Breeding Opinion - Page 3

Tig and Haz,  lol your both right and wrong.

Age lowers the quality of both the sperm and the egg produced by the parents.  However the eggs are affected more because there are less of them.

Sperm that are affected normally exhibit shorter or broken tails which affects their motility.  If there are still enough sperm then the eggs will be fertilized.

The genetic material in these gametes is (depending on the individual and the enviroment that they have lived through) of lesser quality than that of what the individuals would have produced when they were younger.

These lower quality gametes usually result in a nonviable fetus so are either never implanted or are sloughed off early in the pregnancy and never noticed.

Make sense?

bzcz - former biology teacher here...you are half right. The sperm are constantly being produced by the testes, and are either ejaculated, or die. Their number and health does decrease as the male ages, and sperm production may eventually cease entirely. I know someone who was planning to breed their male dog one last time, and had this happen. He was planning to do AI, and when they checked the sample under the microscope, oops! NO little tadpoles! 

The female of ALL mammalian species is born with all the eggs she is ever going to have. When she reaches sexual maturity, the eggs begin to ripen, and become viable. In humans, one, or sometimes more eggs ripen every month. In bitches, it happens once every 6 months (on average). As the female gets older, the health of the eggs can deteriorate. That's why older human females are more likely to produce Down's Syndrome children. The eggs become 'stale', and the egg cells may not divide properly, resullting in an incorrect number of chromosomes, which will produce either a fetus with genetic abnormalities, or a non-viable fetus that dies in the womb.

@Tig

Its sounds like you were happy with your litter which is good.  However, I dont think you can conclusively say that the older dog produced just as well as when he was between 3-8 years.  Since you never bred to him before that point in time.  I believe they did a study on mice that substantiated my previous comment.

There was also another interesting study done on Mice that proved that experience and environment can become genetically coded into DNA and have a substantial effect on resulting offspring.

They exposed a group of mice to vanilla scent and shocked them with electricity.  Thus the mice began to associate the smell with the shock to the point were the smell alone caused fear.  They then bred these mice and seperated the offspring from the parents.  They then exposed the offspring to the same smell and observed a fear reaction.  The fear reaction was observed for several generations if I recall correctly.

WOW! Those are some reeeeeeally nice looking dogs in that pedigree!! Callie knocked my socks off!

I agree with you Marjorie..she is quite well constructed..Since I own a black, I have tried to study the blacks as their bodies are usually a little different .

Zeno the black male, sitting of course, is a nice black male also

I like the pedigree very much...see a lot of great dogs and some very hard working lines...Drigon...just as one I am familiar with..back to Greif also and Tiekerhook just a tiny few

YR

This is the breeding that would be with Axels Son my Cruise.

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/breeding.result?father=729884&mother=643087

TIG:

This is the young females pedigree you asked about.

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=1933789-flix-vom-risdenhaus

This would be the pedigree if I bred her to Cruise my Axel son.

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/breeding.result?father=729884&mother=1933789

Thanks Bob,  I can certainly see why you were thinking of breeding her to Cruise but I guess my question is this - what are you hoping to get out of this litter - what combination of traits, temperament, character and drive. Are you hoping for something along the line of Hutch or more like Cruise and /or Axel or Troll M or Greif Lahntal?  Do you want more the German style dog or Belgian?

If you are looking for more Hutch it may be an uphill battle since you will be bringing a tightly bred (2-4) sire to a bitch who on first blush does not look that tightly linebred. Usually in that case it's likely the tight breeding will prevail. However, I always like to look at the extended linebreeding to get a look at what's in what I call the back 40 because I have learned what masses back there can affect the outcome of the breeding. Holy jesohets she's 7x Fero!! I must confess I find that a bit scary and with Cruise you will simply be adding more to that. So it might be because of what's massed back there you would get more of that type of dog.

Plus to tell you the truth and this is just my personal opinion and  prejudice speaking - I look at her pedigree (wish we had pictures) and see a very well bred WGL working dog pedigree. But a piece of me goes oh yes all the usual suspects. When will someone do something different? I am also concerned because I see working line breeders reproducing all the same errors of hi-line and American show breeders of breeding themselves into a black hole where every other line is stopped by a preminent highly visible stud - here Fero, Troll/Timmy , Yoschy, Nick, Half. In the distant past the Germans used to keep "off" or alternative lines so they had a way out of this genetic bottleneck. They no longer do this and neither do we.

Now with Axel and Flix besides his obvious interest in her, there is no linebreeding in the first 5 and within 7 a bit of Greif Lahntal and Ari/Arex Neffertal, Robby G and Dinky B. No additional Fero. Troll/Timmy or Yoschy. Plus you have the advantage she's young - you could always take her to Cruise for her 2nd breeding.  How old is he? His profile does not show dob.

For the ladies - take a look a Fraya in Cruise's pedigree. I can't believe they only gave her a G. I wonder if she was a bit oversize? To me she's gorgeous. I've always liked the looks of the Salztalblick dogs. Nope not oversized I just checked - 22 in and 59.5 lbs - my kind of girl.

Tig I don't want to hijack this thread but could you start a new one talking about the different dogs? I.e. the Belgian, German, and Czech.  We have one of each and I'm very interested in what you have to say about them.

Thanks

" In the distant past the Germans used to keep "off" or alternative lines so they had a way out of this genetic bottleneck. They no longer do this and neither do we."

the average toothless deep woods redneck understands this, why is the gsd crowd getting so inept at basic biology?, serious question.