What have your actual experiences been regarding inbreeding? I don't mean what the books say, but what have you actually seen in your livestock when they're inbred? How closely were they inbred? I have a buck that has a certain sire in his pedigree at least four times! His daughters are amazingly uniform.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), September 22, 2000

Answers

I helped raise feeder pigs for a few years - when we needed a new boar, we used AI then saved the best boar pig & replacement gilts - the new boar bred back to the sows (1/4 same genes in boar to 1/2 in sow) and to the new gilts (sisters) we had fine piglets, some of our best in conformation & temperment - we saved a few replacements from his offspring & also bred them back - they too had exceptionally nice piglets - (one guy used to buy all our feeders & he liked the cross-backs too) - my end of the story

-- Judy Genereux (thistle_farm@hotmail.com), September 22, 2000.

Hi Rebekah, you really did hit the nail on the head already, when you closely linebreed your animals you get consisitency (your word uniform). The goal in obtaining uniformity is to breed animals in which their pedigrees are similar, remember that you will also be condensing the gene pool down to some bad traits also. When you put your bucks paperwork down on a table, and the doe you are going to breed him to down next to it on this table, extended pedigrees work the best, you should be able to draw lines of related animals back and forth between the animals. If the lines are simply parallel lines going back and forth this is usually an inbreeding if you have triangles or any kind of angles this is preferred, in fact very desirable and is linebreeding. No lines and this is an outcross (the biggest crap shoot of all)

We have a 2 year old 1st freshener, who will be kidding in Feb for the 2nd time, her sire and Grandsire are the same buck, add to this that Price of the Field Bartholomew is 4 times on her extended pedigree, now bred to my new Pruitville buck her daughter this last year or Easy Stream buck who she is now bred to, though none of the animals in the first couple of generations are "related" to her, they also carry numberous references to Bartholomew. Even my junior buck for 2001 breedings doesn have Bartholomew in his paperwork, though his dam's side of the paperwork is influenced through Price of the Field, it is many many generations ago.

Make sure you understand the word TYPE and especially in Nubians this word means very different styles of animals amongst all of us, but once you do find this bloodline you like, stick with it, condense your genepool down to include lots of this stock and you will be able to breed lots of kids each year with this same sort of type.

If you look at breeding as a bell curve, most folks just use any buck they can find, which breeds mostly goats in the normal arch of the bell curve, a few bad kids and maybe a few good kids, but most kids fall in the average. When you line breed to a similar exceptional buck you will have some kids fall into the bad, a few kids fall in the average, but you really increase your chances of breeding exceptional kids "as long as your ultimate TYPE is exceptional"....Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 22, 2000.

When I saw this subject I thought this was going to be a post about Oklamonans....

Just kidding my Okie brothers.

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), September 22, 2000.

Err, that's Oklahomans....

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), September 22, 2000.

If a couple from Arkansas go to Mexico to get a divorce, are they still considered brother and sister?

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), September 22, 2000.

I had a recent unusual experience with inbreeding. I bought my original rouen ducks nine years ago, and have not introduced "new blood". One of this year's hatch was a fuzzy yellow duckling with an orange bill and feet. I just stared at it, wondering if it might be an albino. I have since learned it is called a "sport", and it is a bit unusual.

I've been told all domestic ducks (not including muscovies) trace their ancestry back to mallards. It is from these "sports" that other varieties were developed. I'm curious to see what my little sport will produce.

-- bluetick (coonhound@mindspring.com), September 22, 2000.

In the dairy goat world, many fine animals have been produced thru the use of close line breeding. My experience is that it is very useful, if you do your homework and know the animals and the lines they represent. You need to be aware of the good and bad traits that make up your animals. As was mentioned in an earlier post line breeding can bring out both good and bad traits so you must harden your resolve to cull all but the very best of these crosses. On the actual experience end of this of the many animals we've had thru the years we've never had any that had an extra leg or eye or anything like that, but more things like spots(on a togg) or an extra teat, or a togg with coloring that isn't consistant with the breed standards. Good luck with your breeding season...ron

-- ron (ronmister@hotmail.com), September 25, 2000.

My only addition to all the fine information here is be prepared to cull if you get a serious defect starting to show up and then it is time to introduce a new bloodline into your herd good luck

-- Karen Mauk (dairygoatmama@hotmail.com), September 25, 2000.

Have any of you had any experience with very inbred animals that don't seem to be very inerested or vigorous about breeding? The buck I mentioned wasn't interested last year( he was 7 months old), but finally did get him to settle most of the does. I thought it could be due in part to his young age, but this year, it's the same thing all over again. I gave him BO-Se last year and it didn't help, so I think it is probably a genetic thing. Thank goodness I have only 1 doe to breed to him this year! This buck also has very bad turn out, so I won't be inbreeding on him. Our other main herdsire, also linebred (on Sodium Oaks Sasin), will be used instead this year. Many of the does are unrelated and I am hoping to breed a more homogenous herd. Have any of you tried croosing two different, inbred lines?

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), September 25, 2000.

Inbreeding can be good or bad. The problems with inbreeding come when you have a closed genepool- genetic drift begins and as you double up some genes and they become more frequent, but others become less frequent-you start to lose genetic material that keeps the animals healthy. The chances that one deleterious (bad) recessive pair will match up greatly increase. These can be removed, but it takes time and animals suffer in the meantime. In addition, to have a healthy immune system, the animals need to have the genes responsible to be heterozygous, and the more genes that are lost the worse this situation becomes.

What this boils down to is that if we have a pretty good animal with a lot of inbreeding, his offspring from unrelated mates will be outstanding. The problem arises when we fail to find unrelated mates!

Elaine

-- elaine reynolds (horses@newmex.com), September 26, 2000.

Hi Rebekah,

I too have experimented with line breeding. I am bereeding for uniform traits and want to be consistent with ceetain characteristics with my show string. this has resulted in some good breeding but also has brought out the worst of the line as well. for example last yr in a accidential breeding that was too close the results were twins, a doe and buck. The buck had to be culled as he had parrot mouth. The doe is fine and is doing well in the show string so far. This was out of our French lines using the Nodaway lines. This yr I will be line breeding with my American lines and will breed closely to the sodium oaks lines. Have to be careful, but I know the faults and defects of some of the crossings. I am planning on using a new buck i am importing from CA out of Gryfalcon. He has Wa-Shaw-Me Snowbird in his pedigree 4 times.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), September 26, 2000.

Rebekah- only thing I'll add here is that inbreeding is done enough in dairy cattle, which are monitored very closely for milk production that a strong correlation between the degree of inbreeding and lower production has been seen consistently. More than about 6% inbreeding costs some major money in milk production loss. And you DEFINITELY risk seeing decreased virility, fertility and viablity in the offspring. Also, slowed puberty. It's an interesting tool, used properly, but not for amateurs. Linda

-- Linda Graves (gravesfarm@madbbs.com), September 28, 2000.

The breeder I bought my buck from has double and triple daughters that are breed leaders! She has had over 40 breed leaders now, nearly all of which are inbred to soome degree, so I think it must depend on which animals and gene pools you inbreed on.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), September 29, 2000.

Hi, My neighbor left a male goat in with it's mother too long and they bread. The result was a kid that had one large eye, one small eye, and a misformed head. It lived for about one day. I wouldn't try inbreeding that closely. Bye for now. Indiana Gardener

-- Indiana Gardener (greenthumbs777@yahoo.com), March 18, 2001.

This type of fetal abnormality is not inherited! Though you could breed mother to son or father to daughter and condense a gene down to have parrot mouth, overbite, G6S, extra teats, you can not produce monster fetuses from this. There is an excellent site on the internet that shows all the abnormal types of fetus that are "common", perhaps Bernice or Doreen have these from the other forums. This type of "interest" happens every spring, I just didn't keep the url. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), March 18, 2001.

Inbreeding can cause problems. Knowledgeable line breeding can work well.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), March 19, 2001.