Here is a link to an intersting study about inbreeding and the effect on lifespan and littersize. It's in wolfhounds but it is likely that the deerhound has also gone through similar genetic bottlenecks. I recently met the guy who wrote it at a canine conference and he said he would be happy to conduct a similar study on deerhounds if we can get the pedigree data to him.

What does everyone think?

Hannah
publication

Hello Hannah
Thanks for posting the study Inbreeding and Fertility in Irish Wolfhounds in Sweden: 1976 to 2007 I was intrigued by the finding that it is young IWs, both male and female, that are used for breeding purposes. The reason for this is not entirely clear, but it does make me wonder if a breeder doesn't let the dogs/bitches grow out to full maturity, how does she know those particular IWs are the ones that should reproduce? As I say, just wondering. Then again, with the short lifespans of IWs, perhaps it doesn't do to delay reproduction?

Inbreeding/line breeding has its limits and certainly must be applied with caution, if at all. I've gone to great lengths to avoid it as much as possible, recently pairing a bitch from Canadian, American and Australian lines to a dog from British and German lines! Still, that's not always possible and given the relatively small numbers of deerhounds in existence, some variation of line breeding must sometimes be embraced.

The author did a presentation at the conference which was along the same lines. He mentioned that when you look back 10 or so generations the wolfhounds appear to have quite diverse genetics but when you go back further the amount of genetic variation in the whole population can be explained by only 10 dogs. From memory (and don't quote me on this)the average inbreeding coefficient was 0.35. So even though they can appear diverse they actually are all reasonable similar genetically. That study is obviously very specific to wolfhounds but it would be interesting to see if the same thing occurs in deerhounds. I will see if I can find any links to the other work he conducted.