Interesting article ohiogoatgirl!
On a different website, I'd posted about the accidental breeding of two fraternal cousins.
There was quite a bit of alarm. :roll:
There are those who believe that breeders are evil for terminally culling imperfect, neurotic, or unhealthy animals instead of treating them all with top dollar veterinary care.
People with that philosophy are unlikely to understand how inbreeding and line breeding can be used to make healthier and even more mentally sound animals.
It wasn't hard for me to understand. :? The ancestors of our rabbits lived and bred in colonies, where some amount of inbreeding would be inevitable, and were terminally culled by predators.
In essence, rabbit breeders are really just imitating nature. Except that we can take it farther. We can selectively inbreed to determine the carriers of harmful recessive traits and remove the carriers from the gene pool.
For example, my velveteen lop doe, Mucky has two copies of whatever gene is causing her kits to be born curly.
I feel this trait is undesirable in her breed because a percentage of kits have delayed fur growth after a molt, causing temporary baldness.
I'd determined that is most likely a recessive trait through test breeding and research on curl genetics. I can test breed my future velveteen bucks from her line back to her to determine if they also carry the gene. If they produce curly coated kits, indicating that they are carrying an invisible recessive copy of the gene, I can cull them. (In this instance, I'll probably be petting them out if they are healthy and friendly, instead of terminally culling.)
In nature, the naked kits would be less likely to survive, but...there is no mechanism to remove recessive carriers from the gene pool.
The great thing about rabbits is that recessives can usually be turned up with a lot less test breeding than is required with cattle or goats. With their larger litter size, you get a much larger genetic sample per breeding.
ldtimer:
