Not often I read a thread a disagree so vehemently; cross breeding has its place in all breeding: be it livestock or domestic.
A few examples to illustrate my view. In horse racing the AQPS is currently dominating national hunt racing, after WW1 the Prussian cavalry horses left over from the war formed the base of this breed when crossed with a thoroughbred, it is still not recognised by the french thoroughbred stud book so has formed its own, but is more than capable of competing with and beating pure thoroughbreds. Cattle breeding; the vast majority of the grass based diary farming systems now run cross bred cows, very much on the NZ system where there is little or no sentiment about breed, if it’s fit for purpose they use it and breed from it. In a similar vain they used the same sentiment to create the huntaway, which is not particularly uniformed in type but very able to drive sheep/cattle unlike the herding collie/eye dogs which are better at gathering. The Alaskan race husky, is a bastardised mix of pointer, husky, greyhound, and I’m sure a few others, but is infinitely quicker than any pure Siberian husky team. The Cocker spaniel was all bar extinct as a working dog until masses of springers was bred back into them, and until the early 90’s the vast majority of them where white bodied, only in the last 30 years has it become fashionable to distance themselves from their ancestry by becoming solid coloured. Lurcher/longdog by admission are a cross bred, the very best I’ve seen run either daytime or night and on all quarry have been bitza’s generally lurcher x lurcher. Greyhounds are fast, very, especially the coursing bred ones, but as catch dogs don’t hold a candle to daytime longdogs, or to good lamping dogs, and remember there was plenty of bull blood put into greyhounds back in the day. Terriers, well we’re do you start, all bred to fundamentally do the same thing, go to ground: Lakeland, fell, patterdale are all similar in working style and have been intercrossed many times producing some of the best earth dogs, though strains and types have been developed. The Russell’s have been bred more as baying dogs but with fashion plenty of white Lakeland and bull blood has been added as they have wained in popularity. Whippets would be the exception to the rule with running dogs as the very best are better than most small Lurcher’s.
This mythical thing called litter wastage has been spoken about many times on this thread, there is masses in the KC world too, labs with terrible hips/elbows even when both their parents have low scores as they were x-rayed when very young, hip displacia in GSD even the working strains. If we are honest, most dogs don’t make the grade due to poor human training, the dog blueprint, a NZ deer dog hunting training system demonstrates that a huge range of purebred and x’bred dogs can be outstanding hunting companions. The reality is there are far too many poor dogs bred from. It doesn’t matter if they are crossbred or purebred the vast majority should never have pups.
I’m far more of an advocate of breeding to be fit for purpose, concentrate on the traits you want and breed the best to the best and hope for the best. I personally believe the KC has a huge amount to answer for, most dogs aren’t fit for purpose, hence the show and working strains within breeds. Though the working stuff is driven my Field trial dogs which are definitely not what most general shooting men are after.
There are some amazing purebred dogs out there and I’m not advocating designer dog breeding but there is also some amazing mongrels, judge them on whether they are fit for purpose not on there pedigree.
Tin hat firmly on!
