Conflict over COI

[Henk ten Klooster]

“A first step forward for future” is how the committee of the Dutch Irish setter club describes a proposal to forbid combinations for breeding with a higher coefficient of inbreeding (coi) than five. Reason is “a rise of inheritable defects” like epilepsy, showing a clear connection with COI above five. A group of mostly show breeders tries to prevent this new rule being accepted on the annual general meeting. They launch another proposal, maintaining freedom of breeders to breed above that maximum.
What is your opinion?

[Susan Stone]

Not to worry - I'm slowly recovering.
It is spellt perfectly, just a different seaman:-))))

[ursula wilby]

The Oetzi was found to have a totally unrelated DNA (it has now been discovered) so perhaps ...yes you have got a point there Susan :-)

[Dee Rance]

Ah but was it Dyslexic?????

[Susan Stone]

I am not opposed to an opening of the stud books. Experiments have shown that only a very few generations after an outcross the breed traits will cover the outcross, hopefully keeping what was aimed to achieve. This has been proven by Bruce Cattanach's testbreeding of Corgi x Boxer to achieve Boxers with natural short tails. The later generation Boxers looked like Boxers! The same was done in Switzerland, but with similar breeds: the Newfoundland was used as an outcross for the Bernese Mountain Dog. The COI was reduced significantly and certain health problems decreased.

IMHO the great risk in semen banks and frozen semen is that

a) the use of a popluar sire could be continued long after a stud dogs death - thereby increasing inbreeding and numbers of related families. (If semen from KNF were still available, I bet many would run for it... )

b) a popular sire would no longer be used just within a certain geographical area but worldwide, hereby reducing the numbers of unrelated families.

Using dogs with perfect health tests, who's progeny and siblings have also been tested, may help the breed for a short time but it would also mean that this one dog would become the next popular sire thereby leading to the next bottle neck in the breed. On the long run we would be loosing genetic diversity.

But I actually wonder if semen banks, COI limitation, frozen semen etc. is necessary. Would it not be a lot simpler to limit stud dog use to say 100 puppies? That would automatically avoid the popular sire syndrome and also, over a certain time period, reduce the level of COI.

[ursula wilby]

I think a limit on the admount of offspring (as is applied in many other breeds) would be a brilliant move.
Appart from anything else, it would make the stud-dog-owners more selective.
Perhaps not a bad idea.

[Dee Rance]

AGAIN HERE HERE Ursula, very good idea it would solve a lot of problems, not all but a lot. I think though that there is still too many dogs with too few animals in their background, and these animals are the same over and over again, and you will find them in almost every pedigree in the UK and as was said before they are also all over the world, so the gene-pool is getting smaller and smaller.
We as responsible breeders should be trying to stop this, not perpetuating it, and the more in-breeding the more difficult it is going to be.
As far as line-breeding and in-breeding are concerned the only difference is that it's line-breeding when it works and in-breeding when it doesn't, there is no difference.

[Henk ten Klooster]

Dee Rance wrote:

Yes linebreeding and inbreeding are both inbreeding. But to call everything “inbreeding” might end up in even more misinterpretations.

Take for example the main line of descent:

The eighties in the UK were stamped by Sh Ch Kerryfair Night Fever (born 1979) . With a range of 23 show champions in over fifty litters, his influence topped via his son Sh Ch Danaway Debonair (1987) in his double grandson Sh Ch Caspians Intrepid (1993) who subsequently under more mated his sister and sired at least nineteen show champions.

Even the literbrother/sister mating of the Sh Ch's Twoacres Troilus and Teresa in the seventies had more “crossing” (so lower coi) than nowadays average Irish setter bred in the UK and cultures depending on them.

So we need to specify “inbreeding” to prevend discussions from becoming misty. Lets stick with a coi percentage over ten generations.

[Henk ten Klooster]

Forgot to say: limiting the number of litters to be sired by studdogs is not enough to lower the alarmingly high coi in Irish setters in the UK. In 2007, there were 1029 IS registered by the Kennel Club. Given the numbers provided above, descendants of these all three intensely inbred studdogs must number many thousands. It is likely -given the numbers of show champions- that inbreeding will even be intensified in near future.

In post above the quote of Dee Rance is missing. It was "As far as line-breeding and in-breeding are concerned the only difference is that it's line-breeding when it works and in-breeding when it doesn't, there is no difference."

[Dee Rance]

Henk I think you missed what I said, line-breeding has its place, but taken to the extent of the dogs that you quoted above it has the potential to go very badly wrong, very high COI. But if it is done with thought and knowledge then it can be very useful. To me its the people that think they know a great deal about genetics that can cause a lot of problems. Me I know nothing!!!! of that fact my daughter tells me often. But I do blunder through. I would like to think that, although knowing nothing, I can still come up with the rite answer. Given the chance and a good bitch to start with, and a little bit of luck....But this I know....I still think that the COI should be kept down, especially in the UK.

[Johanna Blacklake]

I think most of the breeders don't even know what the COI really is or how it is calculated, so that should be the first step.

[Dee Rance]

Oh yes, I agree.
I did a wee bit of an experiment last night and took my older girls pedigree back to the 1870-1880's it was, as they say, interesting.....nearly all the lines went back to two dogs, Palmerston (dog) and Townsends Quail (bitch). There were a few lines that led nowhere and there were a few that had different lines, but mostly to those two animals. In the past there were so few animals that were registered so it must have been difficult, they didn't have the luxury of being able to have a choice from all around the world, as we do today. Lets take advantage of this and do something to lower the COI of our dogs, before it is too late.......

[Margaret Sierakowski]

In red Irish Setters you at least have more choices when you breed, in spite of decades of linebreeding. In IRWS its a lot more difficult, we just dont have the numbers. In the UK the top show bred dogs are pretty closely related, and all go back to a very small number of founders imported at the time of the revival. And the working IRWS from Ireland are similarly from a small gene pool and closely related and mostly from two main related kennels
I know I should be trying to get the COI down on my litters . If I try to get a lower COI by using a less related show bred dog, I am increasing the risk of bringing in problems that I dont have in my own breeding at the moment. If I line breed on my own dogs, I'm going to get problems sooner or later. If I reduce COIs by breeding a working dog to a show bred dog , I will lose working ability. There just is no easy answer.
In recent litters of IRWS bred in the UK, the lowest COI (based on 8 generations) that I can find is around 7%, and the highest nearly 30%
The only way to keep the COIs down is to start thinking more internationally, bringing in new puppies from less related lines in Europe or even America, or using stud dogs from other countries