What do you think of this?
Instead of encouraging good breeding practices & health over getting the coloured pups...the Australian Shepherd Club of America encourages breeders to cull puppies...
"In litters from merle to merle matings, a breeder will statistically average one defective, homozygous merle puppy out of four. This will vary from one to many defective puppies in any given litter. If you realize these puppies are going to be deaf or have eye defects, it is not too difficult to cull them at birth. This should be done as soon as possible after whelping since there is no reason to stress the bitch with nursing extra pups. If you cull all puppies with white off the blaze, collar, socks, white chest and belly patterns, there are no borderline pups. Defective, homozygous merle puppies are often primarily white with just patches of color, and nearly always have a lot of white on the head. Puppies with each eye surrounded with color, color over the ears, and no white on the body behind the shoulder should be sound. The patterns seem to be the key. Sometimes a puppy without very much white, but with mismarkings on the body, such as a stripe running up from the underside, will be defective.
There are many breeders who said they would keep excessive white puppies long enough to see if they are sound. They then are faced with the sad task of having a cute, fuzzy puppy destroyed because it is deaf, blind or both. Some people have given these pups away, or even sold them. If you really care about the Australian Shepherd, dont do it! That white Aussie is advertising the Australian Shepherd Breed everywhere it goes, as well as your breeding program. So many times the end of the story is the heartbreak of the child you gave that cute white puppy to crying because the dog never knew the family car was coming- he never saw or heard it start.
The best way is for you, the breeder, to cull those white-factored puppies at birth, and then to forget them and enjoy your healthy, sound litter. Another option is to simply do a solid to merle breeding, and eliminate the possibility of the homozygous merle."
From Australian Shepherd Club of America. ~
"In litters from merle to merle matings, a breeder will statistically average one defective, homozygous merle puppy out of four. This will vary from one to many defective puppies in any given litter. If you realize these puppies are going to be deaf or have eye defects, it is not too difficult to cull them at birth. This should be done as soon as possible after whelping since there is no reason to stress the bitch with nursing extra pups. If you cull all puppies with white off the blaze, collar, socks, white chest and belly patterns, there are no borderline pups. Defective, homozygous merle puppies are often primarily white with just patches of color, and nearly always have a lot of white on the head. Puppies with each eye surrounded with color, color over the ears, and no white on the body behind the shoulder should be sound. The patterns seem to be the key. Sometimes a puppy without very much white, but with mismarkings on the body, such as a stripe running up from the underside, will be defective.
There are many breeders who said they would keep excessive white puppies long enough to see if they are sound. They then are faced with the sad task of having a cute, fuzzy puppy destroyed because it is deaf, blind or both. Some people have given these pups away, or even sold them. If you really care about the Australian Shepherd, dont do it! That white Aussie is advertising the Australian Shepherd Breed everywhere it goes, as well as your breeding program. So many times the end of the story is the heartbreak of the child you gave that cute white puppy to crying because the dog never knew the family car was coming- he never saw or heard it start.
The best way is for you, the breeder, to cull those white-factored puppies at birth, and then to forget them and enjoy your healthy, sound litter. Another option is to simply do a solid to merle breeding, and eliminate the possibility of the homozygous merle."
From Australian Shepherd Club of America. ~
Comments
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
That was kind of my point Casey
In Boxers, white dogs are produced by breeding "flashy" dogs together (flashy is a term that means a fawn or brindle with white). You can easily avoid this by breeding only "classic" (no white) dogs. In Jack's litter, 5 out of the 7 pups were white.