I am new to breeding, in fact I have not done so but plan to in Feb/March. I was wondering if it is safe to inbreed. I have been told yes & no....help! Thanks :)
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It depends on how you define "safe." It is unlikely that anything fatal would pop up, if that's what you mean. And are you really talking about inbreeding (mother-son, full siblings, etc) or line-breeding (uncle-niece, grandfather-granddaughter, etc)?
They say that inbreeding will give you either trash or treasure, based on which genes it concentrates. If you concentrate the good ones, you've got a treasure, but if it concentrates the bad ones, you're got trash. We had an accidental mother-son breeding here several years ago. I had no idea this buck had bred his dam until she was four months pregnant and developing an udder, and I looked at the calendar and realized that he was the only buck who had escaped. She had quads, and three of them had teat defects. Later, she threw a couple kids with teat defects from different breedings -- but it was only one out of three or four kids when she was bred to an unrelated buck, rather than three out of four when bred to her son. Obviously that was not a doe that should have been used for inbreeding.
Most people say that you shouldn't inbreed unless you really know what you're doing, but they don't tell you what that means. I wouldn't do inbreeding unless I had several years breeding history on both sire and dam, and I knew they didn't have a tendency to throw anything unwanted. And I wouldn't inbreed with an animal unless I really wanted to duplicate that animal's genetics -- like it was a really outstanding animal in every way. Personally, I don't see myself being in that position ever, because there is always something that I want to improve on in an animal. For example, I love, love, love Sherri and her daughters. I've kept three of her daughters, but I wouldn't keep a full brother and breed him to his sister, because I have bucks that can improve on whatever deficiency exists in each of the does, because none of them is perfect.
It depends on how you define "safe." It is unlikely that anything fatal would pop up, if that's what you mean. And are you really talking about inbreeding (mother-son, full siblings, etc) or line-breeding (uncle-niece, grandfather-granddaughter, etc)?
They say that inbreeding will give you either trash or treasure, based on which genes it concentrates. If you concentrate the good ones, you've got a treasure, but if it concentrates the bad ones, you're got trash. We had an accidental mother-son breeding here several years ago. I had no idea this buck had bred his dam until she was four months pregnant and developing an udder, and I looked at the calendar and realized that he was the only buck who had escaped. She had quads, and three of them had teat defects. Later, she threw a couple kids with teat defects from different breedings -- but it was only one out of three or four kids when she was bred to an unrelated buck, rather than three out of four when bred to her son. Obviously that was not a doe that should have been used for inbreeding.
Most people say that you shouldn't inbreed unless you really know what you're doing, but they don't tell you what that means. I wouldn't do inbreeding unless I had several years breeding history on both sire and dam, and I knew they didn't have a tendency to throw anything unwanted. And I wouldn't inbreed with an animal unless I really wanted to duplicate that animal's genetics -- like it was a really outstanding animal in every way. Personally, I don't see myself being in that position ever, because there is always something that I want to improve on in an animal. For example, I love, love, love Sherri and her daughters. I've kept three of her daughters, but I wouldn't keep a full brother and breed him to his sister, because I have bucks that can improve on whatever deficiency exists in each of the does, because none of them is perfect.
I am also intersted in this topic. Personal Milkers had good definations of in breeding and line breeding but didn't go into details on the pros and cons.
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Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
They say that inbreeding will give you either trash or treasure, based on which genes it concentrates. If you concentrate the good ones, you've got a treasure, but if it concentrates the bad ones, you're got trash. We had an accidental mother-son breeding here several years ago. I had no idea this buck had bred his dam until she was four months pregnant and developing an udder, and I looked at the calendar and realized that he was the only buck who had escaped. She had quads, and three of them had teat defects. Later, she threw a couple kids with teat defects from different breedings -- but it was only one out of three or four kids when she was bred to an unrelated buck, rather than three out of four when bred to her son. Obviously that was not a doe that should have been used for inbreeding.
Most people say that you shouldn't inbreed unless you really know what you're doing, but they don't tell you what that means. I wouldn't do inbreeding unless I had several years breeding history on both sire and dam, and I knew they didn't have a tendency to throw anything unwanted. And I wouldn't inbreed with an animal unless I really wanted to duplicate that animal's genetics -- like it was a really outstanding animal in every way. Personally, I don't see myself being in that position ever, because there is always something that I want to improve on in an animal. For example, I love, love, love Sherri and her daughters. I've kept three of her daughters, but I wouldn't keep a full brother and breed him to his sister, because I have bucks that can improve on whatever deficiency exists in each of the does, because none of them is perfect.