642 – Espen Engh Offers a Master Class on Dog Breeding
Espen Engh Offers a Master Class on Dog Breeding
Famed Norwegian Greyhound breeder and judge, Espen Engh, is back with host Laura Reeves offering a Master Class on dog breeding.
“When we started out, there was a combination of two very different British strains that had proven that it worked really worked,” Engh said. “Those two breeders were at the end of their career and they hadn’t mixed their dogs a lot while they were still active. But some very clever breeder very quickly found out that combining those two lines worked extremely well and produced dogs that had been almost unheard of before truly high quality.
“So we collected different crosses between those two lines to combine our own strain to start out with. And I do think it helped a lot that my mother had been active in the breed for 20 years before breeding the first litter. She had been judging for many years as well. We didn’t have to do a lot of the beginner’s mistakes. So from day one, we were able to start at a high note.
“When the breeder repeated (that successful breeding of two disparate lines) by luck or persistence, we were able to buy what we considered to be the best bitch in that repeat litter. And she turned out to be just as good as or probably better than those puppies from that first combination. So we were able to start with a really phenomenal bitch.
“We had a phenomenal male at the time too. He was runner up top dog all breeds in Norway. And maybe if we were amateurs, or if my mother was an amateur, we would have bred those two together, but they didn’t really fit. We would double up on faults. The male turned out not to be a good stud dog at all. And we had lots and lots of litters for other breeders. We never used him. So rather than using that top winning really beautiful dog, which didn’t fit the bitch, we didn’t do that from the start.
“So our first combination was quite successful and we got an outstanding bitch in that first combination. And then we quite quickly realized that in order to progress, you know, now we have like two generations of phenomenal bitches, we would never be able to be big breeders number wise. We didn’t have a big kennel, we didn’t have the style, the facilities to breed dogs on a large scale. So we had to make a system where you can actually breed successfully from a limited number of dogs.
“And I thought, why not just base it on breeding from the very best bitch of each generation? And that’s what we did. When we were at the most active, we would have three or preferably four litters from the very best bitch of each generation.
“As Greyhounds are very fertile, you’ll get an average of like 10 puppies or nine, 10, 11, 12 puppies. Each of those top bitches would then have 20 daughters to choose from. I mean, in every litter, we would keep all the bitches that were thought were good enough. Most of them never just one, two or three. And we’d run them on until they were fully grown so we would know for sure who was the best. And selected the best bitch of each generation and repeated that.
“Now, if the mother is great, the grandmother is great and the great -grandmother is great, you’re very likely to get the really good one out of 20 bitch puppies, aren’t you? But We also need some males to breed them to.
“We also chose the second-best bitch in the generation. Remember the mother had four litters, she would be bred to four different males. We selected the second-best bitch from each generation, preferably a half-sister to the main bitch, which I call the alpha bitch. So the second best bitch, the beta bitch, we would try outcrosses on her.”
453 – Dr. Jerold Bell: Dog Breeding is Not “Paint by Numbers”
Dr. Jerold Bell: Dog Breeding is Not “Paint by Numbers”
Dr. Jerold Bell returns in part two of a wide-ranging conversation with host Laura Reeves sharing more thoughts on popular sire syndrome, as well as addressing COI, inbreeding, linebreeding, outcrossing, CHIC programs, genetics of temperament and much more.
On owning a popular sire
“It does become a personal issue as well. It is a very ego boosting thing to have a popular sire. To have a top winning stud dog. To have a national champion … everybody wants to come and breed to it. To turn people down and say I’m not going to breed to your bitch, that’s also something that involves personal emotions. We need to really think about those things. So it is up to the stud dog owners to think about how their dogs are being utilized, what you have been able to evaluate from what they have produced so far and at what point you slow it down… It really is something that the stud dog owners also have to make some concerted efforts about not causing a popular sire syndrome.
On Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI)
Concentrating on a popular sire or a popular sire line, then everyone is going to be related to that sire or sire line and therefore their matings are going to have higher homozygosity overtime. So if I see an increasing homozygosity over the generations, that tells me that they are truncating on a sire line. So it is a very valuable tool to use in a population sense.
What’s happening now is that we’re being told to utilize the tool of the inbreeding coefficient as the goal of mating. So we’re artificially manipulating the inbreeding coefficients, so we can no longer look at it and say this is an honest assessment of how the breed is utilizing their gene pool. All we can say is it’s an honest assessment of how people are manipulating their inbreeding coefficients.
Linebreeding vs Outcrossing
This is why it’s wrong to breed based on increasing coefficient. You need to breed based on what issues do you have, what issues do you not have and what do you want. So if some people feel that some breeds are having diminishing litter sizes (for example) we need to select specifically against that issue of small litter size and breed individuals have larger litters. But it’s not necessarily an inbreeding coefficient thing. It is about deleterious genes that are accumulating in the background.
Some people can line breed and have wonderful things and some people if they even attempt a mild linebreeding we’re seeing lots of disease. If they have a high amount of liability genes in their breeding dogs, then they need to decide ‘who is most important to me that I want to pass things on. Who is less important, maybe shouldn’t be breeding it because they’re producing a lot of disease.’ Then outbreed to individuals that aren’t having those issues and bring in new genes. That’s the way you utilize outbreeding to bring new things in because you’re seeing an issue. But it’s not just a breed by number situation. It’s very specific for what you’re looking for or what you’re selecting against.
How to Utilize on Outcross
Outbreeding in order to bring things in that your line doesn’t have is the proper way of doing outbreeding. You need something that you’re not getting. You’re not getting that level top line consistently. You’re not getting that reach. You’re not getting that quality of hair or whatever other things you’re selecting, or hunting ability or herding ability or whatever else. Then you want to go to lines that have that, that you don’t have. You need to make a list of what you want, what you have, what you don’t have, what you don’t want in terms of diseases or deleterious traits or conformational faults.
Then you need to prioritize those things and actually in prioritizing those things you also need to understand that certain traits, certain diseases, if you have a genetic test, now certain things you can change in one generation. But other things, conformationally wise as well as health wise and hips and so forth, can take multiple generations of selection to get what you want.
They’re complexly inherited, there are multiple genes involved. So for those types of things you really need to prioritize over many generations of ‘this is what I want.’ You don’t get it in one generation. Or if you do get it in one generation, you can easily lose it in the next generation. Because you haven’t fixed all those genes in your breeding stock.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that there is no simple easy way out of breeding dogs. ‘What’s the one thing I can do that just makes everything good?’ … there isn’t one. This is a job and we need to pay attention to what we’re doing. We need to pay attention to what we’re producing.
You know one thing I say to breeders is that on the birthday of every single litter you’ve ever produced, take the last contact that you have and contact that owner and say happy birthday and how is your dog doing. Because if you don’t know what you’ve produced over time how can you help yourself. Breeding is complicated and there isn’t a quick fix. Breeding is an avocation. But if we’re going to do it, we need to do it well.