Crufts, COIs, Mate Select and outcrossing
Tania and I went to Crufts last Sunday, mainly to look at the stalls to see what was selling well and get some ideas for the CavalierMatters stall.
I hired a mobility scooter so did the window shopping in style. I resisted road rage temptation even when we saw certain KC members.
We were shown the new Mate Select programme by Nick Blayney, who is a Past President of the BVA. This project is the Kennel Club's great white hope for the future of pedigree dog breeding.
The KC intention is that breeders and buyers will be able to use this programme to get health & inbreeding information when considering a possible mating or getting details about puppies for sale.
We had a fairly wide ranging discussion during which Mr Blayney rather reluctantly conceded that the PDE film had been a considerable force for change, and that prior to 2008 the veterinary profession had stood by and failed to act despite the obvious health problems in pure bred dogs.
I had a real surprise when I put in the names of Faith, the cavalier that lives with my daughter, & the dog she has just been mated to.
This mating would be considered as an outcross in cavalier breeding circles and so I expected the COI of the potential puppies would be better than the breed average, especially as I was told that Select Mate would only use 3 generations for the calculations.
To my dismay the COI of this mating was something like 6.6 (worse than a first cousin to first cousin mating ) whereas the breed average was said to be 5.4
I had been sure this mating must have a much better COI than average.
Nick Blayney explained that that a lot of the same ancestors in the background could have the same effect as one ancestor in common in the last couple of generations and I have realised that I was only comparing this mating with very linebred show breeder matings, which on the whole would have very high COI indeed.
The relatively low breed average COI will be thanks to the 80% of non-breed-club people who register their litters with the KC but do not line breed.
A lot of fresh genes there if only we could identify those relatively unaffected with SM & MVD.
Faith's eye test results did not show up on Mate Select, although they are on the KC website and in the BRS. This has apparently happened to others and is something they will have to sort out before it goes live ( The KC is saying this will be in few weeks but Mr Blayney felt it would be a good few months )
Nick Blayney mentioned bringing new genetic material into the Cavalier gene pool by outcrossing to another breed.
I said I thought it may be a good idea if it gave us a healthier dog, but I was sure most breeders would be very opposed and there was no way the KC would agree. To my surprise he said it was already being discussed within the KC.
As I have already said on another post we visited the health scheme stall & were told that the BVA was in favour of publication of the MRI scheme results and they were still accepting views sent in by breeders and pet people up until May.
Margaret C
Cavaliers......Faith, The Ginger Tank and Woody.
Japanese Chins.... Dandy, Benny, Bridgette and Hana.
Remembered with love......... Tommy Tuppence and Fonzi
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