Brian's Yorkshire Canary Page
Keenan's Canary Clinic - Season 1 - Pedigree or face value
Canaries can be bred indiscriminately in aviaries, and will produce excellent returns, in terms of the numbers of young bred. Canaries bred for exhibition however, often produce fewer numbers of young than those kept in aviaries, for a variety of reasons. Exhibition breeders are trying to produce birds which resemble the model for their chosen breed, as closely as possible. This means that they are selecting the birds partners, and not leaving the matter of selection to chance.
Tried and Tested methods
Breeding canaries using the tried and tested method known as pair breeding, means that the fancier has a single shot at selecting the right partner for each of their birds, out of all those retained for breeding. Keeping sixteen pairs equates to a sixteen to one chance of pairing the best two available birds together – throughout the entire stud.It stands to reason therefore, that mistakes will happen. This perhaps explains in part why so many breeders are eager to obtain new stock each year, because they quite simply have not produced birds of the quality which they really desire. In severe cases, these fanciers are obtaining stock from a variety of successful and indeed, less successful studs, sim0ly in the hope of pairing their birds at face value, in the hope of producing something which can see them advance in future years.
The chances of success are negligible, because the blood lines are generally alien to those which already exist. In fact, by constantly stirring the pot, the fancier is almost guaranteeing that he cannot ‘fish-out’ the best of the high quality birds he has purchased, because he is pairing them into stock which will reduce the impact of the new bird. Face value can produce the odd winning bird of course, but because the qualities that bird possesses have been inherited indiscriminately, then the odds are that the future progeny will not carry the required factors, because the required genes are not yet dominant.
Long term goals
Fanciers seeking long term success generally follow pedigree breeding principles to a greater or lesser extent. Obtaining stock from a single source, and only using that source I future years, is a good starting point, especially when the source chosen is known to operate on close genetic lines.Breeding from fewer cock birds will also improve the chances of making best pairings, simply because the weaker birds have been eliminated from the stud. After the first year, all the hens produced will have been bred off the best available cock birds, so will be carrying the best blood lines you possess. In the second season, pairing hens from cock A into cocks produced from cock B and vice verca will enable you to form a closely related family of birds, and if this is extended throughout your stud of say eight cocks and sixteen hens, then you can develop four individual blood lines which you can then interwork whenever an injection of new blood is required. It means in fact that you are continually producing your own related outcrosses, which guarantees compatibility, and helps you maintain a known quality throughout your birdroom. Your birds will produce true to themselves, and not throw up constantly different types of young bird, no matter where you pair them.
And will you have weakened the stock, by producing birds along the above lines? Not if fit and healthy specimens were chosen in the first place – pedigree fixes good health as well as exhibition points into a stud.