Line breeding /In breeding
I'd like to know what some of the forum members think about the practice of " Line breeding" a form of in-breeding and whether JA breeders in Japan practice this method. Line breeding, for the benefit of readers who might not know isthe selective breeding of animals for a desired feature by mating them within a closely related line.
I have read many articles on the acceptability of this practice but I have also read from different breeders like Tycon Akitas in Wales that they do not believe that this is an acceptable practice [http://www.japanese-akita.info/puppies/what-to-look-for-when-buying-a-puppy/].
Thanks in advance for your input.
Best,
Musashi~
I have read many articles on the acceptability of this practice but I have also read from different breeders like Tycon Akitas in Wales that they do not believe that this is an acceptable practice [http://www.japanese-akita.info/puppies/what-to-look-for-when-buying-a-puppy/].
Thanks in advance for your input.
Best,
Musashi~
Comments
That said, I do not see line breeding in the same light as flat out inbreeding. If you have a certain look that your are striving to achieve line breeding can be a good tool to use. If you do not know what you are doing then you risk producing dogs that could have significant issues. But understand that outcrossing carries almost the same amount of risk. For example you could introduce a dog to your breeding program that may have health issues. At the time of breeding these issues were not known.
In the end it comes down to 1)Know the dogs that are to be line breed. This includes, health screenings, full understand of all the pedigrees involved. 2)Is there significant supply of JA to be outcrossed with when that time comes.
I like to see hard numbers like average "coefficient of inbreeding" for the breed and the "coefficient of inbreeding" for the mating. Preferably calculated over 10 generations.
The inbreeding event doesn't have to be in the 3 generation pedigree to cause problems. The inbreeding can be upstream of it.
Anything that calculates above cousins-relations is worrisome, IMO. The dogs may look healthy for noticeable problems because their ancestors may have started off with low genetic disease load, but sooner or later, a breeder will have to address hidden low-diversity problems like low fertility and immune issues.
Thanks for the comment. I have been researching importing a JA from japanese breeders (and here in the US) but I was wondering if you knew how prevalant "line breeding" or "in-breeding" occurs in Japan or how the AKIHO feel about this practice. Intuitively the thought of producing offspring that are even distant cousins seems abhorrent but I realize that many domesticated species have been at some point been in-bred or line bred to locate certain genetic faults. Knowing that the JA, and AA for that matter, have many health related issues, I am wondering when choosing a JA breeder, what school of thought is a "safer" approach. I do realize that when selecting a pup, there are always random chances of health issues that may arise but I guess my long winded point is that I am trying to limit the possibility. Thanks again.
I did some research while I was at hospital (yes, I had boring time) and went trough all the akitas what live in Finland (and we have like 400 registered akitas) and their pedigrees. There wasnt any dogs who wasnt related to each other if you find their pedigree. And in past ten years we have had really much imports from Japan. And what I went trough same situation is at USA and Europe, though Pat had lines where those same dogs wasnt that many times or at all, dunno if those lines are still alive? I know some of Akasta's dogs because we have some here and i went also trough the japanese akita database what you have, great job btw! Ise Unruy Go Ise Meiwa Kensha, does it sound familiar? Good looking dog but I'm starting to hate it when it comes over ten times in pedigrees.
But yeah, in Finland we are starting to make crossbreeding most likely with shibas (though japanese wont most likely give us permission........), because the genepool is so small with akitas and the health problems are way too big, honestly there aint any way to go further without new genes from another breed. Shame that all the studies and text what I have about the subject are written in Finnish. Even my own texts (pedigree study and thoughts about crossbreeding) are in Finnish. I should start to translate those, I have feeling that google translate might die with my blog texts
But yeah, that is my opinion about the subject. In this subject I think very black&white because it is very simple. Though, there is one "good" thing with inbreeding, then you can see easily the possible faults in that line what you might not find other way soon enough. But this mean you can do it once but then you need to avoid it and use dogs what are far far away from your dogs in genes. My thinking comes most likely from the fact that I work for club where is lots genetics and scientist what study these things and their job is to inform people that most of the breeds are doomed atm and we need to do something and fast if we want to keep our breeds alive.
Sorry about the wall of text but this is one of my favorite subjects! Love to talk about it and hear different opinions and find new studies etc
I do not know very much about line breeding - so I do not practice it. If you want to have fun go play with the pedigrees.akita-inu.com test mating feature.
@Musashi - My guess is that the vast majority of the breeders in Japan have line breed at one time or another. If you believe the story that there was only a handful of Akita post WWII then they either did inbreeding or threw something else into the mix.
I cannot thank Mr. Yamaguchi (Grace Garden) and Mr. Shirai for all the help they have given to the LA-Branch Akiho. It is because of Mr. Shirai that we have Kita and Waka. Mr. Yamaguchi has done an excellent job of making sure that his puppies to the US are unrelated to each other. (Sometimes there is a relation but very little). In a few cases he has traded puppies with another breeder to make this happen. In 2008 only two Akiho registered litters were born in the US. In 2011 LA-Branch produced 5 litters and has imported a fair share of JA.
Does Akiho care about line-breeding. Yes and No. I really do not have any experience with the JA outside of the US. I can say that I have heard of headquarters asking questions about various breedings.
Regarding Kobun: While we share the same views on a lot of things, and the fact that he'll be at my wedding in two weeks, you'll learn a lot more by talking to Ben on the phone.
@Tensai: Well all of Europe can thank Bandou Tarou Go Saginuma Kensha for the most recent episode of line breeding. IMO Europe is going to start doing a lot better with two -Akiho branches. As an outsider looking in, I think that the Old stock Japanese Akitas (those that were judged into the new breed) really put the brakes on people JA breeding programs. It seems when I read different articles I always notice that people highlight that fact.
So the answer to your question is "yes, there is line breeding happening in Japan"... All one needs to do is look at the look of the breed today vs. the look of the breed 20 years ago. There's only one way to keep that look in the breed.
It's a pretty safe bet that any breed with a hyper-type look like the Akita is the product of line-breeding. The more extreme the look of the breed (think Neapolitan Mastiff and Bulldog), the more extreme the line breeding has to be to keep that look.
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I personally am not considering line breeding nor in breeding, I am sure it can only lead to trouble and affect the health of my puppies down the road.
Btw here is our open list for SA and VKH dogs http://www.akitayhdistys.fi/rodusta/sa-a-uds-rekisteri/41 It's open for are sick dogs and everyone can add their dog to that list. We have atleast one dog there from USA. But yeah, there you can see how much it have spread all around lines. Some say we just have bad luck, I say we are just more open about this thing than many others. I know situation is as bad in several European countries but they just hide it and dont talk about these things
Oh, and when they were making WUAC president of AKIHO said that SA and other health problems comes from our way to feed dogs and also our weather make them sick :P Though thank god they have realised the problem after that and are now working with the SA-studie in Germany. So there is progress, even though it is slow. Even our FCI is now waking to the real world and they have notice how bad situation some breeds have! Here is link to BBC document in youtube what started big changes at UK and all over Europe. This document made people to wake up to the reality in so many ways
On the other hand, known carriers have also been used a lot - the case of Kakusui is famous all over Europe, even if he was a known carrier of AI he was used in all possible breedings.
We also have DLA-project going on here, we are trying to collect blood samples from dogs from different lines (well, atleast that they have different 5 generations....) so we can check how close relatives they are to each others in reality and how much genevariations there are and so on. It will be interesting to see what it shows. They have made these tests for SA dogs whos samples are at SA-studie and they atleast are really really narrow in the MHC area (what is one the most important things for dogs autoimmune system!).
What about the cross breeding with Shibas? Can anyone enlighten me on that more? I don't know that much about genetic diversity in JAs in general, and certainly not about them in Europe, but I'm wondering, really? Is that necessary? Are there not enough JAs to import from elsewhere to help with this problem? What is the reaction to breed clubs about this? Or is it such a dire situation (as with...hmmm....was it pointers?) that they really do need this? I'm interested in hearing more about this.
Also wanted to mention that Ayk's post, way back, about the proper terms for this, was quite interesting, and I guess that would make more sense to know the specifics. (not necessarily for this conversation, but Ann's point that "line breeding" and "inbreeding" doesn't give us a lot of info is a good one).
As I said, if you study JA pedigrees you can see almost all of them are related to each others in some way. We have similar situation with our own national breed, Finnish Spitz. Though their situation aint that bad as akitas because they now put together our Finnish Spitz and one laika breed what basicly is the same breed. It was just left at Russian side after wars. That brught so many new gene variations when they have been breeding them separeted for so long. Well anyways they made DLA-research (dog MHC area) and they find out the whole breed is cousins together. And with Karelian Dog (another Finnish breed) they find out that whole breed is half-sisters together. So wonder what kind of results we get with akitas when we do that test.
And with JA AI-diseases are really wide spread and even if we get working genetest against those it most likely just show us that almost all dogs are carriers and most likely we get more sick dogs who dont have active disease yet. So most likely even if we have working genetest and we use carrier-healthy breedings we dont have enough dogs to keep our genetic variety big enough. And then we will need some other breed to crossbreed. We have studied this for several years here and we really hope that it will go trough. Most likely JKC will say no to it, but atleast we have tried to save this breed before it is too late.
Here is good texts about the DLA-research what they are doing here http://www.genoscoper.com/in_english2/gene_tests/gene_tests/dla_diversity/ Mission is to make it happen with all breeds to get more info. And here is another page about the canine genetic studies http://www.koirangeenit.fi/in-english/
Sean, what do you think about the genetic diversity of the JA? Is it this dire in the states? My (pretty uninformed) impression is it's not, but wondered what other JA people thought. And if it's not that dire outside of Europe, wouldn't importing more JAs be more useful than crossbreeding? I'm kind of puzzled about this, which is why I'm asking.
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And shiba and akita have one of the biggest genetic differences in japanese breeds. Only shikoku have bigger difference when we compare to akita but cant really use shikoku when we have only one puppy shikoku here and way too little information about the breed. And we went trough all other breeds also, but decide shiba might be the easiest solution to get trough with Japan, it have same structure and nature. And about the size, it is one of the easiest things to breed bigger dogs. Hard part is to get rid of all these autoimmune problems etc. And believe me, imports aint helping. In Finland we have had past ten years over 20 imports from Japan (and almost twice as much from other countries) and there have been only 4 imports who havent got sick themselfs (not just ai-diseases) or breed sick puppies. Litters have gone smaller and smaller, females have problems to give birth and they dont breed. And then there are tons of new problems coming. And yes, situation is same all over the place, most of the countries or breeders just keep their mouth closed about these. And that is fact. I know several countries where are known to be several tens of AI-dogs but they dont bring those to public knowledge and problems get bigger and bigger.
For example Dairin Go Fukuoka Tokuhisa. He is in the Japanese Breed book. Handsom and really awesome dog. He came to Finland at age of 7 and was used to breeding at Japan really much (you can find him behind some of the lines at USA also if I remember right) and we used him quite lot for breeding, because he really was AWESOME dog, one of the best I have ever seen. Well.. After six litter his puppies start to get sick with SA so we know for sure he carries the gene and trough him it's spread all around. Wonder how many SA-cases there were at Japan before they sell him to us.. and how much that gene have spread. And there is several cases like this. And this is public information because we have these in our open AI-database what I linked allready to this convo.
And as you can read from the SA-studie at Germany breed allready have really small variety at the MHC area and that is bad, really bad. And if the situation is much more worse with breeds what are bigger than akita (like pinser, novascotia etc) you can only wonder how bad it is with akita. They might have large number at Japan and all over the world but it doesnt change that fact that they have really really small genepool. You can always make more dogs but those dogs doesnt have that much gene variations and large number doesnt solve the problem if all have same problematic genes.
I have a copy of that article "Biochemical-genetic relationships among Asian and European dogs..." The article was published in 1991.
The article catagorizes Shibas into the following breed/population groups:
San-in Shiba dog
Shinsu-Shiba dog
Mino-Shiba dog
Akita-Shiba dog (older name for Joman Shiba?)
The journal article is quite technical, but Figure 3 and Figure 4 summarizes the results.
Figure 3 is a "Dendrogram of the genetic distance matrix computed from the gene frequencies of 14 variable loci." (Basically a one-dimensional graph)
In this figure, the Shinsu-Shiba dog is actually quite close to the Akita dog. It's closer than any other dog breed/population. The San'in Shiba dog is the furthest away of the Shibas.
Figure 4 is a "Scattergram of standardized scores for the 1st and 2nd and 3rd principle components of 40 dog breeds/populations investigated." (Attempt at a 3-D graph.) I do not see anything that supports the idea that Shibas are the furthest Japanese breed away from the Akita.
The scattergram is difficult to pick out details, but the Hokkaido may be the furthest away based on what these people analyzed.
I'm pretty sure that there have been more modern studies about the genetic relationships between the different Japanese breeds. Mitochondrial satellite DNA for instance.
@shibamistress Sohpia is an American Akita breeder who is also pro-split. I think the above quote from her helps answer you question.
I really do not know the right answer here and to be honest this topic is way way over my head. I do not think it is fair to look at our database, in its current state, as it does not reflect the fact that LA-Branch has been around since 1970. True the backbone of our breedings is currently through Kita but there at one point LA-Branch had 200 members and for the most part however around 100. Thats of lot of dogs being produced over the years. I doubt I will ever be able to enter these dogs as I do not have access to most of the pedigrees.
I agree with Brad, I do not think the situation in Japan is that dire. One thing I have noticed while entering pedigrees, is that lack of dogs that have JKC numbers. Dogs with JKC numbers usually = exported dogs and those that do not usually stayed in Japan. Maybe 10% have JL numbers. So that tells me that a whole lot of JAs are not being exported.
Next I looked at our database and akiho number from different years: One of my entries is 99-1084 which means that at least 1084 JA were registered that year. In 92 - I have 3489 so at least that many were registered akiho. Thats a lot of JA with 95% of being born in Japan. In 2008, I have entries up to 1966. 2009 - entries up to 1280 For 2010 - I have an entry for 1841... so at least 1800+ dogs were registered Akiho that year. For the 2011 year I have one with 1912 in its number.
So the total in our database for registration year '08 - '11 = 6999 and that is assuming that no other dogs were registered after those entries and not factoring in dogs born in Europe or any the other FCI nations. I think things are looking ok for the JA.
And I went trough JACA dog archive (I wish I had all JAs registered to USA so I could make better study about these pedigrees) and went trough all 65 dogs what have land of standing USA. In those 65 there is couple litters and some dogs are relatives etc. But anyways, there was 6 dogs who I cant track far enough (meaning to the end of 80s, Ise Unruy Go was born at -88) and there was two dogs and their puppy who dont have Ise Unruy Go in their pedigree. Rest I could follow easily to this big matador stud and some other greatly used dogs also. And one dog of those six had Ise Unruy Go's great-sire in pedigree and some lines stopped at early 90s, so dont know for sure that the big bad guy aint there also.
So as you can see, most of the akitas are related to each others in some way :P One good thing there is. Japanese have breeders who have breed only certain color, like brindle. And some brindle lines go trough the 90s and 80s without these red matadors. But minus side is that they have their own highly used studs. But plus side again is that if we mix these lines they have several different genes. But then there is this one minus side also, we have some of these in Finland and they are not any healthier than the rest. We have get SA and VKH sick dogs from these lines also, so wihiii. If they only get the genetest working soon -.- that would atleast give more information about the situation and help us plan how to go further.
I think the chart you mentioned shows that the Akita Inu is the least related to the Shikoku in that group, but they are less related to dogs in some of the other groups.
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Problem is that Japanese use same breeding studs way too much. Here is list of all our import dogs between the years 2000-2011(I hope this works!) http://jalostus.kennelliitto.fi/frmKoirat.aspx?R=255&VuosiA=2000&VuosiY=2011&Alkupera=2&Kotimaiset=0 and we had our first JAs back in the early 90s (and our first JA was also our first SA-sick dog and he was born at -93) with american akitas we can track registrations to 70s. But there you can see the pedigrees etc. And then we have this akita pedigree database (thanks to Davor Ivic!! Marvelous job!) in Europe http://www.akitapedigree.com/ where is almost 3000 dogs. Havent gone trough them all but I'm going to. I went trough like 200-300 imports from past 10 years and same thing was with them. Only handfull of dogs were without those same matadors.
And yeah, i guessed that is the case with JACA database but by that you can get somekind of picture about the situation. We are lucky in here when our Kennel club does all that work for us and keep open database for pedigrees, health results, show results, you name it