A Guide to Practical Breeding A Guide to Practical Breeding First edition, 2012 | Page 28

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Breeding Concepts and Techniques
Our concept of practical purity
Practical pure is a term coined by RB Sugbo Gamefowl Technology applied to some of our breeding materials. A practical breeder
doesn’t have to be an expert in genetics. It is enough that we know some
fundamentals such as that inbreeding aims at purifying desirable characteristics and traits so that individuals become homozygous
of these traits and thus will be able to pass these on the
next generation. This is why we inbred by matIn the pro- ing relatives to relatives even at the risk of excess of creating periencing in- breeding depression that may
result in offspring that are small, weak, and
the blakliz we
even cowards. Inbreeding is delicate and
were already ap- tricky. It will take precise and accurate skills in
plying our own selecting which among the inbred individuals
theory on practi- to mate in order to produce the next inbred
cal purity when generation that will continue to carry on the
line and avert a breakdown.
we set in proIs there no other way to do it? If our
gress the process aim is to produce a generation of individuals
of purifying the that is pure of the desired traits, is inbreeding
traits we desired the only way? The answer is: probably no.
There might be another way. Take for instance
in the bloodline the example of the simple hereditary trait of
long before we comb type. We can produce pure pea combs or
began inbreeding pure straight combs even without resorting to
inbreeding. We can produce pure straight
them and setting combs by pairing a pure straight comb individthem as strain.
ual with another pure straight comb individual
even if these two individuals are not related to
each other. We can do the same with plumage
and leg color. On the other extreme, we might also be able to do it, with
complex characteristics such as cutting ability, flight, speed or power.
We might be able to do this by mating a cock with excellent cutting ability over hens whose bloodlines are also known for excellent cutting ability; by breeding flight over flight, speed over speed, and power over
power. If we do this enough number of times, we may be able to purify
these desired traits even if we will not use related individuals. We may be
able to purify desirable attributes, not bloodlines. We may not have in
our hands pure of a certain family but we have pure cutting chickens or
pure speed strain or pure power cocks. What does it matter whether a cat
is black or white as long as it can catch mice, said Mao Tse Tung.
I got this idea from Antonio Hidalgo, author of a trilogy on sabong—which is among the best, if not the best cockfighting literature I