This is just my opinion: In the case of chickens, the fighting game fowl and in dogs, the real Pit Bulls and various other working breeds (not just a breed that worked at one time, but is out there working today or within the last couple of generations); health, vigor and lack of faults is ‘almost’ a given in my opinion as you are picking up on a successful breeding program that is the result of hundreds or even thousands of years of progress. However, you still want the best you can get before starting a line breeding program to ‘fix’ or ‘lock in’ what you’ve got. The breeders who have the best are the ones who should be doing this and those breeders are who you want to get your seed stock from. Now I’m not saying you have to have the top strain in your country (although that would be nice) to start a line breeding program, but you want to be up there with the best. Keep in mind I’m talking about strains and breeds, a large and diverse gene pool is common sense when you’re talking about a species.
I remember being shocked to learn all the issues, even health issues, that plaque so many of the top lines of breeds, of different species, that have long been bred for ‘show’ not ‘go’. How did this happen? Someone posted a few posts back that their chickens were the result of a line breeding program that had good attributes, but also faults bred into them. In my opinion it would have been better for the originator of the line to purchase better stock to begin with and/or practice complementary breeding, as Yellow House Farm explained so well, before attempting to ‘clone’ or ‘lock in’ those traits.
Today we have many breeds of animals that are not bred to do any kind of work (only need to look like they can do work) and things like fitness are not tested. In working breeds if you’re healthy and work well you get bred and pass on those genes and if you aren’t healthy or don’t work well you don’t. These ‘other’ breeds rely on the breeders to make those decisions for them and that’s where the trouble starts.
So when you purchase stock, learn what the faults are. Hopefully they are minor. If they have major faults that will take many years to correct or a dead end, do not use them for breeding. Learn what the strengths are. There is no perfect bird, but seek out the best you can get. As a breeder, replacing Mother Nature’s survival of the fittest and avoiding faults is a huge task. If you were to go out today and purchase a trio of good game fowl, assuming nobody has screwed them up, there’s a good chance you can start a line breeding program immediately after testing the hens to see who consistently threw the best cocks, hopefully as good as or even better than the Cock bird . If you see faults in your breed stock it may be a good idea to practice complementary breeding, put a lot of birds on the ground, cull all but the best and when you feel it’s as good as it’s going to get you are ready to lock in those traits.
This is my understanding based on what I know, but I am not a master breeder. Hope this helps.
