Creating your own line

Having gone to school for genetics and growing up around animals my entire life, this seems really 'basic' to me. However I'm sure there are many who wonder why they aren't seeing results in their breeding programs after a litter or two (or lambing season/calving season,breeding season etc).

Since I've been breeding cattle and pigeons the longest I'll talk about them mostly. This can be related to dogs and sheep and just about anything else.

First of all. Find something you like to look at, and stick with it! There are so many people in pigeons who are raising for example the English Trumpeter. I"ve been breeding them for 14 years and still am having inconsistent results. Why? Because I'm going solely on color or gender, not on overall type. On the opposite side of the coin, I have been raising Homing Pigeons for 15 years. I started with all out crosses (still all homing pigeons, just different lines and different 'families' within lines. From that beginning I closed off my flock, and have only brought in SIX birds for colors/patterns/ or pedigree. Pigeons are great because you are guaranteed a new generation every year, if not twice in one year! The genetic advancement you can make with them is amazing! While most of my homers are from the "Janssen" line (a man in Belgium who raced them and made his own strain), I am able to tell MY birds from everyone elses. I can tell at 3 months of age which are cocks and which are hens, and they are almost like cookie-cutter birds. All the cocks are the same, all the hens are the same structurally, except for color/pattern! Of course with line breeding you get the very best to come out and the very worst. My biggest problem now is that the backs tend to be weaker, so I've kept back my strongest backed birds to breed back to my best of the 'other' patterned birds. Its working :)

I laugh when dog people or sheep people say "well in my breeding program" or "in my lines". Really? Looking at pedigrees or both species would be an easy answer to that. I personally don't think you have your "OWN" line until at least 4 generations! When it says EBONWALD or WHITE PINE in my pedigrees for four generations, then I can say that I have my own line. Until then, I'm just breeding someone else's lines!

In my dogs, in all of their pedigrees, there are several generations in a row with the same kennel name. That's a line. In the sheep, when the farm name is in three or four generations...that's a line. I can only think of a few people in both dogs and sheep that I'd consider have lines. Get mad. Its ok. I said it. Why are you mad? Its because you don't have your own line? I don't have it in my sheep or dogs. My sheep are mostly Sheltering Pines, Underhill, WinterSky, Bramble, Justalit'l, FirthofFifth.

In my dogs...almost all of them go back to Pluperfect, Cardiridge, Coedwig, Phi-Vestavia, Chandler, Kennebec, Davenitch, all long time breeders. I have to decide what i like best and bred to that.

In pigeons guys make me laugh...Person A buys person B's birds. He breeds only person B's birds for three, four generations and claims to have his own line. Really? Aren't you just breeding person B's birds? Do they look at all different? what makes them different enough to be their own line?

More times than not I've tried to cross two different lines in any given pigeon breed, only to have failure. Sure both parents are amazing birds in their own rights, but bred together all that crap that is hiding in the lines shows up. You can sometimes get a pair that 'clicks' and have amazing babies. Never split them up! They are a Godsend!

Is it any different in sheep? No! I've breed line A, to line B and gotten amazing stuff. I've also taken line A to line B and gotten terrible stuff. And just because its the same marking or color of the unrelated parents doesn't mean that you've now created a line.

Wow, am I rambling? I meant to have this all laid out in order but I seem to be jumping around a bit. Oh well. IF yo know me, you know I have ADOS....Attention Deficit ............OOOOH Shiny!! LOL

Maybe this has helped you at least realize that you need to create your own family/line before you will have guaranteed results,and even then you might still get a few 'uglies', but much less often!

And while we all breed towards the same standard, we all have different takes on what we feel is the prime example of the breed we are breeding. Heck that's why we have so many religions! ONE BIBLE, all different points of views. We all interpret it a little different, don't we? But that's another days' discussion :)