once this is done your offspring SHOULD be purer of family then the Sire or the Dam, because you are breeding this purer of family, if the results vary or the offspring does not show you to be more like the desired family you are trying to hone in on then you might be dealing with untrue pedigrees on your dogs and what looks on paper like you are tighting, you are actually breeding away from. But for conversation sake we will assume once again that your pedigrees are True Enough that you see some results, its not 100 percent yet but you see it getting closer to what you want. This is proven the truth of what family you have and this is done by breeding around one male, and if you are able to inbreed on that male and each time you do the results are closer and closer to the family you desire then your confidence in his pedigree being true become more and more.

BUT on the same token you have to expect the genes of the outcrosses to line up as well and if you throw a 40% white dog or more from within this family of dog, you should not breed around this dog because this dog has to have the genes lined up of the family you are trying to breed out in it and if you breed this dog to your family dogs now you will be adding in a genetic BOMB that you created within your family of dogs but the pedigrees will look the same between the undesired and the desired only the understanding of you as a breeder to know what family it is you seek will allow you to make the right choices when the genes show so heavily in one individual. This is where a lot of breeders go wrong today in my opinion and they look to a pedigree and say look how tight this dog is of this but they don’t look at the individual and think WHY does this dog not look like his family?

When a breeder inbreeds its dangerous because you not only tighten the desired genes but you tighten the undesired genes as well so Culling is important in inbreeding. So its important to understand the family well you intend to breed toward because if you don’t know what the family it is your breeding for or how it looked or its character then how the hell are you going to breed it purer of that family? I don’t know either but its funny to me that many a man think he has a pure family of dogs when you cant see any consistency of a family within the yard.

Once you have a pure family then what?

Once you have a pure family of dogs you will have consistency, your dogs will not only look alike they will have the same character and same mannerisms, they will be like identical clones.

But also!! Can you breed two good dogs together of unknown breedings and have some good dogs?

Sure but can you do it consistently? These breeders who think a good one is where you find it will always be looking for something to add to their dogs and will be easy targets to serious breeders that understand familys and character of the familys and if you understand how to consistently create the character of dog then you understand how to pure a family and if you understand how to create a more powerful more versatile dog from the combinations of two pure familys or more, then you understand how the greats created the true guarding dogs.

You understand what it took genetically to get your blood free from the undesired familys so you could work with a KNOWN, then by looking at what has been done in the past successfully you will know what family combination worked the best.

Can backwards breeding be done today since the dogs are so outcrossed?

I hear people say this idea cant be done, but when you do it and see it for yourself then does it really matter what people think that have not seen what you have seen? It can be done and its already been done many many times, sometimes its so obvious that it cant be seen by people but stop and think of dogs that you know of that were black for generations and when inbred you see a different looking animal you see a white animal that doesn’t look like the dogs that created it, and ask yourself how can that be if you know the breeding is True as the pedigree shows it. Some of the breeders that attacked this understanding are doing it and don’t even know it.

They do it by sheer luck sometimes and then the results are good and they are breeding the best to best within their own family of dogs but only see it as best to best ( performance wise and don’t see the point that they have actually used performance to cull the undesired familys from within their line of dogs to the point where they have PURER of Family dogs.

These people are so narrow focused on this idea that they sometimes will believe its only performance and when they outcross their once proven stock to a Male or Female from a different family they start loosing what took them YEARS to get and then they blame it on that other family when in reality it was their own lack of family breeding that got them where they are at and they will outcross again and again to get back the dogs like they once had that were purer of family then any outcrosses they can add usually.
So if you inbreed and you get closer you have fewer outs but if you inbreed and your results start showing variation then you are not puren on any one family.
Looking at scatterbred family dogs its impossible to tell what family they are or what they will reproduce but when you inbreed a family you will understand more easily what family each individual of that litter has most of in it.
Every attribute or characteristic of a dog is a piece of a puzzle that helps you as a breeder determine what family that dog is. I have seen brother and sister of tight LINE BRED familys of dogs that were totally different dogs. One dog would be bully in build,with a mannerism that displays it and a bark that is much different and a movement and style that is much different from its litter mate that showed a different style, a different mannerism, and not only did the physical features look different but even the bark of the dog was different, this is being able to identify what family each individual is, from the research you done on the FAMILYS THAT CREATED OUR MODERN DOGS.

Some breeders can start with one family and totally breed away from what they once had by using pedigree alone, it takes a deeper understanding and ability to see the familys to pure them. Anyone one with any family today can do this and some breeders today that are boasting Pure Family have never showed to understand or practice this breeding but they are fast to show a pedigree and believe they are pure but ask that breeder what family are they pure of and watch them stop in their tracks and if they give you an answer ask for an example as why you feel your dogs are pure of that family and the silence is evident across the entire spectrum….


We all want the same thing in these dogs and each wants the best but I believe it’s the ones that use the information from the past that has the advantages today, because the older pedigrees are a wealth of knowledge and you can spend countless time understanding what familys made a particular dog and then seeing what Familys worked the best from that dog.

From what I have seen, very few people practice family breeding, more people go with short term of what they see, they start with a line of dogs they like and the best to best is what they use, this will eventually get you there but why not use best to best within a family breeding? The reason most don’t is because it takes more time and more patience.
But the end results are worth it, your yard will be more consistent and if done right you will know exactly what combinations of familys give you the desired outcome you want because this has all been done before so your not creating anything you are cheating from whats been done already. Having the patience to cull out the undesired genes takes a long time so its best to start with a line that has been applying this for you before you get started, the results speak for themselves when done right.

Character show family………….Consistency of Character,show purity of a family……..

[Antonio D.]

excellent articles. thanks for sharing :)

[pynadath]

best to the best within line breeding and out cross once in a while to prevent limiting the gene pool.
works well when trying to breed "game" pits.