Responsible Landrace Management - Preserving Foundational Strains

By definition, a landrace consists of composite strains built atop foundational strains. Textbook best practices call for the preservation and sustainment of those foundational strains so that every dog in the landrace always has a true outcross available. Responsible breed management organizations pursue best practices for carefully identifying and nurturing foundational strains. See figure 1. Conversely, less than responsible landrace management results in the loss of foundational strains. In this unfortunate scenario, only composite strains with no true outcrosses remain.

When classifying members of a foundational strain within a landrace, three of the most conclusive tools we can use are genotype, phenotype and history. In isolation, any one of these three investigations can be inconclusive. But when all three are used together, we can assert a classification with a reasonable amount of confidence. In regard to genotype for example, sires from the Old-fashioned Black and Tan English Shepherd consist predominantly of genotypes of the A1a H1a.48 and A1a H1a.29 haplogroup / haplotypes. Because most foundational strains in a landrace breed were started with only a few individual dogs, those foundational strains are dominated by only one or a few haplotypes. See figure 2.

Sire	Strain
Carousel’s Calhoun	A1a H1a.48
Carousel’s Joey Rifle	Unknown
Duke (sire of Oney’s Butch)	A1a H1a.48
Maynard’s Duke	A1a H1a.48
Maynard’s King Bob	A1a H1a.48
Maynard’s King III	A1a H1a.48
Maynard’s Prince	A1a H1a.48
Miller’s Tennessee Tucker	A1a H1a.48
Oney’s Butch	A1a H1a.48
Oney’s Nick	A1a H1a.48
Oney’s Ruff	A1a H1a.29
Oney’s Sam	Unknown
Oney’s Smoke	A1a H1a.48
Oney’s Toby	Unknown
Oney’s Ziggy	A1a H1a.48
Raulston’s Roscoe	A1a H1a.48
Rockhouse Hollow Remington	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Billy Bob	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Duke (Jr.)	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Jake	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Jo Jo	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Okla Boo	A1a H1a.48
Sallee’s Rustie Jr.	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Sam	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Sambo	A1a H1a.29
Sallee’s Smoky Bear	Unknown
Shepherd’s Rex Blaze	A1a H1a.29
Sherling’s Ace	Unknown
Sherling’s Jack	A1a H1a.48
Sherling’s Dan	A1a H1a.48
Sonny Tucker McCarty	A1a H1a.48
Wheelbarger’s Ebony	A1a H1a.29
Wheelbarger’s Tiny	A1a H1a.29
Whippoorwill’s Jethro	A1a H1a.29
Whippoorwill’s Johnny Reb	A1a H1a.48
Whippoorwill’s Poplar Creek Bandit	A1a H1a.48

Table 1

You can read more on the subject of breed management in the textbook titled Managing Breeds for a Secure Future: Strategies for Breeders and Breed Associations written by D. Phillip Sponenberg, Jeannette Beranger, et al.

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