Breeding decisions...good and bad

[crackerc]

Just had a few minutes and thought I would post some thoughts about breedings.  I "try" not to raise a litter but every couple of years, but Monkey has managed to get to my JJ female the last two years in a row, due to me working all the time and not knowing when she is really coming in heat. When you only see the dogs an hour a day, and that after dark some days, I have missed seeing a few dogs coming in heat. Monkey runs loose and a couple of females are on cable runners, so its easy to miss. He gets them bred before I even notice they are coming in heat. So mistakes happen and dogs get bred. But I have never intentionally bred a young dog or a "brood female"...whatever that is.

I don't normally breed a dog until its 3-4 years old. Monkey is 6 years old and has been bred 3 times, all to my JJ female and 2 of those were accidents. JJ was 5 years old before she had her first litter and her sister Red was 5 years old before she had her only litter. I want to know what a dog is capable of BEFORE I breed it. I try to find a mate that is strong where the one dog is weak. It doesn't always work, but when it does it works well.

Now here is my question. How many of you guys would breed a young unhunted dog? I know a guy (no names) that got a pup from me last year. The dog is 14 months old and has never been to the woods. He has messed with him in a 2 acre pen a few times and he will bay, but has never been on a hog in the woods. The same guy has a 3-4 year old female from someone else. This dog has been hunted some and has found a couple easy hogs but from the times I have hunted with her, she is not what I would call a top dog by any means. She has been hunted on a 24,000 acre place where I hunt Monkey and while I consistently catch hogs there, she has never found a hog on the property and she has hunted there 2-3 years.  The female is in heat and he is breeding this young unhunted male to a female that in my opinion, probably shouldn't even be bred.

Then I had a person call me two weeks ago wanting to breed a female to Monkey. I usually get several of these calls a year but have never bred an outside female. Not that I am opposed to it, but I want to know what I am breeding to. I asked my usual questions such as where did the dog come from, who bred it, and how does she hunt. I then tell them that I want to see the female hunt in the woods, their place or mine, before I agree to breed her. They said they would email me some pics but hemmed and hawed about hunting. I told them to let me know as they said she is due in heat the next week or two. I have not heard back from them, nor gotten any pics. This is about the 5th or 6th time this has happened, with different people. When I say I want to see the female hunt, they bow out and go find another male, one that the owner is not so picky about I guess.

Does it seem like I am overly cautious as to what I breed ? I feel its for the betterment of the dogs and won't change my ideas. If a dog is unproven, no matter how its bred, I don't want to breed it until I see it hunt for a while. That way I know if I want to breed it and possibly get more like it. I don't believe in "brood females" either with the exception of a dog that has been hunted and has an injury that prevents it from being hunted, but can still raise pups.

Just curious what some of you other guys that have been breeding dogs for years feel about these examples.

[Purebreedcolt]

I am relatively new to pups but I will breed a young dog if they show that they poses the traits I am looking for.  If a dog is good at a year and a half they are just going to get better.  Also a rough dogs life is uncertain and no matter how good they are there is no certainty.  Like you said I'm not much on brood females but to each his on.

[Noah]

Ahh... yet another reason I have been, and always will be VERY particular on who gets anything from me...  that kind of chit really pisses me off... almost to the point I might just go and sterilize any animal that leaves my yard from here out...

Kinda hard to control when you sell a pup though... not as much "respect" from someone who feels they owe you nothing because they paid for the dog...

[Purebreedcolt]

Also breeding for a purpose is one thing breeding for the heck of it is pointless

[Reuben]

CrackerC, that is the reason we have so many culls...because too many folks do it on a regular basis. But there are exceptions:

example; if I had my main female killed and I needed pups and I have a young gyp I raised from my dogs and I know her background and she is progressing rather well... I would breed her to one of my good males in a heatbeat if I needed pups.

I would breed to her even if I had decided that she was a cull because then I would be looking at the dogs further back in the pedigree and not her. I would much rather do this than outcross to a top gyp from another line of dogs...but like I said...it would be an exception because making this compromise shouldn't happen very often at all but can happen.


If hunting traits were a color we would all have good hunting dogs in the woods...

[arrowbar]

breeding like everything else has ethics, some people live to a stricter code

[tomtom]

 If you don't have the resources to hunt your dog, you don't have the resources to breed it.

[dub]

I am no breeding expert, I ain't that smart. But I have heard people I respect take a different angle. They will breed young dogs and then look at the puppies that come out. If they produce a high number of good dogs they breed again. If not they cull the pups and breed different dogs. They like to protect their breeding dogs so they can keep getting good puppies. So if you asked them to hunt their breeding female or male they would not do it. They can produce good dogs and want to produce better dogs. But if the breeding dogs gets killed they have lost what they have. I hope some of those people will chime in and explain it better.

I think more like you but I understand the other thinking. Of course they could just have culls they want to breed so they can say the pups came from your line too.

[Bryant]

What's more important than what your breeding is why your breeding.

[halfbreed]

ok kids , you are just as likely to get crap out of a well rounded good hunting bitch dog, as you are to get to get crap out of a well bred bitch dog thats never hunted . and just the opposite could be that breeding that just[  clicked ].and you wind up with super dogs . us old guys didn't waist our times breeding lines of dogs with out a purpose . just because a dog hunts excepyionally well . DOES NOT MEEN IT WILL PRODUCE a whole litter of outstanding dogs . me personally i have 2 reg. catahoula gyps on my yard that will never see the woods . could they ? you betchya !!. why wont they ? they are where my hard hittin, good lookin , people pleasing young dogs come from crossed or pure . but they are no quit dogs that don't seem to reach that golden retirement age . ANY OTHER TYPE OF HUNTING  [exept maybe bear ] . and you can hunt your females or males and not worry so much about loss but HOG HUNTING IS A DIFFERANT GAME . and the possibility of loosing a well bred dog is greater. all you can do in the breeding game is to  BREED and let the OFFSPRING  do the talking as to how well the HUNTING or NONHUNTING parents , and this is important  PASS ON THEIR TRAITS . not all  HUNTING dogs produce hunting dogs .  and that is the reason their are so many culls people just asume because the parents hunt the offspring should all hunt as well . every first pair breeding is an experiment from hunting or non hunting sires and dames. now LET THE BATTLE BEGIN !!!

[firemedic]

Mark, I agree with you 100%. In my opinion,.....waaaaay too many want to have a litter of pups out of ole' Stem-winder and their buddy's female that is out of his brother in law's sister's nephew's step-dad's dog that was reportedly a hog finding machine, but is now dead and nobody they know has ever actually hunted with that dog. These are not dog people, merely people that have dogs.

If there were more folks as critical about breeding as you, there wouldn't be so many culls floating around either dead or alive. I'm just not for breeding a pair of dogs that are unproven just to see what you get. So I say...hold your ground brother,....if someone wants to breed to Monkey, then they should have no qualms about letting you see the female work on the woods. This is merely my opinion...I'm no dog breeder and never will be....but I've raised a few litters in my time and seen way too many beedings that should never have taken place....in my opinion.

[crackerc]

I "normally" only breed when I need pups for myself. But with limited space and time to hunt I can't keep 10 pups until they are a year old to see which ones I want. Last year I let the guys that wanted pups pick theirs first and I kept what was left, including the runt. Thats as fair as I can be, as its a roll of the dice when you get an 8 week old pup.

But I still don't buy into breeding non-hunting dogs or experimenting with breeding unhunted dogs. Yes, you may get lucky but you may breed a dog that won't hunt, has no nose, no bottom, or worse no desire. I want to see what a dog can do in the woods before I breed it. I have missed out on a few breeding opportunities that way, but I feel I have avoided a whole lot of mistakes too. A cull in the woods is a cull in the breeding program in my opinion.

No, not every dog that hunts will produce. If that were true we would all have great dogs. And I have known some really good hunting dogs that didn't produce pups worth feeding, but they seem to be the exception.

Do you think the race horse industry got to where it is by breeding culls off the race track or unproven young horses??  Just an example but they have been breeding running horses to running horses for years and breaking track records regularly, so somethings working.

As far as getting dogs killed, thats usually the way you hunt, not the dog, unless the dog is just suicidal. In that event, I don't want more like him anyway. You will lose some dogs to accidents or just bad luck but I see a lot of dogs posted as being killed or died on the boards that probably didn't have to die.

firemedic, I am glad there is at least ONE other person on here that feels the same as I do!! Seems you and Noah are about the only ones......

[halfbreed]

like i said EVERY FIRST TIME BREEDING IS A CRAP SHOOT !! regardless of what who and where the dogs come from . all dogs i personally [ experiment ] with are sold on a first come first serve basis and all go with a 1 year garranty . i never pick and chose witch ones are kept till this past litter . of course starting young dogs and breeding better dogs is my passion . been at it a long time with scent hounds and roosters . have i had some that didn't work you betcha . have i bred one of my good huntin bitches to a buddy's good huntin male and did not like the cross ,yes . that is what it's all about to a breeder. will i ever buy a started dog or have to go find me a new strike dog off some other breeders yard absoloutly not !!  it's all about hard knocks and accumulation of many years of trial and error and experimentation . and as far as horse racing they will breed a mare to a champion just because of the mares ancestry her having never ran a race .

[Reuben]

outcrossing a good male to a good female that have no relations weven though they both hunt will be more or less a crap shoot.

When line breeding a family of good to great hunting dogs their will be a higher percentage of good pups produced.

but the other half of maintaining or upgrading a line of dogs is in picking the pups that will reproduce back into the said bloodline.

It is my opinion that outcrossing is more of a crap shoot so it should be kept to a minimum.

[BobbyB]

If done right, breeding and raising a litter of pups is actually more work than it pays back a lot of the time. I do it when the stars align correctly, mostly my Brittanys. I bred my BMCs once, but it will be a year and a half before I know how that turns out.

If I could just get what I want from some one that knows what they have, that is the way I'd go about 98% of the time. But I do like an occasional experiment and will make a cross to see what I can produce.

The other thing is , have a plan for what to do with those pups. Have ready homes for em, be ready to keep the entire batch yourself or split em between you and some trusted friends. I know a lot of that is what is done here now, but a lot just think " I'll have a litter and see what happens." No preparation what so ever.

[halfbreed]

 ditto rueben i am a line breeding fanatic . i like what i got but do to not putting up a line and not hunting them . like we were discussing i am in the market for some new blood to put into my line to continue on produing the quality of pups that i demand . you see most peoplle think breeders aren't criticle about there [product ] and some aern't,. just want the money . but i won't know what to put into my dogs to get what I want without trying differant breedings. be it from a hunting bitch or not . i have rescued many a catahoula that was bought as pets and never hunted and at 2 year olds started them and they became good dogs . my saying is with out trying a breeding you can NOT know the outcome and may pass up the chance to have the next SUPERSTAR that everyone is looking for .

[YELLOWBLACKMASK]

Well I kinda look at this situation several different ways.

On breeding a young unproven dog.  (Should give you an idea of the persons breeding experience in a nut shell)

On being upset that someone is doing a bad decision breeding out of your dogs (Don't sell any and you won't have to deal with that problem anymore)
 
A fourteen month old pup that hasn't been hunted yet....(Cull) and go get some good line bred pups as described above that will be finding their own at a year old.

Breed crap and the best chance you will get is probably a higher level of crap!

I feel your pain man I truly do. That's why I quit with the selling of pups years ago due to this exact same situation. The friends that get anything from around here will cull at the drop of a hat or will send it back to me to cull. Between me and two close friends in the last two weeks 5 have registered with the no longer gotta worry bout it program.  Nothing wrong with selling pups but you gotta be good with this type of situation popping up from inexperienced breeders.
Hope it works out for ya bud cause I know where your coming from