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Genetics and the popular sire


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I knew he was a Dhu grandson, didn't know that granddam on his mothers side also went deaf. I would consider that a carrier/carrier breeding, for some reason I thought you were looking a lot further back for deafness showing up.

 

Interesting looking at the pedigree with the dam's dam info.

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Yes, it was a carrier x carrier. Scott still has normal hearing and is about 11 years old. Freya had normal hearing until a few months ago. She is 13 years old. Never would have done the breeding if I had the correct information.

 

I have taken their pedigrees quite far back, looking for the origin of the mutated gene. During my research I was able to track the gene back quite a long time and find many affected relatives.

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I thought I would share my experience with EOD.

First my good friend and her mother about 16 years ago purchased two pups from good lines. My friend wanted hers for stock work and the other went on to be her elderly mothers best friend. My friends pup once old enough to work sheep turned out to be wonderful. Fast forward a few years and my friend was at a loss to help her dog on driving, she went to many clinicians and most thought the dog was just blowing her off. Had baer test done and turned out to be deaf, and the vet figured was born deaf. The litter mate never had hearing problems until very late in life. We just thought this was a fluke as there was no mention of other littermates with the problem.

We both purchased pups from a similar breeding, same bitch, different sire. I can't remember exactly when I noticed something wasn't right with Belle. I think she was about 4, and I was having trouble with crossdrives. We were going from a dog that was easy to work, and wanted to please to what looked like blowing me off. Took her in for Baer testing and she was going deaf. So far my friends dog still seemed fine and was running in open and doing very well. The next year she started having the same problems, had Baer test done and same thing. Both eventually went totally deaf.

Before I knew all this with Belle I had her bred, she only had two pups and I kept both.(this is the one and only litter I had) Had them both fixed once I found out. Floss never had hearing problems, ran her successfully in open, but she died of cancer at age 10 ( best dog I ever had, my heart dog) Wisp was about 7 or 8 and I was running her in open but couldn't always get a reliable crossdrive at trials. I took her out to friends to have them watch and they could never see a problem because she would work just fine. By happen chance I walked into the barn one day, and Wisp ran in from another way, I called her name, she looked around everywhere but my direction. She turned her head and I called again and she came running. From that I had a sneaking suspicion she was deaf in her left ear. Took her to get tested and sure enough she was deaf in her left and had hearing loss in her right. She is still here and loves to help take sheep to pasture, but we have Meg for help. After all this I have become a little paranoid about future dogs I get being deaf.

So at least in my experience there were some dogs not affected, but I'm not a science person at all. When the hearing studies first came out I think it was some research in Canada, my friend and I send each dogs DNA with complete pedigree hoping the we could help. It was disappointing to hear that study had stopped I think due to lack of funding and so nothing came of it. I hope they someday find a way to test for EOD so people don't have to go through what my friend and I did.

 

Samantha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I can probably do it this weekend. The rest of this week is crazy, but I will try and PM you this weekend.

From what my friend and I figured out, it all went back to the bitch from my friends first pup, that was the common thread.

 

Samantha

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CMP,

You are basing a lot of your comments in this section and others on your view that trial dogs are bred exclusively to trial dogs and farm dogs exclusively to farm dogs, despite the number of folks here who have actually done matings that are not in keeping with your worldview. My own working dogs have trial lines and strictly working lines combined (to make that perfectly clear, there are dogs close up and way back in my dogs' pedigrees who worked on farms and never saw a trial field, and there are others who did a lot of trialing and some who did both). You are course are welcome to continue to believe that people who trial breed their dogs only to the dogs of other people who trial, but I am telling you that in my experience you are making a faulty assumption and then basing a whole lot of conclusions on that faulty assumption, as someone who neither breeds, nor works, nor trials dogs. Maybe if you spent some time in the larger community of people who trial dogs you'd be pleasantly surprised, but you might also have to change your firmly held beliefs about what you know.

 

J.

 

You had an inconsistent opinion Feb 2013, post # 32. Regardless of matings between farm dogs and trial dogs which you cited above, Feb 2013 you had affirmed "something of a divide" between those same dogs in the US. Which is it? -- TEC.

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Maybe I have mis-understood this, but I thought this thread had NOTHING to do with the divisive 'trial vs farmdog debate"..

 

Instead the OP posted an article from Dr Beuchat about the HEALTH problems that will inevitably arise if a few stud dogs are heavily used within a breed.

 

IMHO it would be a great shame if this current thread got derailed onto the other issue...because as other recent discussions have shown, the posts can become somewhat acrimonious.

 

FWIW, My reading of CMPs earlier post in this thread was that she was providing information about her farm's breeding programmes (and health status) that has been documented in detail ( 9 boxes of note books) since her great grandfather's time and therefore IMO is a valuable source of information.

 

Mark ( wrt to your posts 17 and 19.). Everything is a bit hectic here, but I will try to find time during this week to read the linked article in post 17 and will get back to you on it ( ...don't hold your breathe, I probably won't be able to add anything particularly insightful!!)

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Just looking at the ISDS stats, in 1967 Spot sired a whopping 438 registered pups out of a total registration in the region of 4500.

 

In contrast last year's most used sire produced 77 pups out of a total registration of over 6000.

 

That is not an anomaly over the last 20 years.

 

Of course there are no figures for the number of unregistered pups sired.

 

On the face of it more dogs are being produced by a wider variety of sires. The Wiston Cap / Spot era of the 1960s no longer applies to the same degree except in terms of its legacy in the population.

 

Have breeders learned or is it as result of market forces and better means of communication with a lot more good sires to choose from?

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I would bet a lot of money that the most popular sire in the US produced more than 77 dogs this year. No, so many people here absolutely breed to the stud du jour; just ask around at trials when you see a pup or take a look at FB. Not something that I can support, but *a lot* of people do it, especially when the dog is imported (ooohhhhh fancy!). We won't "learn" unless one of these studs contributes something bad in large numbers. Then what?

 

Re: PDA, I can't see this being a big problem in the working border collie and have heard of only a handful of cases. Breedings that go back to MAH don't count in my book: how many quality breeders have her dogs behind them (and like Liz said, how can we trust her pedigrees anyway)?

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I would bet a lot of money that the most popular sire in the US produced more than 77 dogs this year. No, so many people here absolutely breed to the stud du jour; just ask around at trials when you see a pup or take a look at FB. Not something that I can support, but *a lot* of people do it, especially when the dog is imported (ooohhhhh fancy!). We won't "learn" unless one of these studs contributes something bad in large numbers. Then what?

Re: PDA, I can't see this being a big problem in the working border collie and have heard of only a handful of cases. Breedings that go back to MAH don't count in my book: how many quality breeders have her dogs behind them (and like Liz said, how can we trust her pedigrees anyway)?

 

Do you think that is partly a result of the particular logistics you face?

 

We live in a pretty cosy little world where there are plenty of opportunities to meet face to face without much effort in terms of travel time or expense. Information spreads at first hand. I suppose that can make it easier to get to know what potential studs are around rather than relyng on reputation.

 

Someone brought her bitch from Spain to be put to a friend's non working dog and the journey was probably easier and shorter than some of you will face within the same country.

 

We don't have much of the hobbyist element (although it is increasing) and that probably means that there is less likelihood of being impressed by fame.

 

I asked a while ago how many dogs were registered each year in the US but no one replied. Are there any figures available for registrations as a whole and by sire? If not, estimating the current effect of popular sires is pretty much guesswork.

 

I like hard figures as a starting point while recognising that they don't tell the whole story.

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Just looking at the ISDS stats, in 1967 Spot sired a whopping 438 registered pups out of a total registration in the region of 4500.

 

In contrast last year's most used sire produced 77 pups out of a total registration of over 6000.

 

That is not an anomaly over the last 20 years.

 

Of course there are no figures for the number of unregistered pups sired.

 

On the face of it more dogs are being produced by a wider variety of sires. The Wiston Cap / Spot era of the 1960s no longer applies to the same degree except in terms of its legacy in the population.

 

Have breeders learned or is it as result of market forces and better means of communication with a lot more good sires to choose from?

Alas.. I fear that you are only looking at the number of pups per dog per year. if you analyse the total number of pups per dog, the figures are somewhat different.

 

If you check out Teun van den Dools wonderful site #pups/dog page and re-sort by date of birth, you will see that van der Zweep's Gary has already sired 220 registered pups from 41 litters and he is currently only 4.5 years old. (ETA. Mr v/d Dool's data currently summarise upto the 2013 stud book .. so Gary's age to produce this number of pups should be considered as 3 years 8 months)

 

It may not reach the very high pup numbers of Wiston Cap, but some of the highly successful trialists still have several dogs who sire a large number of pups. In addition, when considering the genetic pool, it should also be remembered that the different dogs from these handlers are also probably related to each other.

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I just used one simple comparison of patterns.

 

The OP's article says that the FCI recommends no more than 5% of the breed registrations over a 5 year period should be from the same sire.

 

Yes, that is a very useful site which I browse quite often and it is apparent from that site that the reason Wiston Cap's tally exceeds that of Spot is because he was active for a longer period, even though Spot often beat him per year. It's a pity the ISDS doesn't collate such figures but I'm glad someone does.

 

Geographical location can't be ignored. According to that site the constituent countries of the UK and Ireland tend to breed to their own, with Scotland even more likely to use dogs that are more easily available. This must produce a patchy effect; just look at the number of Dalziel pups.

 

I would guess that there is less choice of dogs to use in the Netherlands and surrounding markets which again skews the picture.

 

Difficult to say how far popular sires share pedigrees without a lot of research. I'm sure some have a succession of home bred dogs while others will buy in an unrelated dog to use with their own bitches.

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Mark ( wrt to your posts 17 and 19.). Everything is a bit hectic here, but I will try to find time during this week to read the linked article in post 17 and will get back to you on it ( ...don't hold your breathe, I probably won't be able to add anything particularly insightful!!)

I understand, I will be busy with farm/house chores over my long Thanksgiving weekend (hopefully we don't get snow tomorrow).

 

Even if you don't find anything insightful having more people involved with the breed reading/studying the original scientific literature (as opposed to someone's review) is better for the breed and the community.

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Quote

I asked a while ago how many dogs were registered each year in the US but no one replied. Are there any figures available for registrations as a whole and by sire? If not, estimating the current effect of popular sires is pretty much guesswork.

no hard numbers that I know of, but one can get a sense by looking in the ABCA newsletter at the annual report. In 2013 there was $149,169 received in registration fees, average fee per pup is $11. If I round down to $145,000, it would be a rough estimate of 13,549 pups registered by the ABCA 2013, probably a little high but should be close. Would not be limited to the US, more like North America would include dogs registered to members in other countries too, not certain how many that would be.
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Thanks Debbie. That seems a lot of pups for not many sheep.

 

Estimate of US sheep population in 2011 5.5 million.

 

Estimate of UK sheep population in 2010 36 million, with half as many registrations (also including non UK ISDS registrations)..

 

Do cattle make a lot of difference to the numbers?

 

Why do you think there is such a disparity? We do have a lot of non registered working dogs here. On no evidence whatsoever I would guess that they could be in the majority.

 

Less danger of the popular sire effect in the unregistered market I suppose.

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95 million cattle / 5.2 million sheep from a recent count on the USDA website.

 

I believe that many of the working ones are being used for cattle work, though there is a large number if not even the majority that are likely being bred for pets and sport, pets would also include companion farm dogs that are not truly saving labor, IMO. Those dogs also are not likely to be bred to popular sires, more what ever is available or personally owned by who ever is breeding them.

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Mum24dog, is it common for a breeder to register entire litters over there by you or only the ones that they feel are worthy of registration? That would effect the numbers registered since most here seem to register every pup born. For some reason I'm thinking that your registration fees and related requirements are also quite a bit higher, that too would reduce the actual numbers being registered creating a higher percentage of unregistered dogs.

 

Here it's simply $11 per pup, no other requirements other then ABCA membership and registered parents

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Because I'd guess the majority of border collies bred in this country are actually bred for something other than stockwork. There are two registries, ABCA and AKC, so people who want to register are going to do so with one or the other, no matter what their breeding goals. ABCA is the de facto working registry, but it doesn't "police" what dogs are registered with it (beyond keeping up with AKC conformation champions for the purpose of deregistering), so all the sport, pet, backyard, etc. bred dogs could be registered with the ABCA as long as the parents were also registered there. That's why we're forever making distinctions between working bred vs working lines or some-other-way bred because all could be (and are) represented in the ABCA numbers.

 

ETA: I see that Debbie said pretty much the same thing. Sorry for repeating.

 

J.

Thanks Debbie. That seems a lot of pups for not many sheep.

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is it common for a breeder to register entire litters over there by you or only the ones that they feel are worthy of registration? That would effect the numbers registered since most here seem to register every pup born. For some reason I'm thinking that your registration fees and related requirements are also quite a bit higher, that too would reduce the actual numbers being registered creating a higher percentage of unregistered dogs.

 

 

IME if the breeder is going to register a litter then usually all pups of the litter are ISDS registered (unless there is a clear physical disability in one).

In general, the ISDS will only register pups and young dogs up to two years of age and only if both parents are registered and the owners of both parents are members of the society. (ETA there are also requirements on the parents to have their eyes tested &/or DNA screened. The parents 'eye' status will dictate whether the litter can be registered without further tests, or whether they need to be DNA screened for CEA or whether the litter is completely ineligible to be registered )

Dogs whose parents are not registered need to be ROM. (I think if a dog has not been registered by the age of 2 then he/she will also need to be ROM)

 

The fee structure is such that most pups are registered by 6 months of age . FYI Current ISDS registration fees per pup is Less than 6 months = $26, 6-9 months = $32, 9-24months = $64. All pups must be microchipped prior to ISDS registration

 

Current ROM fees are $800 plus the cost of DNA testing for CEA plus microchip

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Another number to consider, is USBCHA membership, only 1000 members. If you figure that the majority are not likely to produce even 1 litter each year that really cuts into the overall number of ABCA registered dogs that are bred with trialing in mind.

 

eta (not saying that all usbcha members are breeding with trialing in mind, but they/we have a common bond that would likely influence their/our selection, the ISDS trial format).

 

With that said, it would be interesting to see what percentage of those dogs are closely related compared to how closely they are related to those registered by non USBCHA members.

 

Would reduce the immediate impact of a popular sire to our entire gene pool having it effect a specific subset of lines, though over the generations you will likely see quite a lot of bleed as relatives get introduced into the rest of population via outcrossing.

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I should have also added in my previous post that I have been told that the fees plus costs for the other requirements needed for ISDS registering in the UK has risen significantly in the last 18 months. A number of shepherds/farmers have told me that they are considering not registering the whole litter because of these costs.

 

If this happens then the number of ISDS registered dogs will decrease and because of the relative high cost of ROM, it could have the effect of further limiting the gene pool for registered dogs...I guess only time will tell

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does ABCA have restrictions as to residency of members? Could those in other countries with ISDS registered dogs become ABCA members and have their litters registered with ABCA so that they don't lose their paper trail and in turn be able to get the offspring back into ISDS with out the ROM expense?

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