SD_Line_Breeders ~ View topic - Troubles knowing what to keep, and what not.

Joined: 24 Jan 2007 Posts: 2

So I have FHed any unneccisary dogs from Gen0-2, and now have a few stragglers and most from Gen3. I feel like such a newbie. Everyone is saying different things, it seems to me! Should I now narrow it down by keeping neutral dogs, not too high with many goods or bads, but neutral? Or should I choose dogs with extremes and hope their numbers will carry on (well, the blues anyway?!)
How does everyone else maintain under the 30 dog limit? Which dogs do you sacrifice (FH.. hehe)?

I would love some suggestions Smile

River City Bearded Collies · Site Admin Joined: 21 Jan 2007 Posts: 6

It seems to me that a lot of people work on eliminating reds, yellows, oranges first and building overall quality, instead of going trait by trait, is their top priority.

In the breeds I am in, though, I believe this sort of early breeding may have placed us in a really slow point. Especially in Ibizans, we seem stagnant or even to be backsliding and there are absolutely NO 10's in anything but gait.

SO, I'm taking a different approach in my source lines, working towards fixing 10's in certain traits and then incorporating those lines in with existing lines.

This is all theory, though. It's my plan, but I only have Gen 1 pups on the ground right now so we'll have to see!

When it gets right down to it, everyone will have a different suggestion based on their goals. Decide what your goals are and it will be much easier to figure out where you want to go next. Smile

Joined: 17 Feb 2007 Posts: 1

I'm trying the opposite tactic in my source kennel. I bought a bunch of starters and collected at least one dog with a 10 in each trait. Then I inbred and line bred mostly, trying to fix the good traits in each line. So I have a line that all had high temperament and high coat, for example, and another that had nice SS values, and so on. My plan once I get those fixed a little better (more consistent) is to cross breed the lines with each other and try to combine the good traits. This is all just theory though - I'm only on generation 5 and just barely have gotten away from those nasty hidden source dog genetics.

I'm curious what is everyone's opinion about breeding back to the original starter dogs. I kept a few with the 10's thinking I could always go back to them to infuse the 10's again, but now that I've seen what havoc is created by the 5/15 stat source dogs, I'm thinking this isn't such a good idea.

MagicWolf Belgian Sheepdogs

Joined: 24 Jan 2007 Posts: 2

I have bred back to sourcies with "great" 10s and other traits, but in each pup seems to be no improvement. The dogs just seem to look like Gen1.