Breeding hidden true recessives.

[Charles Courtois]

The key thing to remember when you're breeding true recessives is that you're often breeding for something you can't see. In this case, the most important thing is to know when the hidden recessive passes and when it doesn't. This is where dominant traits come in very handy.

Since Swanky whiskers were used as an example, and since I probably have as much experience with breeding them as anybody lol, I'll talk about how I worked with them.

When I got the first Swanky, I decided to gamble by selling it, counting on being able to breed them out from what I had left, which was the female starter, a decent male OS of that starter showing Curious whiskers, and a slightly less traity female OS also showing Curious. As I saw it, I had essentially 2 valid approaches: breed the male to one of the 2 females (the starter would have been the better approach in this case, since I could be certain that an OS of the Swanky-hiding starter showing Curious would definitely hide Swanky, whereas a sibling OS showing Curious whiskers, since both parents would have been showing Curious, could hide either Curious or Swanky, making the Swanky whiskers next to impossible to track),or (the approach I took) breeding all 3 cats to other quality cats showing a variety of slightly more recessive whiskers.

The first approach (a perfectly valid one), probably would have allowed me to get my second and later Swanky-whiskered cats to market about a month to 6 weeks faster than I inevitably did. The trade-off would have been that they would have likely been low-traited, with relatively dominant, less popular traits other than the Swanky whiskers (the starter that hid the Swanky hid nothing but older dominant traits other than the whiskers).

So I decided to breed my Swanky hiders with 9-traited, quality cats. I paired the starter with a nice Ocicat Ebony Silver with Mysterious whiskers, one of the OS's with an Ebony Silver with Frazzled whiskers, and the other with an Oci Blue with Boo Boo whiskers. Why did I do this? It allowed me a solid chance to track the hidden Swanky.

If the first pair had an OS with Mysterious whiskers, it would hide Swanky. If the second pair had a Frazzled-whisker OS, it would hide Swanky. If the third pair had a Boo Boo-whiskered OS, it would hide Swanky. Then I took the best Swanky-hiders of that generation, with different shown whiskers, and I would know that 25% of the time I would get shown Swanky, and another 25% of the time I would know I had a Swanky-hider.

This approach may seem a bit large scale, and well, it was lol, but one advantage with working with a true recessive is that any kittens you get that are provably hiding the true recessive that don't fit with your program can be sold pretty easily, and the program will generally more than pay for itself. While this approach took longer than the other one, I was quite pleased with the results: my second Swanky was a 7T hiding the other 2 traits, and within another month or so I was breeding 9T Swankies together (9+9=9: How I like KittyCatS! math to work ).

Notice I was using partners with whiskers that were only slightly more dominant than the Swanky-hiders shown whiskers. Why? It allowed me the best opportunity to know when Swanky passed. The only time I put Swanky-hiding and Light Wave-whiskered kitties together was to help prove that Swanky was recessive to Light Wave. I ended up passing that cat to a friend that I knew had a Swanky-hider to breed with it; I wouldn't have felt comfortable selling it to anyone as a Swanky-hider, because at the time, anyone trying to breed Swanky whiskers from it from scratch would be working totally blind.

Let me illustrate. Suppose a person had a then 2nd most recessive Light Wave hiding the then true recessive Swanky, with no Swanky-hiders of any sort to put with it. Whatever you breed it with will produce an OS that will have a 50% chance of hiding Light Wave, and a 50% chance of hiding Swanky. But unless you were breeding it with a Swanky-hider, YOU WOULD HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING WHICH IS HIDING!!! If you take 2 OS's of that Light Wave hiding Swanky and breed them together, it is very likely at least one hides Light Wave, in which case the shown whisker of their OS's will always be Light Wave or more dominant. When you're breeding for true recessives, information is key, and the closer the showns are to the true recessive in recessiveness , the less information you'll be able to retain.

Hopefully this way-too-long post is helpful to somebody lol.

[Tad Carlucci]

Let's work it out, step by step.

Remember, you can only have ONE gene.

You have two choices, in four cases.

---

You can mate your Salt and Pepper Hides Showshoe Cream to another Salt and Pepper. In this case, since there are NO other choices, the Salt and Pepper mate also hides Salt and Pepper.

SPsc x SPsp --> SPsp SPsc SPsp SPsc

All boxes produced will be Salt and Pepper.

You have a 1-in-4 chance of producing a box which can breed back (1-in-2 to hide Snowshoe Cream, and 1-in-2 for the correct gender). And YOU CANNOT TELL which box will work. Choose correctly and you'll eventually get your Snowshoe Cream. Choose incorrectly and not only will you never get your Snowshoe Cream, you'll PERMANENTLY loose the gene.

---

You can mate your Salt and Pepper Hides ShowshoeCream to something else, which also hides Salt and Pepper. For this I'll use Red Tabby.

SPsc x RTsp --> RTsp RTsc SPsp SPsc

On average, half of your boxes will be Red Tabby, and half will be Salt and Pepper.

Again, you have a 1-in-4 chance of producing a box which can breed back (1-in-2 to hide Snowshoe Cream, and 1-in-2 for the correct gender). And YOU CANNOT TELL which box will work. Choose correctly and you'll eventually get your Snowshoe Cream. Choose incorrectly and not only will you never get your Snowshoe Cream, you'll PERMANENTLY loose the gene.

---

You can mate your Salt and Pepper Hides Snowshoe Cream to something else, which hides a third gene. For this I'll use Red Tabby and Burmese Blue.

SPsc x RTbb --> RTsp RTsc BBsp BBsc

On average, half of your boxes will be Red Tabby, and half will be Burmese Blue.

Again, you have a 1-in-4 chance of producing a box which can breed back (1-in-2 to hide Snowshoe Cream, and 1-in-2 for the correct gender). And YOU CANNOT TELL which box will work. Choose correctly and you'll eventually get your Snowshoe Cream. Choose incorrectly and not only will you never get your Snowshoe Cream, you'll PERMANENTLY loose the gene.

---

You can mate your Salt and Pepper Hides Snowshoe Cream to something else, which hides itself. For this I'll use Red Tabby.

SPsc x RTrt --> RTsp RTsc RTsp RTsc

All of your boxes will be Red Tabby.

Again, you have a 1-in-4 chance of producing a box which can breed back (1-in-2 to hide Snowshoe Cream, and 1-in-2 for the correct gender). And YOU CANNOT TELL which box will work. Choose correctly and you'll eventually get your Snowshoe Cream. Choose incorrectly and not only will you never get your Snowshoe Cream, you'll PERMANENTLY loose the gene.

---

You will notice that all possible cases, while the appearance of the boxes may differ, end with the exact same result. You can NOT tell which box to breed back and, if you chose the wrong box, you risk losing the genetic material forever.

---

Now, let's use Red Tabby Hides Snowshoe Cream.

And, let's breed it to Burmese Blue hides Russian White.


RTsc x BBrw --> RTbb BBsc RTrw RWsc

On average half our boxes will still be Red Tabby. BUT LOOK! If it's Red Tabby, it NEVER hides Snowshoe Cream, and if it is NOT Red Tabby, it ALWAYS hides Snowshoe Cream.

First off, we can Menagerie all Red Tabby boxes produced. This both reduces our cost via store credits, and reduces the potential of error down the road.

This means we have a 1-in-4 chance (1-in-2 for Snowshoe Cream, and 1-in-2 for gender) to produce a box which can back breed. But we have recourse!

Of all the boxes we did NOT choose, there is a 1-in-2 chance it will hide Snowshoe Cream, and we CAN which those are !!! Simple: it's NOT Red Tabby.

We can pop one to breed back for a 1-in-4 chance of meeting our GOAL: Produce a box 'Showshoe Cream hides Snowshoe Cream'

We can pop one boy and one girl, neither Red Tabby, for a 1-in-4 chance of meeting our GOAL: Produce a box 'Showshoe Cream hides Snowshoe Cream' .. AND we can do this AT THE SAME TIME, for AS MANY as we can produce!

We can pop one box and do it again. Simply chose something more recessive than what we see. If we have a Burmese Blue box, chose ANY box recessive to Burmese Blue; if it's Russian White, ANY box recessive to Russian White.

We can sell those boxes which are left over and truthfully claim (since none are Red Tabby) that they hide Snowshoe Cream.

[Barbara Collazo]

Well--this is all really helpful, but not germane to the question I asked, which was, when bringing out a hidden recessive, why is it more useful to use a more dominant trait than to use one that's only a step or two away? The post that prompted my question said that it was harder to get Snowshoe Cream out from under a Foxie S&P than from under Siamese Seal, for example. I don't see why it's harder--the probabilities are the same.

[Tad Carlucci]

Read what I posted. It IS the answer to your question.

The more dominant you go, the longer it is until you're left with no choice but to work with Salt and Pepper and run the risk of losing the genetic material entirely.

It's not a question of changing the odds.

NOTHING can change the odds.

One of the primary goals, when designing our breeding programs, is to use the odds wisely.

The only "easier" choice, when breeding, is to breed our goal against something more recessive. This is NOT POSSIBLE (at present) for Snowshoe Cream because there is NOTHING more recessive.

So, we're left with "wiser" and it's wiser to chose to purchase "Red Tabby Hides Snowshoe Cream" than to purchase "Salt And Pepper Hides Showshoe Cream" .. why? .. because the Red Tabby gives us more choices, where the Salt and Pepper does not, and the Salt And Pepper has a risk of permanent failure, where the Red Tabby does not.

[anna Acanthus]

I can see ( i think ) what you're confused about Barbara.

You're quite right, when trying to find the hidden fur of a starter the wtg is to use the most recessive fur there is , especially if it's given you reason to think it may be carrying an ultra recessive, and who knows maybe a new TR.
That way, if your starter produces this fur then it's a signal to start back breeding to the starter. The same applies of course to all other traits.

What we discuss here is a bit different though. I won't go through it all again, but this is in the case of buying a non starter hiding the most recessive new and showing the second most recessive.
We are just showing that it's a mistake to buy this kind of cat as if you only have the one, then you have an extremely small chance of ever getting at that new TR.
The probabilities of it passing as hidden are of course the same as with a more dominant fur, but as theres no fur in between the two, you can have no possible indicator fur to allow you to know if it's been passed.

---

And thanks to all you guys who posted so far, very useful and valuable contributions

[Tad Carlucci]

Also note that if your Starter hides the (new) True Recessive, it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to produce it directly since ALL POSSIBLE choices will be dominant and continue to hide the new True Recessive.

This is why the subject of this thread comes up.

If I have a Starter and I breed it to the current True Recessive (say, Salt and Pepper) and I get that same back again (a S&P box results); I am **VERY** Interested in that Starter! Why? Because it can only hide one of two things: either it hides the current True Recessive (S&P) or it hides a new one (Snowshoe Cream).

If the Starter hides Snowshoe Cream (a new, undiscovered True Recessive) then the Salt and Pepper box from our Starter and Salt And Pepper parents also hides it and we are .. BANG! .. right to the subject of this thread.

---

As a Buyer, it's wiser for you to purchase a more dominant hiding the new True Recessive.

---

As a Seller, it's wiser for you to switch parents to a more dominant and sell the box which is the subject of this thread.

Why? Because you're adjusting your breeding program to produce more results, faster AND you're selling the box which, while true, more likely leads to failure than success .. in other words, you're maximizing your chances for future sales and minimizing your customers' .. or, yet another way, you're doing what you can to put off the inevitable "market crash" until you've had a chance to get a bit of it.

[Aisling MacMoragh]

It absolutely does make the a difference, because you have more choices to breed with your hider in which you will definitively be able to determine the hidden fur. Telling breeders it doesn't make a difference is dangerous. If you understand the difference and still choose to breed that way so be it, but telling people that there is no difference or that it in fact has a higher success rate if you breed with more recessives is completely misleading and damages the community overall. I will try to give another pair of examples that will help illustrate the different approaches.

Part 1 - A Siamese Seal, which definitely hides Snowshoe Cream because at the time it was bread the one parent was a Snowshoe Cream when it is know to be the most recessive trait on the grid or when it has been bread back from a starter, is bred with a Burmese Champagne with a hidden trait that is not Snowshoe Cream, for example sake lets say it hides Bengal Snow. There are four possible OS results - Siamese Seal hiding Burmese Champagne, Siamese Seal hiding Bengal Snow, Burmese Champagne hiding Snowshoe Cream, and Bengal Snow hiding Snowshoe Cream. These later two OS options are definitively hiding Snowshoe Cream so continuing to work with them is not a gamble, we know we have a shot at getting Snowshoe cream when breeding them.

Part 2 - Say we got one of each of the latter two options in our previous breeding and bred them together. If we breed a Burmese Champagne hiding Snowshoe Cream and Bengal Snow hiding Snowshoe Cream together the possible results are - Burmese Champagne hiding Snowshoe Cream, Burmese Champagne hiding Bengal Snow, Bengal Snow hiding Snowshoe Cream and solid Snowshoe Cream. The first two can't be know which you get but the latter two are definitive as to what is shown and hidden. The two Burmese Champagnes are a risk to breed with if you want to get Snowshoe cream because you can only guess at whether you got the Snowshoe Cream and you could breed them for all cycles and never find out for sure, so for most of us the first to boxes, the Burmese Champagne boxes, are now really duds and not worth pursuing. With this method 1 in 2 breeds gives you something of high value for your goals. Personally I would keep breeding the first two until I either go a male and a female Snowshoe Cream or a male and female where one is a Snowshoe Cream and one is a Bengal Snow.

Part 3 - With the desired male female option acquired by the end of part 2, I either have a solid pair of Snowshoe Creams to breed OR I have a pair which on average will give me 3 Snowshoe Creams for every 1 Bengal Snow which hides Snowshoe Cream.

Now a second example, in which the starting breeders are Foxie Salt and Pepper that is known to hide Snowshoe Cream and Foxie Salt and Pepper that is known to be solid Foxie Salt and Pepper.

Part 1 - breed the two together. There are 2 possible OS results - Foxie Salt and Pepper solid Foxie Salt and Pepper hiding Snowshoe Cream. I can't tell for sure which option I have with any OS until I breed them, and then I can only know an OS hides the Snowshoe Cream once I risk breeding and eventually get an OS that is pure Snowshoe Cream which could potentially never happen from those parents. At this point it is too big a risk unless I am willing to have a cattery full of nothing but Foxie Salt and Peppers with only a possibility of hiding Snowshoe cream. There is no reason to go on to Part 2 or 3 because they are too high and likely will take too long and cost too much to risk.

Hope this explains why starting with a much more dominant fur pure or not gives you much more wiggle room to be able to tell for sure what your OS will hide and thus increasing the probability you would want to breed them and be able to have measurable results.

---

(02-11-2014 01:29 PM)Barbara Collazo Wrote:  Well--this is all really helpful, but not germane to the question I asked, which was, when bringing out a hidden recessive, why is it more useful to use a more dominant trait than to use one that's only a step or two away? The post that prompted my question said that it was harder to get Snowshoe Cream out from under a Foxie S&P than from under Siamese Seal, for example. I don't see why it's harder--the probabilities are the same.

Actually, these are all answers to your question. I am sorry we haven't been clear enough in how they answer it and what that answer is but they do directly address the question and explain the answer.

Answer: It is because of the ability to get predictable known results that you cannot get as easily with the most recessive option. with the Foxie S&P you have no way to know which box hides the SS Cream and which does not. With the Seal there are very clear ways to know if your OS hide the cream or don't.

[Barbara Collazo]

I did not say it doesn't make a difference (I'm sure it does or you all wouldn't be doing it); I asked why it does. But in any case, what I think I've gotten from today's conversation is that you experienced breeders are working with not two, but at least three furs, so that you can infer what is being passed into the babies. That's a very useful strategy to know that hasn't been clear up to this point! Thank you!

Barbara

[Aisling MacMoragh]

(02-11-2014 08:40 PM)Barbara Collazo Wrote:  I did not say it doesn't make a difference (I'm sure it does or you all wouldn't be doing it); I asked why it does. But in any case, what I think I've gotten from today's conversation is that you experienced breeders are working with not two, but at least three furs, so that you can infer what is being passed into the babies. That's a very useful strategy to know that hasn't been clear up to this point! Thank you!

Barbara

Yep, Barbara, you are definitely getting it and not just multiples but more traited dominant furs for traiting up and pulling out TRs. It wasn't you who implied or said it didn't make a difference and we get that you are just trying to learn. Personally I think it is awesome that you are asking questions and really trying to digest the conversation. It is newer breeders like you, Barbara, that are trying to learn all the nuances that cause threads like this to be started. We, as a community, want to help you learn best practices.

[Keltora Edenbaum]

I'm finding I have so very much to learn because I did this a few weeks back. The pair cost me about 3000 Linden and I will admit it wasn't the brightest buy I've ever made.

I never knew this and it was my first attempt at bringing out a trait that I really wanted. Thank you for bringing this up. I know better next time.