Puppies, Breeding and MONEY????

[Duke]

Danny you said a lot, and I am very aware of Reggies background and your friend is in my opinion missing an opportunity. Its not just the name of the kennel, it is from the very best that that kennel produces that makes better hounds. All of us have pups that come out of litters that do not make the grade and they still have the name of our kennel on it. Hopefully if we do our job right it is fewer and fewer as we breed better stock.

I personally hope that I do not ever get to a point where I believe that I cannot improve on what someone else does, and that some cannot improve on what I do, your friend may be missing the boat or is just not motivated enough to try to improve things and is satisfied with someone elses line.

What makes a good breeder? He starts with someone elses blood, hopefully he has done his or her homework, and started with quality stock and then improves that stock to make it better, and then from better to great. He works harder, understands hounds better and seeks the best he can find and produces hounds with greater POTENTIAL. Which then produces better value.

[bill (flint river )]

so pedigree is what u look at. alot of people say blueback had papers put on him. alot of people. then he came up dead. i dont know the hole story. and i dont care either way. but if he was as good as they say so what. he seems to throw alot of good traits in his off spring and u may never know were he came from.

[TomMN]

I used to be a big believer in pedigrees. I raised coonhounds (and beagles) for many years. I studied and memorized pedigrees on many famous stud dogs and females. I have come to the point that I don't think pedigrees help in making breeding decisions and may even do more harm than good. In fact, I'm sure using pedigrees in your breeding decisions will hurt more than help.

Not that it isn't important to know the background of the dogs you are breeding. It's just that you can't learn anything useful about a dog without actualy spending lots of time hunting with it. If you didn't know the dog very well, seeing his name on the pedigree just lets you make lots of assumptions about how the pups will turn out. Most of those assumptions will be wrong in my experience.

Even if you know all the dogs in the pedigree, it is only a guidline at best. I have several dogs from the same litter. They range in ability from below average to outstanding. All have the exact same pedigree.

I also have a female with no known pedigree. She has produced a high percentage of very good offspring. I just bred her again and if she has pups, none of them will be leaving here.

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you don't know the pedigree without having to see it on paper, it aint going to help you. Even if you do know your dogs background inside and out, you can't know for sure what kind of pups it will produce until you see for yourself.

I think the most important tool by far in breeding dogs is selection. Find the individuals that come the closest to the standard you are trying to achieve and cross them regardless of how they are bred. Pick the very best of the best from several litters for future breeding stock and cross them with others like them. Keep this up for several years and you might get lucky and get an outstanding strain of dogs that reproduce themselves reliably. There are no shortcuts.

Pedigrees are fun to look at though

[Bev]

TomMN, I feel you have to do both - study the dogs in the pedigree, and study your dog on the ground. If you make the crosses as you suggest, then write down who was who, how they performed or reproduced, if they were a dud, if they had too much mouth...in short, keep a record of it, so essentially you're doing the same thing as creating a useful pedigree for future breeding decisions. Not every pup in a litter will turn out to meet your standards no matter how you go about breeding for them.

[jonnyringo]

It's not just pedigrees alone. I figured it is common sense that one would be breeding the best bitch to the best stud available AND look at dogs pedigrees closely. Hell, don't take my word on it, go to the library and read up on breeding. It's a NO BRAINER.
Another thing many don't do is cull. They just sell the bad ones on these type boards instead of having them fixed or put down.

[TomMN]

Bev, I agree with you 100%. But then, you would not need to write all that down. I'm sure you remember all the dogs you had and their good and bad traits.

Writing down all that information would be helpfull to someone who didn't hunt with these dogs. Trouble is, fast or slow, good line control, rough, all mean different things to different people. There is no substitute for seeing it for yourself.

Still, what if someone like Willet Randall had written down all the information on every dog he bred and raised. Probably wouldn't do much to help us breed dogs but wouldn't that be interesting to read?

[S.R.Patch]

Tom,
He did, Mr. Capozzi has them. Little red pocket booklets with the tiniest, neatest writing I've seen, really needed a magnifying glass to read them. The crosses, mothering, no. pups, resulting qualities were all in there. He also had a pedigree book with the pages split in half. The top half were filled in with the sire's pedigrees and the bottom halfs were filled in with the bitches pedigree, this way, you could turn the pages to match-up any sire and bitch and see how the pedigree of each lined up.
I saw Cupid's hide on the floor and the old rams horn Willet was given, still makes the hair on my neck stand to think about it, what a great day it was to be at Beaver Meadows. I've got some pictures I'll try an dig out...

The pedigree is a part of the essential tools used in breeding, if your simply breeding best to best without reguard to pedigee, you truly are breeding the lottery. There are performers and there are producers, rarely one and the same. It is the intertwining of these to create a family that gives quality with the greatest degree of consistency.
Your comments are repeated by those who've felt the sting of failure and have thrown up their hand claiming there is no science in the breeding of good hounds but rather, like produces like, reguardless of background...

[marr24]

The pedigree is a part of the essential tools used in breeding, if your simply breeding best to best without reguard to pedigee, you truly are breeding the lottery. There are performers and there are producers, rarely one and the same. It is the intertwining of these to create a family that gives quality with the greatest degree of consistency.

Very well said.

[TomMN]

S.R.Patch, you are right in that I have felt the sting of failure many times, as has anyone who has been at this game any length of time. Many of those failures were the result of breeding to dogs with outstanding pedigrees and reproduction records. I knew they were outstanding because everyone said so. I realy didn't know much about them from personal experience. Looking back after time I found that I had better reproducing males in my kennel than those I chased after. If I could only go back 30 years and do things different!

I still have failures but they are much less common these days.

"if your simply breeding best to best without reguard to pedigree, you truly are breeding the lottery. There are performers and there are producers, rarely one and the same. It is the intertwining of these to create a family that gives quality with the greatest degree of consistency."

I fully agree with your statement. I will also add that if you have not personaly hunted with the dogs in the pedigree under many different conditions, along with their littermates and offspring from other crosses, the pedigree is meaningless. If you try to assume things about those dogs listed on the pedigree going by what others have said, no matter how well informed they may be, you may be setting yourself up for failure.

Every time you make a cross that you have not made before you are breeding the lottery to some extent. No one can know which dogs are producers before they are ever bred. I don't have many illusions left about breeding dogs when it comes to names on pedigrees. I go by the old saying "don't believe anything you hear (or read) and only half of what you see".

[Duke]

Bill,
I do look for Blueback in pedigrees, and not as much that he won the World, Little World, HOY, but the fact that he was a Hall of Fame producer. He was one of those great hounds that passed on good genentics. I will always be happy to see his name in a pedigree.

However, I do not pretend that Pedigrees are a be all, end all. S.R. Patch said it correctly in that they are an ESSENTIAL TOOL. Raising and breeding good hounds is a lot like anything else. If I said you were a carpenter and I handed you a tool box with only a hammer in it, how far would you go???? However if I gave you a toolbox with all the hand tools along with power tools, nails and wood, then if you had the knowledge you could be a carpenter. Pedigrees are the blueprints to breeding. If you like to build houses without blueprints, fine by me.

Again it is all about what you want in a hound, and what they are worth to you, again they do not have to come from big names like Branko, or out of hounds such as Blueback. There are tons of very good hunting dogs out there that all of you know about that are worth breeding to. My object was to get everyones opinion an what they feel is important when breeding puppies in regards to quality, and money.

[TomMN]

It's a good subject Duke.

My intentions were not to change anyones mind, just maybe to make them stop and think. If I can save someone from having to learn things the hard way as I did, so much the better.

[Alabama John]

Tom

I have raised many pups in my day and always breed to a dog I have been in the woods with hunting, not trialing. Also want to see other pups out of him and what they are like. I've never bred to a male the first time and won't. I want it in its prime though as I think the gene mix is somewhat are different in a dogs old age.

I always know my female well, want more like her, or don't breed her.
I don't plan a breeding hoping to cover up faults or to average out best traits. What I'm looking for is a good match up for her. Papered or not.

A friend of mine lost a coon dog in the woods here in Alabama and went to the World hunt and it was drawn in a cast with him.The owner lived in Ohio and bought it off a trader. Dogs can sure travel.

Heard for many years that Blueback was not registered, doesn't matter to me, but wouldn't it be something if he was one of several dogs we have lost over the years. Odds are its not, but could be!

[Rabbithoundjb]

All I have to say is when I see a bloodline that can consistently out performs my grade dogs on the ground, not on paper or by the tongue then you'll have my attention. My experience in the past has been once I invite them to run that ends the hype and I'm not saying I have the best dogs in the world because I have seen better but they also were grade dogs bred by rabbit hunters, as I have said before I have seen a lot less top quality registered dogs than I have seen that were worth the price tag on them, that's why those high priced mediocra dogs belong to someone else. That's also why so many are for sale, if they were that good they wouldn't be for sale. I have 10 that money can't buy.

[S.R.Patch]

It takes nothing to make a grade dog, a grade dog is only a hound with unknown registered history. When the boys stole Bob Patch, he became a grade dog, when the fella in Ga. didn't pay for Buddy & Mossie Patch, they became grade dogs, it didn't change their genetic make-up or their producing powers, only that the linage that produced them was lost.
As Duke said, the blueprint showed this house was built of salt treated lumber, don't use plain steel nails and pine to add-on and expect it to stay together and last as long...

[jonnyringo]

Well put SR Patch and Duke.
The blueprint or pedigree is an extremely important piece of the puzzle for successful select breeding to produce the best rabbit dogs, according to the traits that the field trialer or hunter desire.
Breed accordingly with the best stock available and cull as required.