I have a herd of 5 sheep, 1 is a ram. They are Dorper/Katahdin mixes and I would like to breed them. I plan on getting more dorper/katahdin males to breed for more diversity. My question is, after a couple generations would the sheep revert back to their original breed?
Breeding mixes?
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Sheepshape
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Pretty unlikely. You would get ones sheep which looked more Dorper. other more Katahdin, but unlikely that you'd end up with any that had ALL of the characteristics of either pure breed. However, if you're not a purist, some would look a lot more like one breed or the other.
Bunnylady
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With a lot of livestock, they talk about percentages on the cross. As an example, if you took a purebred Dorper and bred it to a purebred Katahdin, the resulting lambs would be 1/2 Dorper and 1/2 Katahdin. If you then bred those lambs back to a Dorper, the next generation would be 3/4 Dorper and 1/4 Katahdin. Breed them to a purebred Dorper, and the result is 7/8 Dorper and 1/8 Katahdin. Cross back to a Dorper again, and the result is 15/16 Dorper and 1/16 Katahdin. With most types of animals, 15/16 of one breed is enough for the animal to be considered purebred.
That equation assumes that you are breeding back to purebred stock. Genes don't necessarily divide up that neatly; through pure dumb luck, it's possible that an animal that was 15/16 one breed could be born to a pair of mixed breed animals after a couple of generations of mixing, but as Sheepshape said, it would be unlikely. If you carefully selected for characteristics of one breed and bred only those animals together, you could get closer with each generation, but it probably wouldn't be uniform throughout the lamb crop. Generally speaking, if you are breeding mixed breed animals together without careful selection for certain traits, the results will just be mixed breed animals, generation after generation.
That equation assumes that you are breeding back to purebred stock. Genes don't necessarily divide up that neatly; through pure dumb luck, it's possible that an animal that was 15/16 one breed could be born to a pair of mixed breed animals after a couple of generations of mixing, but as Sheepshape said, it would be unlikely. If you carefully selected for characteristics of one breed and bred only those animals together, you could get closer with each generation, but it probably wouldn't be uniform throughout the lamb crop. Generally speaking, if you are breeding mixed breed animals together without careful selection for certain traits, the results will just be mixed breed animals, generation after generation.
