Percentage of puppies that turn out to be good hunters

Ricko · Post by **Ricko** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 8:44 pm

I read a lot about all the emphasis put on using the different high powered bloodlines in breeding and was wondering what was the percentage of the puppies in a litter that would actually turn out to be good gun dogs? I realize that the trial guys are probably the pickiest on speed, line holding, etc. thus the reason for only going with gun dog ability. Let’s assume you give them the best chance too by using a starting pen and running them often.

Bryan · Post by **Bryan** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 10:40 pm

They should all be good gun dogs if given the training and running, as long as the parents are good gun dogs.

klrconcrete · Post by **klrconcrete** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 11:07 pm

They should all be good-with should being the key word in that phrase or you could have one good one and the rest are okay at best. If they all should be good why is there an ongoing quest by most hunters to find a decent dog? We should be able to breed dog A to Dog B if both are good top of the line hounds and get a litter of pups that grow into rabbit assassins no questions asked.

mybeagles · Post by **mybeagles** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 12:20 am

Kurt, at the rate everyone is inbreeding, I would argue in 10 more years a good hound capable of running in tough conditions that Michigan offers will be tough to find. Right now if you take the 10 most popular studs of years past and look in the pedigrees of 1000 dogs. 950 of them would have one of these 10 studs if not several, worse yet, the same dog 5,6,7 times. I keep hearing guys talk about the great success they are having with inbreeding, but to date nobody has shown me a truely dominating dog thats clearly inbred. I would like to see one some day, just so I can say Ive seen one. A friend of mine had one that I thought was going to be that dog, but at 2 years old he is going to crap on him. He blames it on the dog food.... you know thats getting bad.

goes1 · Post by **goes1** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 1:34 am

Ricko, I can only answer this from my kennel experience. I have noticed the smaller the litter the higher probablity of each pup turning into a fantastic hunter. In larger litters, the rate increases of at least 1 pup not turning out to be a hunter but to be more suited to become a lapdog.

Mybeagles, I'm not quite sure how your response answers the posters question but what you seem to be describing would be linebreeding not inbreeding.

Respectfully

Goes