A Guide to Practical Breeding A Guide to Practical Breeding First edition, 2012 | Page 31

31 bloodline. In the process we always took into consideration the Hidalgo concept of breeding individuals with same attributes, in the case of the blakliz, speed-to-speed as this was the main fighting trait that we aimed at in creating the blakliz. Of course, cutting ability and gameness were also of vital importance. Thereafter there were a couple of infusions with a couple of bloodlines known for cutting prowess and gameness. First with the Aguirre grey that led to the Midnight grey version of the blakliz, then with the blue face. Cross breeding Crossbreeding is the mating of entirely unrelated individuals or individuals without any common ancestor for the past six generations. The object of cross breeding is to combine the good traits from both parents to produce better off spring. The beneficial effects of this genetic variation is called hybrid vigor. The more varied the genes in the individual the greater the chances for hybrid vigor, provided that vast majority of these genes are desirable. Although, not entirely proven, I am inclined to support the theory that more often than not, good genes for particular traits are more dominant than bad ones. This is supportive of the Darwinian theory of survival of the fit enough. I surmised that attributes that have everything to do with increasing the chances for survival such as strength, intelligence, speed and vigor must be dominant, otherwise species will be endangered and eventually beTherefore as come extinct. There are various kinds of cross- a rule, an inbred breeding. There is the two-way cross or individual is better breeding say a pure lemon to a pure sweater. for breeding, and There is also the 3-way cross like a mating the crossbred between a pure kelso and a lemon/sweater 2way cross. There are 4-way, 5-way, 6-way individual is better crosses, so on and so forth. Crossbreeding for fighting. combinations are practically limitless. But, in the same manner that too intense inbreeding may result in inbreeding depression, too much genetic variations may result in genetic confusion rather than in hybrid vigor. Let’s not confuse ourselves with too many technical matters. Practical breeding does not deal with in-depth genetics. Rather it sets realistic desirable objectives and try to achieve these goals as economically as possible in terms of time, money and effort. Let us just keep in mind that inbreeding is designed to reduce genetic variation ́Ѽ