>>13803882>What species do you practice husbandry with? How often do you bring in "rotational crossing" between breeds? I'd love to know more.Cattle mostly, but I know a little about the sheep 3-4 breed stratification system.
We used to run a "pure bred" dairy herd of friesian-holsteins (a complex topic I'm not best placed to answer it's a big herd book encompassing animals who were related but selected for different uses, it's a complex issue so I'd rather not make a fool of myself trying to unpick it)
now we would crossbreed some of our cows to a beef selected breed for more muscled animals with better carcass traits
these F1 hybrid animals would go to slaughter
Other commercial herds would use what is known as rotational crossing. They would take various dairy breeds with different prominent traits and crossbreed them some would flip flop back and forth between two breeds others would cycle around three or more breeds, sometimes it leads to quite variable herds but a lot are now using digital records and breeding management programmes.
New zealand really pioneered research into these mixed breeding systems.
similarly rotational breeding systems are also used by beef herds and were the main implementers because they generally rely on natural service so would buy a few new bulls and cycle around the offspring to avoid inbreeding.
various breeding mixes are touted because hey combine traits from multiple different breeds
the best example I know comes from sheep stratification where a hill sheep farmer would cross a small hill breed with a longwool breed and sell then as mules to lowland farmers for maternal stock, combining he lowland longwool breed's size with the hill breed's hardiness and mothering ability, these mules would go on to be crossed for several years with big muscley fast maturing breeds known as terminal sires such as Texels to the sell the lambs for slaughter.
I guess agriculture might be a little different to dog or horse breeding.
