A Guide to Practical Breeding A Guide to Practical Breeding First edition, 2012 | Page 33

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Line breeding
Line breeding, usually a form of inbreeding, is a program which
Here is a very
is anchored on a favored individual. This type of inbreeding is a favorite
simple, easy to
of preservationist or in-breeders who constantly work for the preservation
understand LINEof their bloodlines. The common notion is that line breeding means the
BREEDING
continual breeding back to an individual, may it be male or patriarchal; or
CHART. This
should be quite
a female or matriarchal; or to both sides (see chart on this page). But this
helpful to the novice method although the best known, is by no means the only way to effect
and intermediate
line breeding. Continual breeding back to an individual is only one way
fanciers. This chart
of effecting line breeding. There are various other ways. For instance
can be used as a
breeding a favored cock over several hens and then breeding the off"line-breeding"
chart or for
spring among themselves is another method of line breeding as, no matestablishing a
ter what, the influence of the favored individual remains substantial, in
"strain" when only this case half of the blood of all resulting offspring will still come from
one bird of the
the said favored individual. As long as the object of the exercise is to
wanted mutant is
keep the influence of a favored individual substantial in the genetic comavailable.
position of a flock, then that is line breeding. Let us repeat here that line
breeding is usually a form of inbreeding, but not all the
time. We can line breed without inbreeding if the appearances of the favored individual in the pedigree of the breeders we currently use are more than six generations ago, although its influence remains significant.
In creating and developing the blakliz, we at first,
applied several line-breeding programs. There were actually
five-favored individuals, all males, in the blakliz program. It
was not pure coincidence that all the favored individuals
were males. The main reason for this, was we could pick the
best among the males more conclusively than among the
females. First, we could pick the males through sparring and
even by actual pit-testing. Something we could not do with
the females. Second, since males could be mated to several
females at a time, it follows that a breeder would get more
sampling from the brood cock’s offspring than of any single
hen, thus, the conclusion would be more accurate.
After a series of line breeding, we occasionally
stumbled upon some superior generations. When this happened we immediately locked the genes by brother-sister
mating and started setting them as strain. When we have
decided to stick to a particular composition, we observed
moderate in-breeding in maintaining it. Our f