Wow, that really sucks...And I was so hoping to see some Loa puppies:( But it is best to have her live a long, healthy life with out puppies than it is to go through the trauma of losing her and the litter. We all love Loa too much to see anything bad happen to her.
Is CEH a common risk when breeding? Is it genetic or environmental (ie. purely caused by empty heats)?
@Calia - From what I understand it is an environmental thing, but some females can have it worse than others and so there must be a genetic aspect to it - tho that genetic aspect may only be in the roll their genes play in the timing and length of their heats. Humans get it too, BTW.
Sorry to hear (again) about Loa. It is hard not wanting to breed too early and yet not too late either. Loa is beautiful, it is too bad that she did not get pregnant.
It's always interesting for me to hear how people's thinking evolves from when they start a breeding program. I think that people can be so hard on breeders and criticize their almost every move, but when you begin the experience yourself ideologies and opinions can change. Could these breeders really know what they are doing? ha ha ha probably.
after what I have been through with FUU, I am beginning to re-think my plans for Tora. I had planned on waiting until after she was 2 to breed her. I waited on Fuu and now we are having problems getting her bred. I just had the vet do a collection and immediate insemination on her to see if we can get it to take this time.
Yeah, I was a bit high and mighty thinking I knew better, and that dogs should be bred later rather than sooner. Inoue-san warned me that with a lot of females if you don't breed them at their second heat, it gets harder. Might not be the best in all cases, but I'm seeing that maybe there is something there.
For some breeds that don't mature quickly, maybe this thinking is good, but with what I've found with Koda and Maymay is that they were pretty all grown up by 1. Even my Rott's took longer to look mature than them.
Hey Shigeru, we need to find a man for Tora before her eggs dry up. ha ha ha ha. Koda wants to be an Uncle!
I think the idea is to breed females early and males late. From what I have read on breeding and breeding genetics, the majority of the genes come from the mother and the majority of the temperament (due to gestation) comes from the mother too.
So, assuming you have a mother who is a good breeder (breeds naturally), has a good temp, and is a good mother, your best bet is to breed her early (2nd-3rd heat) and often to males who are older, proven, and healthy. This reduces the risk of passing on health issues as you know, at the very worst case, only the female would pass on any health issues (since the male would be old enough to be proven healthy and clear of issues).
The age number I have read for males is 7 years old for breeding, which is shockingly old IMHO, but it makes sense from a purist health standpoint. IMHO, with the addition of things like Penn-Hip and DNA testing, I think that age can be dropped significantly (like to 3 or 4).
I've also read, an Ann (@ayk) has brought this up a few times too, that it's best to pay some attention to who the female selects for breeding as it's thought that they base their selection on various things like social maturity of the male, vitality, and vigor. It's thought that they select the right male-match for their personality and genetic needs and so that makes AIs a bit worrisome, at least in a breed where there are plenty of males for the female choose from - that's not really the case with our medium sized NK tho, so I think the rules have to be a bit adjusted per the breed's rareness.
Then there is Masha and Luytiy, Masha mated with Luytiy freely the first time. The second time she wanted nothing to do with him and preferred Blue or Naum. Obviously Blue is a no-go (different breed) and Naum was WAY too young.
Why didn't she want to breed to Luytiy the 2nd time tho? Maybe her instincts pushed her away from him in favor of diversification? Her lack of interest in Luytiy was taken as a "sign" by Jen and I, so we decided not to breed Masha to him back-to-back... Then the vets (mentioned above) got wind of that choice and pushed us to do an AI with Masha so she didn't have a empty second heat. We used Luytiy for the AI since there were no other unrelated breeding prospects for her.
I bring Masha and Luytiy up because it paints a conflicting situation - we want to follow our reading and understanding of breeding and breeding genetics, which tells us if Masha is not interested in Luytiy not to breed her to him. But then you have the newer medical info, which says, for Masha's health, we should breed her back-to-back the first 2 times. So, who do we breed her to if she isn't interested in Luytiy? Tough call. Obviously we went with Luytiy and decided to do an AI to reduce stress on both of them (and it was kinda late for a natural breeding since we had decided to pass on breeding her in the beginning).
As a breeder, what I find difficult in following all these plans (breeding dogs as late as 7 years and females early and letting the female choose), are the logistics of keeping the dogs in a non-kennel environment. Especially when you add allowing the females to be "choosy" in who they mate with, I mean we can read a pedigree and tell if there is relation between the female and male we select, so do we really need the females input on it? Sure, I think so, because that gives them the ability to choose the correct temperament for the father of their progeny - I'm not gonna pretend to know as much as they do when it comes to that...
But, the logistics in doing that is hard. You would have to keep several intact males for 5+ years before you got a female to breed them to, and then that female would need to be aged and cleared for breeding also. When you factor-in the poor success rate of finding a healthy breeding quality female (or male) in a rare breed you realize the best way to spread your risk is to have many females and many males, with the males being older and the females being younger. That's a hard group to keep in a non-kennel environment, ya know?
For us, one of the biggest most important things has always been to keep our dogs in a stress-free non-kennel environment. Well, when you add that goal to the plan mentioned above there is no way to succeed, in a rare breed, without having a lot of dogs and a really complex management plan. It's a full-time job. If we had kennels it would be a lot less work on us, for sure, but our dogs would be unhappy (IMHO), and that's no fare (again, IMHO).
So now add that to the typical stereotypes of BYBs and Mills - many people think if you have more than x number of dogs, or do more than x number of breedings you are a Mill, and if you have too few dogs and are not educated in breeding you are a BYB. Well, what if all your females come into season at the same time? Or what if you want to allow your females free-selection of her male so you have to keep a good number of dogs? It really makes it clear how crappy being a breeder really is. LOL Breeding dogs is not easy or cheap, that's for sure.
Yeah, being a breeder is not a clear-cut road sometimes. There's the stuff native breeders/oldtimers say, there's the stuff that Western/modern breeders say, and then there's that very unwanted layer of what animal rights extremists (non-breeders) say. Complicated enough without the fourth dimension of what specialists may say.
I had heard 2nd hand info about Dr. Hutchinson and his support for back-to-back breedings. but I and bunch of other people assumed his position was based on how wolves and primitive dogs cycle only once a year. So being bred and having pups back-to-back was still a once a year event. Hence, when dogs started cycle twice a year, it was half as much time to rest between litters. So resting between litters (having one litter a year) was more the norm - or so it was thought. It's an instance whereby a little right information with lots of layman assumptions can be very wrong...
I have some quibble on this statement though: "the majority of the genes come from the dad and the majority of the temperament (due to gestation) comes from the mother." Are you sure you heard it correctly?
Technically no, the majority of the genes does not comes from the dad. It comes from the mother. There's the nuclear DNA which is half from the mother and half from the father, but there's also mitochondrial DNA in which it is all from the mother. The mitochondria is the energy producer in a cell and so it's pretty significant. Also inherited from the mother are stuff in the cytoplasm which affect how genes are turned on and off during an egg's development.
I do agree with the idea that the temperament is highly influenced by the mother, only not only during gestation but also during initial rearing. As bad as it sounds to our ears, I've heard of hog hunters in the US who hunt pregnant cur females right up to when they're expected to drop puppies because it affects how the puppies will turn out. And I've also heard how some breeders will remove pups early from a shyer mother to a better female/teacher in order to not imprint fearfulness.
@ayk - Well, I am no genetics expert, and you by far have a deeper understanding of genetics than me. But, that statement about male dogs came from an article I remembered reading a year or so ago. Perhaps I misinterpreted it tho, I dunno, you be the judge and please correct me if I did misunderstand it...
From the article "Eugenics or Dysgenics": "Owners of bitches can afford to be and indeed, should be, extremely choosey when selecting a prospective stud because genetic change within a breed is effected extremely quickly and dramatically via male dogs. Whereas a bitch's genes are passed along to only a score or two of pups in her entire reproductive career, a stud's genetic moiety may be passed on to twenty pups in just a couple of days! Genes from far too few male dogs are overrepresented in the gene pool of many breeds. Whereas this is the prevailing sexual strategy for many animals, (e.g., cattle, sheep, chickens), it is unnatural for dogs. A bitch’s much greater temporal and physiological investment in her young is protected by preferential mating, i.e., her selection of a preferred partner. Hence, if we are to choose a stud for a bitch, we should do so with extreme discretion and also, we would be wise to at least consider her preferences. " http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/eugenics-or-dysgenics
Maybe I read it as being more local when really the statement was more globally directed. Like, perhaps he was saying males are bred more often than females so their genes are therefore more prevalent and have more influence over the breed as a whole?
Yep, that's what the article is saying. A single male can sire more pups than a single female could produce in their breeding careers.
The number of pups with a male dog's genetic contribution can be higher, but within the individual puppy, the female's genetic influence will be greater.
The mitochondria is the energy producer in a cell and so it's pretty significant. Also inherited from the mother are stuff in the cytoplasm which affect how genes are turned on and off during an egg's development.
I recently heard of a study done on rats where the fathers are overfed until they become obese and develop heart disease and diabetes. The mothers are kept healthy. When the rats are bred with the healthy mothers, their offspring show signs of diabetes and heart disease. The study was done to really test whether or not it is mothers who pass on obesity, diabetes, etc. and what it found is that the father's mitochondria has just as much an effect as the mother's.
The article explains that any paternal mitochondria that is deposited by a sperm into the oocyte is normally destroyed. However, a particular mutation in the paternal mtDNA allows it to evade destruction. This mutated paternal mtDNA becomes distributed in the various tissues of the grown person. The problem is that deviations in the mtDNA affects "energy production" (they go through some more specific cellular details) which causes the person to have severe exercise intolerance.
So, it's still not the norm for an animal to inherit paternal mtDNA.
I am in the same position as you brad. I do not have a kennel and do not really wish to keep my dogs in a kennel environment. All my dogs live in the house which makes keeping multiple males very difficult.
I think I found a reference to the article that Tara was thinking about - how obese fathers passes down those tendencies in the offspring. Of all places, found it referred to in this Newsweek article:
It refers to changes in the way a father's DNA (regular DNA, not mitochondrial DNA) is methylated. Basically, if the DNA is "turned off" by the father, then it's inherited in the off position in the offspring. If it's "turned on" by the father, it's inherited in the on position.
Yeah, when I first got "into" dogs in general...my view was very different from now. As I got more involved with canines and then the breeding aspect...my views changed almost entirely, lol. And to this day, I continue to grow in knowledge of all these things.
I now understand though WHY some people breed their females at a young age. And for each female it differs anyways. Some should be bred earlier and some should be bred later. Kinda just depends on the bitch in question and what the situation is like with and for her.
I'm bummed out though that the Loa breeding didn't work out =/. When IS the spay appointment anyways? Just wondering...
Comments
Is CEH a common risk when breeding? Is it genetic or environmental (ie. purely caused by empty heats)?
@Calia - From what I understand it is an environmental thing, but some females can have it worse than others and so there must be a genetic aspect to it - tho that genetic aspect may only be in the roll their genes play in the timing and length of their heats. Humans get it too, BTW.
----
Good luck with your Kai!!
Hey Shigeru, we need to find a man for Tora before her eggs dry up. ha ha ha ha. Koda wants to be an Uncle!
So, assuming you have a mother who is a good breeder (breeds naturally), has a good temp, and is a good mother, your best bet is to breed her early (2nd-3rd heat) and often to males who are older, proven, and healthy. This reduces the risk of passing on health issues as you know, at the very worst case, only the female would pass on any health issues (since the male would be old enough to be proven healthy and clear of issues).
The age number I have read for males is 7 years old for breeding, which is shockingly old IMHO, but it makes sense from a purist health standpoint. IMHO, with the addition of things like Penn-Hip and DNA testing, I think that age can be dropped significantly (like to 3 or 4).
I've also read, an Ann (@ayk) has brought this up a few times too, that it's best to pay some attention to who the female selects for breeding as it's thought that they base their selection on various things like social maturity of the male, vitality, and vigor. It's thought that they select the right male-match for their personality and genetic needs and so that makes AIs a bit worrisome, at least in a breed where there are plenty of males for the female choose from - that's not really the case with our medium sized NK tho, so I think the rules have to be a bit adjusted per the breed's rareness.
Then there is Masha and Luytiy, Masha mated with Luytiy freely the first time. The second time she wanted nothing to do with him and preferred Blue or Naum. Obviously Blue is a no-go (different breed) and Naum was WAY too young.
Why didn't she want to breed to Luytiy the 2nd time tho? Maybe her instincts pushed her away from him in favor of diversification? Her lack of interest in Luytiy was taken as a "sign" by Jen and I, so we decided not to breed Masha to him back-to-back... Then the vets (mentioned above) got wind of that choice and pushed us to do an AI with Masha so she didn't have a empty second heat. We used Luytiy for the AI since there were no other unrelated breeding prospects for her.
I bring Masha and Luytiy up because it paints a conflicting situation - we want to follow our reading and understanding of breeding and breeding genetics, which tells us if Masha is not interested in Luytiy not to breed her to him. But then you have the newer medical info, which says, for Masha's health, we should breed her back-to-back the first 2 times. So, who do we breed her to if she isn't interested in Luytiy? Tough call. Obviously we went with Luytiy and decided to do an AI to reduce stress on both of them (and it was kinda late for a natural breeding since we had decided to pass on breeding her in the beginning).
As a breeder, what I find difficult in following all these plans (breeding dogs as late as 7 years and females early and letting the female choose), are the logistics of keeping the dogs in a non-kennel environment. Especially when you add allowing the females to be "choosy" in who they mate with, I mean we can read a pedigree and tell if there is relation between the female and male we select, so do we really need the females input on it? Sure, I think so, because that gives them the ability to choose the correct temperament for the father of their progeny - I'm not gonna pretend to know as much as they do when it comes to that...
But, the logistics in doing that is hard. You would have to keep several intact males for 5+ years before you got a female to breed them to, and then that female would need to be aged and cleared for breeding also. When you factor-in the poor success rate of finding a healthy breeding quality female (or male) in a rare breed you realize the best way to spread your risk is to have many females and many males, with the males being older and the females being younger. That's a hard group to keep in a non-kennel environment, ya know?
For us, one of the biggest most important things has always been to keep our dogs in a stress-free non-kennel environment. Well, when you add that goal to the plan mentioned above there is no way to succeed, in a rare breed, without having a lot of dogs and a really complex management plan. It's a full-time job. If we had kennels it would be a lot less work on us, for sure, but our dogs would be unhappy (IMHO), and that's no fare (again, IMHO).
So now add that to the typical stereotypes of BYBs and Mills - many people think if you have more than x number of dogs, or do more than x number of breedings you are a Mill, and if you have too few dogs and are not educated in breeding you are a BYB. Well, what if all your females come into season at the same time? Or what if you want to allow your females free-selection of her male so you have to keep a good number of dogs? It really makes it clear how crappy being a breeder really is. LOL Breeding dogs is not easy or cheap, that's for sure.
----
I had heard 2nd hand info about Dr. Hutchinson and his support for back-to-back breedings. but I and bunch of other people assumed his position was based on how wolves and primitive dogs cycle only once a year. So being bred and having pups back-to-back was still a once a year event. Hence, when dogs started cycle twice a year, it was half as much time to rest between litters. So resting between litters (having one litter a year) was more the norm - or so it was thought. It's an instance whereby a little right information with lots of layman assumptions can be very wrong...
I have some quibble on this statement though: "the majority of the genes come from the dad and the majority of the temperament (due to gestation) comes from the mother." Are you sure you heard it correctly?
Technically no, the majority of the genes does not comes from the dad. It comes from the mother. There's the nuclear DNA which is half from the mother and half from the father, but there's also mitochondrial DNA in which it is all from the mother. The mitochondria is the energy producer in a cell and so it's pretty significant. Also inherited from the mother are stuff in the cytoplasm which affect how genes are turned on and off during an egg's development.
I do agree with the idea that the temperament is highly influenced by the mother, only not only during gestation but also during initial rearing. As bad as it sounds to our ears, I've heard of hog hunters in the US who hunt pregnant cur females right up to when they're expected to drop puppies because it affects how the puppies will turn out. And I've also heard how some breeders will remove pups early from a shyer mother to a better female/teacher in order to not imprint fearfulness.
From the article "Eugenics or Dysgenics":
"Owners of bitches can afford to be and indeed, should be, extremely choosey when selecting a prospective stud because genetic change within a breed is effected extremely quickly and dramatically via male dogs. Whereas a bitch's genes are passed along to only a score or two of pups in her entire reproductive career, a stud's genetic moiety may be passed on to twenty pups in just a couple of days! Genes from far too few male dogs are overrepresented in the gene pool of many breeds. Whereas this is the prevailing sexual strategy for many animals, (e.g., cattle, sheep, chickens), it is unnatural for dogs. A bitch’s much greater temporal and physiological investment in her young is protected by preferential mating, i.e., her selection of a preferred partner. Hence, if we are to choose a stud for a bitch, we should do so with extreme discretion and also, we would be wise to at least consider her preferences. "
http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/eugenics-or-dysgenics
Maybe I read it as being more local when really the statement was more globally directed. Like, perhaps he was saying males are bred more often than females so their genes are therefore more prevalent and have more influence over the breed as a whole?
What do you think?
----
The number of pups with a male dog's genetic contribution can be higher, but within the individual puppy, the female's genetic influence will be greater.
I recently heard of a study done on rats where the fathers are overfed until they become obese and develop heart disease and diabetes. The mothers are kept healthy. When the rats are bred with the healthy mothers, their offspring show signs of diabetes and heart disease. The study was done to really test whether or not it is mothers who pass on obesity, diabetes, etc. and what it found is that the father's mitochondria has just as much an effect as the mother's.
edit: Used Google scholar to try to find some info. Best I can find right now is this article in humans:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020350
The article explains that any paternal mitochondria that is deposited by a sperm into the oocyte is normally destroyed. However, a particular mutation in the paternal mtDNA allows it to evade destruction. This mutated paternal mtDNA becomes distributed in the various tissues of the grown person. The problem is that deviations in the mtDNA affects "energy production" (they go through some more specific cellular details) which causes the person to have severe exercise intolerance.
So, it's still not the norm for an animal to inherit paternal mtDNA.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/30/how-your-experiences-change-your-sperm-and-eggs.html
It refers to changes in the way a father's DNA (regular DNA, not mitochondrial DNA) is methylated. Basically, if the DNA is "turned off" by the father, then it's inherited in the off position in the offspring. If it's "turned on" by the father, it's inherited in the on position.
I now understand though WHY some people breed their females at a young age. And for each female it differs anyways. Some should be bred earlier and some should be bred later. Kinda just depends on the bitch in question and what the situation is like with and for her.
I'm bummed out though that the Loa breeding didn't work out =/. When IS the spay appointment anyways? Just wondering...