Half Brother/Sister Cross??

[BCBeagles]

I am going to attempt to make this cross this weekend. The more I have thought about it and the quality of the hounds involved the more excited I am on it. Could be some nice ones could be some idiots, at least I will know??

[warddog]

WOW, took me some time to read through all this post as I usually don't read all the dispute on breeding because I've yet to see anyone with a Masters in breeding beagles. What I do see is debaters. I've also never seen anyone be able to consistantly reproduce the very likeness of what they are breeding for be it inbred, linebred or totally outcrossed. What I have seen is the very likeness being replicated over and over again but it wasn't through any breeding program but rather it is done in a lab and it's called CLONING! Until someone can bred two individual dogs and reproduce offspring that is their very likeness, every time, we will have nothing but opinions and no need to cast stones amoung those voicing them as they are entitled to them as you and I. All I can say, is beings there is no vast consistancy amoung any line of hounds there is and has been NO actual authority on doing so and therefore the theories and opinions continue to flow. I can understand the mathematics and statistics behind limiting the gene pool through line and in-breeding so as to have a better possibility of loading up on the ones folks are looking for but that has been done for numerous years and as far as I know there has not been one single line dominate when ALL the traints come to a perfect match. I've read most on the boards state that there is no perfect hound and that's because we all use our opinion or theory in how to do that and the only way it has been done is in a bottle! Imo there is no right or wrong and it is a gamble regardless of how you try to match things up unless you know how to make that genie in a bottle. So I say pull the arm on the one armed bandit and let the cherries line up however they may. You may get lucky and hit the jack pot once BUT don't expect to do it with the very same cross the next time or each and every time.

[Kenny VanHoose]

I am going to attempt to make this cross this weekend. The more I have thought about it and the quality of the hounds involved the more excited I am on it. Could be some nice ones could be some idiots, at least I will know??

If the parents are good dogs theres a good chance you'll get good offspring. I've said this before but you dont get idiots from breeding close, you get idiots from breeding idiots !!!

[Norshore]

I am going to attempt to make this cross this weekend. The more I have thought about it and the quality of the hounds involved the more excited I am on it. Could be some nice ones could be some idiots, at least I will know??

If the parents are good dogs theres a good chance you'll get good offspring. I've said this before but you dont get idiots from breeding close, you get idiots from breeding idiots !!!

Yup...What he said!!!

[S.R.Patch]

You know, I am always amazed at the number of people who post opinions on topics, but never post personal experience to back them up.
It's easy to form an opinion from looking in, but another to actually have some skin in the game and trying to do the best you can with what you got and then lay yourself out for success, failure or some degree of the middle ground and then be scrutinized by others who've invested no time, study, investment or involvement in the process.(boy, is that a run-on sentence or what? )

Lets hear some personal involvement stories of what's formed your opinion and the hounds involved in those experiments?
Let's get personal if you have the true conviction of your statements and have proof of what you believe to back it up.

I'd love to hear Fredia's and Branko's story of the beagle trail journey and what (if using hindsight) they'd have done different,... or what usage of tools, with what hounds they'd have concentrated more on to bring their line forward.
One life time is hardly enough,... if we can benefit from the experience of others who've already walked to trail, the better to save us those mistakes repeated...

[littlewoody]

You know, I am always amazed at the number of people who post opinions on topics, but never post personal experience to back them up.
It's easy to form an opinion from looking in, but another to actually have some skin in the game and trying to do the best you can with what you got and then lay yourself out for success, failure or some degree of the middle ground and then be scrutinized by others who've invested no time, study, investment or involvement in the process.(boy, is that a run-on sentence or what? )

Lets hear some personal involvement stories of what's formed your opinion and the hounds involved in those experiments?
Let's get personal if you have the true conviction of your statements and have proof of what you believe to back it up.

I'd love to hear Fredia's and Branko's story of the beagle trail journey and what (if using hindsight) they'd have done different,... or what usage of tools, with what hounds they'd have concentrated more on to bring their line forward.
One life time is hardly enough,... if we can benefit from the experience of others who've already walked to trail, the better to save us those mistakes repeated...

+1 Well said!

[warddog]

I'll start off by saying and making it clear that I don't profess to be any authority on hounds in any way, shape or form. I'm also no breeder or trialer but have followed hounds and hunting since old enough to follow behind my elders. As a kid I grew up hunting and following hounds as a means of assisting in feeding our family. This was a way of life not a hobby but as I've gotten older the need to assist the grocery bill has twendled and the following of the hounds and hunting has became a hobby and entertainment. My posts are nothing more than a compilation of at least 55 years of following the hounds be they coon hounds or beagles. We never bred dogs to sell or even to better the breed back then because that wasn't the main thing on our minds. Our intent was to replace our source of putting food on the table as we found out real quick it was easier to do that when we had hounds doing the work. Yes, we could and did put some meat on the table when we had no other means to do so other than to jump shoot them but the meat on the table and the cost of shells made that a very lacking proposition. We had always had some ole rabbit dogs that we picked up, mostly given to us here or there that would run a rabbit to the gun and that was our only concern and we never paid any attention to much of anything else as our only concern was to be able to harvest some meat without shooting it to pieces as we did when unloading numerous shots when jump shooting. When these ole pot lickers, that could circle a rabbit to the gun started putting some age on we would cross the best ones we had amoung the entire family consisting of what my dad had as well as my grendfathers, and uncles. We never had more than two dogs apiece as we just couldn't afford taking care of any more than that so at that time we were actually crossing the best to the best that we had and knew nothing of where they came from. When the litter was whelped the entire litter would be distributed among the family so no one would be stuck with the burden of having many extra hound mouths to feed. I can say at this point only the off spring that showed the same as the best that were bred were kept and the other lesser performers were culled out of necessity to lessen the mouths to feed. It wasn't until the entire family decided to go together to buy an AKC registered male dog did we start to notice differences in how well different dogs circled a rabbit. By the way so you will have an idea of what money was like back then my dad and two uncles pooled their money to buy ole Whitey for $35.00 with a set of AKC papers we knew nothing about at the time other than we had heard about how good papered dogs were. I'll have to stop here as this has already turned into a book but I think you can see where this is going so far and I'm only into my teenage years of experiance of breeding the best to the best good ole dogs and keeping only the best from the entire litter to now having some idea of what we were breeding. I'll end here making the statement that our yardstick back then was piling the tailgate full with the least amount of shells used with the least amount of dogs to feed and having dogs that could get rabbits up as close to home as possible. The hunting close to home was tough due to pressure as every other hunter was trying to do the same thing back then and although gas was but a few cents per gallon those extra few cents were hard to come by and they weren't spent for the mere pleasure of it. Our competition wasn't judged on a score card but on putting some meat for the table.

[S.R.Patch]

Have you ever seen a whole litter of 14-16 week old pups run a rabbit?
I've done it a number of times, got a litter now that are 3 months old and have found their nose. I'll take them and get them started while I'm on midnight shift, should have them going in a couple of weeks. They'll still be puppies but folks will come get them and get to see them start and run a wild rabbit as a group.
That's what I call breeding hunt and consistency in a litter. I never had that before I got the patches,...
My grade dogs, if I got one or two pups out of a litter before that would hunt and run, that was about the average, the rest were culls. I tried a couple of other registered lines before I got the patches,...one, the pups were so hyper and fussy that I questioned their mental stability,...the other, I bred a niece to her uncle and got a whole litter of deformed culls with no desire to hunt. It was obvious I was using the wrong pair or there was a lot of culling that hadn't been done to clean up the line.
I believe the best you can do is search out the people that will be honest with you, that breed a family of hounds you like and hold their hounds to a standard of high expectation. By that I don't mean super hounds, but hounds of a high percentage that when bred, will make good hunters that you can enjoy the run and kill rabbits off of. jmho

[tommyg]

You know, I am always amazed at the number of people who post opinions on topics, but never post personal experience to back them up.
It's easy to form an opinion from looking in, but another to actually have some skin in the game and trying to do the best you can with what you got and then lay yourself out for success, failure or some degree of the middle ground and then be scrutinized by others who've invested no time, study, investment or involvement in the process.(boy, is that a run-on sentence or what? )

Lets hear some personal involvement stories of what's formed your opinion and the hounds involved in those experiments?
Let's get personal if you have the true conviction of your statements and have proof of what you believe to back it up.

I'd love to hear Fredia's and Branko's story of the beagle trail journey and what (if using hindsight) they'd have done different,... or what usage of tools, with what hounds they'd have concentrated more on to bring their line forward.
One life time is hardly enough,... if we can benefit from the experience of others who've already walked to trail, the better to save us those mistakes repeated...

I sell very few and buy fewer. Been raising the same line from the get go. Bernard Mullinex told me a long time ago not to breed to something that couldn't beat what I have in the field,stuck with it because If you ever seen Buddy One go or Brusier or just about any of his older hounds you'd know why. That is why I line breed and out cross to hounds only better than I have. It works if you like what you have,or try to improve what you have. If I breed to a Male I have to watch him run against what I have. If I have a male that has what people want I'll tell them the truth about the Hound but my advise would be to watch them run against what you have that will tell the story.