Breed, v. To procreate, to generate; to bring up, to take care of. To bring young; to raise a breed.
Breed, s. A cast, a kind, a subdivision of species; progeny, offspring; a number produced at once, a hatch.
Breeder, s. One that produces any thing; a female that is prolific; one that takes care to raise a breed.
Breeding Dogs.—Never breed from an old dog and old bitch; if one party must be aged, it had better be the latter; but age on either side should be avoided if possible.
Winter whelps of all sorts of dogs are best, although the difficulty in rearing the produce and the loss of the use of the bitch for some weeks, are strong reasons against it, in the opinion of many; but the few that survive and are reared, amply recompense these obstacles. At three or four days old, part of the sterns should be twisted off, and the dew claws be cut off with a sharp pair of scissors. Puppies will soon learn to lap milk, which will relieve the mother; at six weeks old they may be separated, and should then be wormed.
The dog, to be complete in his form, should have round small feet, legs strong, straight, and muscular; the shoulders fall properly into the back, not upright; chest let down; loins good; back not too long; elbows play finely in their action, and come well in; thighs and gaskings broad and strong.
In our selection of parents for multiplying a breed a variety of circumstances should necessarily engage our attention; as, whether we are continuing a race already established, improving a defective one, or altogether forming a new variety. In either case, but particularly in the two latter, one or two propagations are not sufficient to enable us to judge of the merits or demerits of the products: anomalies may occur, monstrosities appear, or dogs may breed back. It should likewise be always present to us, that, in despite of all our care, and in face of the most favourable opportunities for selection, still perfect specimens to propagate from are unattainable; and as, therefore, we are necessarily to expect defects, it should be our care to well examine that we do not select our male and female parents with each the same faulty form or property; for, however perfect they may be in other respects, they are, in such a case, totally unfit to breed from together. We may, for instance, suppose an otherwise eligible pair of pointers, of the purest blood, but that each, from early and constant confinement, had contracted long, weak, spreading phalanges or toes, instead of a round, cat-like form of foot. By choosing a mate for each of these whose feet were unusually small, round, and firm, we might remedy this defect, and preserve their excellencies; but it would be only propagating deformity to breed from them together. We can only expect to prove successful in rearing a superior race of any domestic animal, when we make our selection of parents with a careful reference to the merits and defects in each, by balancing the one against the other, and by thus combining their different properties. It is by inattention to these circumstances that so many persons, after giving immense prices for animals of particular stocks, have found themselves foiled in their attempts at rearing any thing beyond mediocrity, which animals, under the judicious management of a Russell, a Coke, or an Ellman, among cattle, or an Orford, a Meynell, a Rivers, or a Topham, among dogs, would have produced unrivalled forms.
Breeding In-and-In.—Among the practical and systematic breeders of all domestic animals, and among none more than those sportsmen who devote themselves to the improvement of the dog, a great diversity of opinion has always existed on the subject of consanguineous breeding, or of that between near relations, characterised by the term In-and-In. The conflicting authorities on the subject are numerous, and the testimonies contradictory; and it is more than probable that they will remain so, until a long course of experiment is undertaken by a body or society of scientific and observant breeders on various domestic animals, for the express purpose of arriving at the truth in this particular.
Sir John Sebright says, “a breed cannot be improved, or even continued in the degree of perfection at which it has already arrived, but by breeding from individuals, so selected as to correct each other’s defects, and by a judicious combination of their different properties (a position that I believe will not be denied); it follows that animals must degenerate by being long bred from the same family, without the intermixture of any other blood, or from being what is technically called bred in-and-in.”