Series 6 - Episode 37: Line Breeding or In Breeding

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:19]Heat. Heat.

[00:00:31]Hello again. Welcome to Shed Talk, my magazine video style series looking at the keeping, breeding, and showing of capers. Uh with a special focus as usual on the exhibition style budgery car. Um, and a uh a couple of episodes ago in one of in the comments somebody asked about uh the how I calculated my inbreeding percentage. Um, and I gave a very quick explanation of that, but did say I would do a an episode pretty much dedicated to um, lime breeding, inbreeding, and in particular the um, database that I use that automatically calculates some of that for me. Well, it calculates all of it for me. In fact, I have to do none of it. So it calculates all the sort of inbreeding percentages when I'm looking at pairing up and the inbreeding of a particular um bird. Um and there are various bits of information on that um uh database that I use, the program that I use um both in terms of the general information around the uh individual bird record and also the information available when I'm looking at triing a pair a pair up and then subsequently pairing up. So we will look at that in this episode.

[00:02:01]Uh for those of you that are interested um in terms of the last episode where I where we looked at the uh young bird and barhead show, I was reasonably pleased with how I got on. Now well done to Bob McCabe. He did really well. He's got some um absolutely lovely birds and is a you know a long-term champion breeder of budgery gar. So I was not surprised that he won. He always brings some very nice birds to all of our shows. In fact, um, considering we're just a cage bird society, I say just considering we are a cage bird society, he supports the club very, very well. Um, so I wasn't, like I say, I wasn't surprised that he won. I had so in the uh rundown, I had third in the young bird class with uh Gray Green.

[00:02:54]Maybe more pleasing than that was Bob actually come over to me and asked about that particular bird. So um so I think it it it could do well for me in the intermediate section at some of the shows. Um and then in the uh barhead section, my the sister of that bird uh who was obviously in a later round um actually came third I think it was out of quite again another third um out of quite a strong section. So I was pleased with or quite a strong class. So I was pleased with that as well. Um overall I'm pleased with how the birds are developing. Right. What we will do to begin with is we're going to talk a little bit about my understanding following some reading that I've done on the line breeding and inbreeding and differences or not in the two um ways that we look at it. Right. Lime breeding or is it inbreeding?

[00:03:57]Well, before I start to talk about um the differences between line breeding and inbreeding, if there are any, um I just want to point out that I am by no means am I an expert in this subject. um what I know is based on uh the various articles that I've read um on the subject and uh so so I suppose really this is my basic understanding of um line breeding and inbreeding so inbreeding then or or selective breeding so we initially start off by calling it um isn't something new really I suppose as humans have been doing it since the we first discovered agriculture. You know we if you think about you know simple things like wheat or grain production if we eventually I the you know early humans would have realized that if they only planted the seed off the grasses or the grains that produced the most crop for them. the most um seeds for them, then that would in effect produce wheat that continued that tra of having the most rain on it. So, you know, and it's likewise with cows, you know, we we bred from cows that produced the most amount of milk and therefore eventually we ended up with cows that were producing more and more milk for us. So, that you know, so like I say, it was nothing nothing new at all. Um so I'll begin by saying that you know the difference between inbreeding and line breeding isn't clear. You know there is no definition that I can find anywhere that says this is inbreeding and this is line breeding. And indeed many different fancies will have different ideas. you know the so dog breeders for example have one perhaps one definition of what inbreeding is. Um uh the you know bird keeping may have a different definition of what inbreeding is. And even within the fancy, you know, the bird fancy, there may be a difference between the what canary breeders think is inbreeding and what um budgery breeders might consider to be inbreeding or certainly in terms of uh our use of it of that closeness because because closeness generally is how what we refer to it. You know, I think most people would expect that the closer we breed to birds, the closer um in relationship we breed to um animals together, that closeness reflects inbreeding. And I think there's a general view that inbreeding is what humans would consider probably consider to be um incest. So you know um father to daughter, brother to sister um those types of um pairings would be considered inbreeding and the wider selective breeding would be considered inbreeding.

[00:07:26]So that that's a very simple definition of what I would consider to be inbreeding and line breeding. Inbreeding is very close. Uh line breeding is breeding from a family. So birds that are related, definitely related, but not quite as close as that. So realistically, you know, all inbreeding is line breeding, but not all line breeding is inbreeding. There we go.

[00:07:54]That that's a a simple little term for you. Right, let's now have a quick conversation about why we might want to line breed or why lime is at the heart of any pedigree system.

[00:08:16]So the reason why we line breed, I'm just going to use the term line breed uh across the board here now rather than inbreeding and line breeding. So the reason why we um want to line is basically to um reduce the number of genes um that our stock holds. So that and that produces a pedigree and we want to reduce the number of genes so that we only have genes in a particular animal that are producing the results that we want. In the case of the cow for example, you know, we wanted to reduce the number of genes in the overall stock of the of uh the cows that were producing little milk and increase the number of genes within our stock of the number of cows that are producing a maximum amount of yield. So there you go, that would be that. So in the terms of the budgery gar you know let's consider um a long a deep mask for example um there it's probable that that deep mask is being produced by a number of different genes but you know the long a long feather gene the gene that actually develops the mask overall and and so on and so forth. So, so, um, so what we're trying to do is to breed birds with long mass. You want to make sure that that you maximize that number of genes that are capable of producing the long mass. Now I've heard somebody refer to it when I talk to this about um considering you've got two jars of marbles for example and the initially you start off with two jars of marbles which contain 50% red marbles and 50% green marbles. So um so each of the two jars are 50% of each. So and your aim is to have to end up with the maxim maximum number of red marbles. So you want jars that look predominantly red. So when you mix the two jars up initially, you will end up with, you know, a jar, some jars that contain more red than green and some jars that will contain more green than red and some that will be 50/50 as the um pot will be or the starting would be. That's just, you know, statistically if you just mix the two jars up. Next time round though, if you only use the jars that have got that appear to have more red marbles, appear more red than green and remove the ones that are green, the next time you do it, the chances are you will end up with jars that contain more red than green. Um and then again if you only um mix the two jar or jars that then contain the most red marbles you should contain get end up with jars statistically more of the jars will contain more red marbles. I hope that makes sense. There is always of course the chance that you end up with a jar that contains more green than red just because you can't guarantee how the two jars are going to mix. So, you know, you might um particularly with, you know, with birds, an early outcross bird, for example, when you're pairing two birds together, two nice really nice looking outcrosses. If you pair those two outcrosses together, they might produce lesser birds in that round just because you get you end up with the worst of that of both of the genes of that um bill. That makes sense. So the the genes that you don't want um from from those two birds. So that's the the reason why we are line breeding. Um and you know I mentioned it in a couple of episodes ago in one of my episode uh one of the when I was talking about one of the pairs producing you know some good birds and some bad birds. And I said that that's because my gene pool is still too wide. And that's a prime example of where, you know, some of those genes have mixed and produced the nice birds, but but it's also some of the genes have mixed and produced lesser birds. Now, I will obviously try and keep the the the birds that that look good to me and only breed with those, hoping that I'm going to minimize those genes that produce the lesser bird. So, that's the reason why um we will um lime breed. Now, the obvious problem with this is that, you know, we unlike with color, it's really easy. You know, if you wanted to say, I want to maximize the number of blue birds in my um shed, you would only breed with the birds that are blue and you would end up with, you know, a complete shed of all blue eventually just because that's the way it it would it would work if you didn't produce any uh if you didn't breed with any green birds. And likewise, if you only spread with green birds in your shed, eventually you would end up with mainly green birds in your shed. Now, it might be we all know that the blue is a recessive. So, it might be that some of those greens actually are hiding that blue, but the more often you you don't breed with the the offspring of those birds, um the the more likely it is or the less likely is they'll end up with a blue. Um, so but with things like, you know, the beat mask, uh, the thick feather or the, um, blow across the top of the head, directional feathering, those jeans aren't as simple as the color jeans. It's more likely that those genes are being or those features contain are being produced by more than one of the of the genes. So I suppose a little bit like you know cinnamon opaline dominant pie there are lots of different genes involved in that. So just breeding those together you may not end up with the same with a bird that that produce it looks like that at the end of it just because of the way they um produce particular if they're non-dominant. Um so so we need to try and narrow the genes down and and so it but it does produce us with a number of problems that we might end up with a bird like I have a problem in my shed and still do and a little while ago it was really bad with hinged tail and and it just so happened that my better birds feature-wise in terms of head feature and size also were the birds that had that hinge tail. So, I made the mistake of breeding those birds together. Um, and I ended up with a nice top end, but all the birds or the vast majority of them had ended up with the fe the hinge tail feature. So I've now had to try and rectify that that by being quite harsh or even though I might have a really nice looking bird with um in terms of the top end as a hinged tail I have to really you know it it's a feature that I will try not to use in my breeding no matter how good the other the bird is for the rest of it to try and breathe it out. The other problem with um line breeding is we know from experience has shown us that you can you can end up with weakening the overall strain of the bird particularly if you breed close together. you can end up with defects, birth defects and and you can end up with birds that are less fertile than as you continue to breed closer and closer together.

[00:16:14]And that's one of the reasons one of the reasons why we produce outcross to to increase uh fertility in our stock. if we begin to notice that it's not too it's not you know our birds are becoming less and less fertile. So um that's the reason why we line breed.

[00:16:34]Now generally speaking almost every budgery gar in the whole of the UK at some stage is related. So you know you get an outcross the chances are that somewhere in the background of that bird it's relate already related to the birds in your shed. That's just the way it works. You know you only have to go back you know 10 generations and suddenly you've got so many parents or so many ancestors that some of those are going to be related. It's just it's no there's no way it can't be. I remember seeing somewhere that you know if you if you go back I think it's 10 generations with your own generation going back 10 or 15 generations eventually there are more ancestors than there were ever humans in the whole world. So it's that means that there must have some of those must have been related and that's why if you do your ancestry tree the chances are somewhere in there you're related to a king or a queen just because it has to be because of the way that exponential exponentially increases. So, so as I say, you know, all breed eventually will be line breeding, but most people only consider the last five generations of their birds when they're looking at how closely a bird is related. And when I spoke previously about and I'll do it I'll talk a little bit about more more in this in just a second, the inbreeding coefficient.

[00:18:20]Most people will the embreeding co coefficient is calculated on five generations of birds no more than that.

[00:18:29]So right that's line breeding and inbreeding. What I'll do now is talk about the program that I use and some of those key terms that um on that within that program that I often refer to in my videos that I know some people have asked about. Right. So the program is Zoo Easy.

[00:18:54]So this is the program then that I use Zoo Easy. I've mentioned it before so I won't talk too long about the actual program um because as I say I have mentioned this before. What I wanted to do is start off by talking very briefly about the actual um record for each bird. Uh this is an example here of the record we have for each um bird in my um shed. And I'll just talk through the bits. I mean, most of it um I suppose sort of speaks for itself. Um so the ring number standard um we enter that myself or it gets entered automatically when I um enter a young bird as part of a breeding pair. Um you know the format I use is just my own format. So I start with my own ring number, then the year, and then the ring number for that um particular year. I do it that way round because then it just orders them nicely for me when I list them. Gender is obvious. That's a hen. Obviously, a hen or a Um breed below it. So just here um buddy as we can see that comes important.

[00:20:09]uh in in just a second because there was one bit of this I wasn't quite sure about a list initially but um having done some reading I now understand it but we'll talk about that in a minute.

[00:20:19]Okay so next bit here is the color again a drop-own list you can add as many as you like um so if it if it's a new color to your um bird room then you just add it. So the next two bits title in front of name and uh title behind the name I use this to represent the the various I use the term families or lines um very roughly so that YF just stands for it comes off my yellow face line and the blue means that that's a secondary one so it's closest in terms of um the the parents were one of them must have come off the blue line at some stage. So, hope that makes sense. I sort of work this out based on the the parents um titles. Uh born is stand again stands to reason what the born is. That just gives me its age. Um if it if it does die or when it dies, you just enter that in there and then it will automatically assume that it make it dead. And in my case, I've got it set up so it won't then show it on the list.

[00:21:31]Um the next bit then I will cover is down here. So the father's number is there and that is the mother's number there. And again that would be linked to either I can enter that manually or the um breeding records. And if I click on here it would take me through to that father's breeding record and that one would go take me through to the mother's breeding record which is always handy.

[00:21:57]Um the final bit I'll just quickly cover is this bit here breed percentage has confused me for a little while um as to what it meant. All of them are 100% and that basically links to here and I think because this database is used by multiple different line breeding and pedigree breeding groups. those sort of dogs, cats, um horses and others as well as birds. So if you were to have, let's say you crossed a um cockuspananiel with a poodle, um one of them would have the breed as being cockaspananiel, one of them would have the breed as being poodle, and then this here would obviously down here would become 50%.

[00:22:46]So it's 50% of whatever the breed is you put it down. Hope that makes sense. It for birdreeders, not necessarily budgy breeders, but bird breeders, you might want to use that might come important when you're muleing or um doing the uh hybrids. So, you know, it would be let's say you were hybrid and doing a cross between goldfinch and a red pole. Then that would one of them would have goldfinch there, one of them would have red pole there. So that would naturally come down a bit lower. I hope that all makes sense for the overall bits. What we will move on to now then is talk about the um inbreeding AVK and the various bits down here.

[00:23:39]So quickly running through the bits down here then the bottom end. Hope you can see my mouse pointer. So first of all, complete generations what this stands for and that's three. That means there are three generations in its pedigree where we've got all of the birds. So um both both parents of all of the birds.

[00:24:02]So and here this one here that the generation A and C is six. That means it's going back a total number of generations. It goes back is six generations. Although that may only be on one side. So the father's side goes back six. The mother's side goes back three. Hope that makes sense. That's the sort of idea there. And then this here is the estimated um complete generation. So that is a mixture of these two here. So what the estimate is in the total number of complete generations is uh 4.31.

[00:24:38]So that just tells me how reliable the remaining data on this card is really because obviously the higher complete generations or generations and this figure here are the more accurate this information above it is going to be. So the information around um the inbreeding and the AVK. Now I'll start with the AVK because we're going to move on to another screen to look at the inbreeding. So AVK it's it's a a Dutch term as I understand it um developed by a professor of genetics in Holland who studies um line breeding and genetics in general and it's basically looks at the number of complete generations uh uh sorry common birds within a five generation um background. So it looks at the last five generations and looks at the number of unique birds that are in there. So if it was 100 then all of the birds would be unique. So there would be no birds that had the same that were the same in those generations. So what do we mean by that? So the same bird might be let's say this father here might also be the great grandfather of this bird as well because we've bred him to a different hen at some stage in the past. So he might be a great grandfather. Therefore this bird the father would appear twice in the in this bird's background. Some birds might appear three times. It might have two common ancestors in the background. It might have a a great great grandfather and a great grandmother that are the same as the mother and father here. So with that in mind, um this bird here therefore has a 65 well about 66% of it um is is um in terms of their complete common ancestors. Now, if 100% is no common ancestors, this means that around about a third of this bird's ancestors appear more than once in its background history. So, it sort of to give me an indication of how closely the bird is bred and how diverse its genes are likely to be.

[00:27:19]So to some extent you want to keep this figure. You don't want it really being 100% because that means that you're not line breeding. Um but you have to keep an eye on it that it's not coming down right down too low. And clearly this figure the AVK will to some extent influence the inbreeding coefficient to some extent. Um right so that's re really this screen explained. What I want to do now then is we're going to go across and have a look at the how I when I pair up the trial breeding pairs screen that I use. Um, and the easiest way to do that from this screen, so let's say I want to pair this bird up would be is just literally to to click on the tab at the top here, trial breeding pair, and it will automatically fill this hen in into that breeding pair. So, let's just click on it and you can see it.

[00:28:15]And there it is. Right. I'll now talk you through the various bits of information that we can get off of this screen.

[00:28:22]So here we go then. This is the um screen as I say that. And if I want to now pick a a cockb bird for this, I will I click on the three dots here to add.

[00:28:37]Um that brings up all of the cockb birds in my shed that are still alive. Um, I did have one planned here. So, I'm looking for 256.

[00:28:47]Let's go across to about there.

[00:28:50]Back again.

[00:28:52]Okay. So, 256. There we go. We've now got um two birds um in here and we're going to trial this breeding pair. Now, the first thing I'm going to hit on is calculate relationship percentage. Once I've done that, I will talk a little bit about what this figure actually means.

[00:29:15]Okay, there's there we've done that. It automatically calculated the relationship percentage as being 23.1%.

[00:29:24]Okay, so the relationship um coefficient represents the the genetic um resemblance of each of the birds and it's a figure from about zero through to one. So for example um the a father to um daughter if that was a father and a daughter we would expect somewhere around 50% like that um because it would contain 50% of the father's genes and 50% of the um mother's genes. So it would have 50% [laughter] difference as a general principle um if it was uh brother and sister then we would expect it to be somewhere around about 25%. So this is would look like it would be the equivalent of of a of a brother sister type pairing if we were to look at these two birds. Okay.

[00:30:30]Now it it does a calculation for this not just based on the immediate two um parents but it looks back again over the five well over the five the whole of the generations that it's looked at to work this figure out. So it might well be that some of this is coming from an earlier pairing that that is quite close and quite high. Um, so when I see a figure high like this, not not that it's relatively high, but not massively from my point of view, and I'll explain why as we go through. Um, but if I see a figure like this that is if it was higher than that in particular, you know, what I would like to do then is have a look at find out what's causing that to be high. I do that by clicking on the trial pedigree.

[00:31:24]It's doing a little bit of calculations here.

[00:31:29]And here is the pedigree chart for this bird. Um, so and there's the hen. You can see there that we already spoke about there. And there's the bird there. Um, and the in figures here are the inbreeding coefficient for each of these two birds. And this here is the inbreeding coefficient of um the potential offspring. So fictitious animal as it says here. So right. So the inbreeding coefficient this is um how likely it is that these two birds contain the same pairs of genes. Now, if that was zero, they would contain it's they would contain none of the same genes or this bird would contain no of the same genes.

[00:32:17]Um, and if it was one, they would have all of the same genes, if that makes sense. So, it's looking back through all of these birds to um to work out the likelihood of this bird having the same genes as um its its ancestors.

[00:32:46]Hope that makes sense. Now, in here, when I look at this here, I can't see any obvious reasons why this would be relatively high because this bird here has no obvious and these two are not the same. And likewise here, I can't see any any birds so far that are repeated in this bird's ancestry. So, what I'm going to do now is to click on the number of generations at the top and take that full to the full five generations. It might take a little while to update this. There we go. We've now got five generations of birds. And now what I'm looking at here is when I get back down to this area here. So the great great grandpants.

[00:33:30]You can see there are some repeated birds. And I can tell this instantly without looking at them because of this little symbol here. You can see this um this should actually be three dots. for some reason currently um it's not showing up properly and it's just doing like a little missing logo symbol anyway but that would normally be three dots um red uh sorry yellow red and green I think they normally are but for each one of those means that it this bird here is appearing more than once in the uh um background around. So you can see them there.

[00:34:12]And again here we've got birds that are appearing more than once. So this is what I now know that it's somewhere around. So the most of the the reason for this bird's relatively high in breeding coefficient is actually quite a long way back in its ancestry. So it's ancestry, it's ancestry right the way back as far as great-grandparents and great great grandparents is where the common bit common is. Now that's not unusual if you think about it. Um we know that you know if you go far enough back we're all related somewhere um just because of the way it works. Um so it's it is not unusual the further back you go for the more birds the more likely it is that um you will have common ancestors in there.

[00:35:08]So that's what that I now understand that figure a little bit better by basically using this um pedigree chart to give me a full understanding of this figure here as well.

[00:35:34]So those are the various um bits of information I'll just come out of this um that we have around how I go about pairing up. And so sometimes those one or one of those can appear quite high as I've said before. Um and but as long as I understand why it's appearing quite high then I'm not overly uh concerned about it. I will make a decision based on my understanding of where the problem lies.

[00:36:11]Now I we we spoke you we we started this conversation by talking a little bit about um someone mentioned that it was quite high at the one of the figures now and that sort of leads me into the discussion around um how close we should line breed and at which and and we spoke earlier about inbreeding and line breeding. So, what's the problem with breeding too closely together? Um, so if we if we had let's say we wanted to pair two birds together and it came up really high and it was father daughter or brother and sister, you will often hear people saying talking about that and going actually that should you shouldn't do that. It's too close. Um, but and I'm going to be a little bit controversial here. expect. In reality, there is nothing stopping you from breeding that close together. You might want to not do it too often. As I say, it can it can weaken the fertility within your shed, but over a period of time, you can see that all the birds get relating anyway, and that can reduce the fertility in your shed, and you're going to have to get an outcross. In my view, the main reason for not doing it and doing it are very similar. So, let's take the um brother sister pairing. Now, if you've got two birds there that have suddenly got an outstanding feature um that you really want to lock in and they both got it and you want to lock it in, then then why not breed those two together to lock that feature in to your um stud. And then you can what the out the likelihood is that the children of those are going to have that outstanding feature. And then you've got more of them that you can then pair out pair out further out of the family to birds that are not so closely related following on from that. Um so that would be so and the flip side of that of course the other side of that coin is if those two birds also contain a fault. Let's say I mentioned my hinge tail fault. So, um if both those birds had had the hinge tail fault, you are doubling up on that fault as well and therefore all of your birds, any birds you breed off of those will also are likely also to contain that fault. So, um, so I would say there's nothing inherently wrong with doing it, providing you don't then breed the children of those two birds, the brother and sister together, and then breed the ch the brother and sister off of that pair together. Um, I I think then you get into the why are you doing it?

[00:39:10]Because all you're not adding anything.

[00:39:12]They're not adding any to that to the outcome bird because the genes are now so small it's just going to produce the same bird that you've already got. I hope that makes sense. There's nothing you're not you can't add any additional features to that bird because there aren't any genes that can come into it.

[00:39:33]So, it's great for locking them in, but you're never going to add anything by pairing or you're very unlikely to add anything by pairing brother and sister together continuously.

[00:39:44]Um, so that would be that, you know, the the the problem with or one of the reasons why you don't really want to pair brother and sister together is just because um unless you've got a particular feature you want to log in, they're just two alike and you're never going to produce anything different, anything special um from it. So that's my view on it and and you you will probably find you know I think I've mentioned it before the you know canary breeders will re quite regularly pair father back to daughter brother to sister um and if if need if they think that that will lock a certain feature in if it's some if it's produced an excellent a great producing a good offspring and then they will try and run that across Um there other better birds as well. Um but all of us if we're lime breeding are gradually reducing the number of genes available to be used anyway and at some point almost certainly we need to think about getting an outpost.

[00:40:55]That does bring us to the end of probably a fairly technical and I think far too long um episode. Um, in the uh next episodes we will take a look or back to the birds really and we'll take a look at the outcome of that line breeding and we'll take a look at the um offspring of cage number six. We'll pop them into the showcase and we'll have a good look at each of those birds before we pop them into the um nursery flight.

[00:41:24]But until then, as always, do stay safe, enjoy your birds.

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