Breeding Practices

Ben and I started breeding English Setter puppies in 1978.  I was still in High School. Ben started training dogs at 16 when our father built a 102 dog kennel facility for his long-time friend Ed Schnettler who put two dogs in the Field Trial Hall of Fame.  Looking back I know realize that Ed taught us valuable fundamental lessons.  We learned that avoiding kennel blindness and a disciplined selection process are prerequisites to breeding superior English Setter puppies.  It took us a number of years of successes and failures to understand what it would take to produce dogs that exhibited strength across a variety of performance related traits.  We also added one more key requirement.   We demanded they also be great companions. Disposition has a marginal effect on their performance in the field, but they are pets 365 days/year and we wanted dogs that were a pleasure to be around.

Most performance traits regress toward the mean rapidly.  Therefore, producing high performing / intelligent / biddable dogs requires a high degree of selectivity.  This is a differentiating factor among breeders.  It would seem obvious that exceptional individuals are by definition one in many but the type of meticulous selection where good and even very good dogs are cut from the team is a rarity among breeders of any breed for a variety of reasons. Evaluating large numbers of individuals is costly and extremely demanding.  The percentage of English Setter breeders across the country that evaluate even 5 females to find a brood is probably less than 2% and one in five is not adequate to build or even maintain an elite program.   This is why we evaluate 30+ dogs/yr to select 2-3 exceptional individuals for breeding.  The rest are sold as started dogs.  This practice enables us to produce very consistent English Setter puppies.  We also produce 2-3 Red Setter litters/yr.  The bottom line is you can’t trick mother nature and the only way to consistently produce exceptional animals is to practice very disciplined selection and maintain a very open-mind when evaluating prospects.

English Setter Puppies

Most Setters are bred by hobbyists and cutting a good dog to get a better breeding specimen means considerable effort with no guarantees of improvement.  It’s also very unpopular with most families. Unfortunately, this is directly responsible for many average females being bred.  Berg Brothers Setters has been applying this selection process since before we had wives and children and our families learned from the beginning to accept this process which is paramount to our success. This type of program is simply not feasible for the vast majority of hobbyists breeders.

It took us about 15 years and considerable exposure to other dogs to understand we were not going to beat the odds.  Elevating our program to the level we desired would require that we evaluate as many English Setter puppies from exceptional breeding as we could. We began to hold back more pups for evaluation.  Click on this link to read about the first year evaluation of our English Setter puppies.  We supplemented our effort by acquiring outside pups from top females across the country. Finding exceptional females that were being bred to top males was not easy.  One of the side benefits of this search was all of the knowledge and first hand information we exchanged with other top breeders. It helped us gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics of certain lines and also helped greatly with the selection of stud dogs.  We continue to acquire 4-5 outside pups a year from the top females in the nation.

The value of this collective information and my professional experience with collaborative efforts made me certain that a cooperative effort among the right breeders would give us a substantial advantage. We brought this idea to Tekoa Mountain Setters, Hytest Setters and Suncanyon Setters whom we had been sharing information and trading stock. The idea was to share breeding females and distribute certain offspring among the group for evaluation. Collectively we would have deeper knowledge of the ancestry and we would have an ample gene pool to create a line of dogs collectively that would be very difficult for any single breeder to match. This relationship has helped all of us elevate our programs. We are also starting to work with other breeders interested in a collective effort for the benefit of the breed.

Side note: Our selection process produces many nice started dogs that do not quite meet our requirements and are offered for sale.

Selection Practices

The appearance of field trial champions in the pedigrees of our dogs gives some folks the impression that range is a primary factory in our selection process which is simply is not the case. We have dogs that are modest in range and others suitable for the open prairie.  Our selection is based on factors like intelligence, bird finding ability, manners around game, and style. We consider stamina and drive to also be prerequisites but range is an attribute we consider in terms of what type of range and application will be the most productive in a given environment and type of game bird.

It took us a number of years to fully understand the importance of trials dogs in producing superior English Setter puppies.  We found that with proper selection, the dogs a generation or two removed from trial dogs reproduce offspring with the same exceptional intelligence, bird finding ability, manners around game and style as the trial dogs but with a very manageable level of drive and range.  This practice when executed properly produces truly exceptional foot hunting dogs. It is somewhat of a trickle-down theory. However, you can’t trickle very far. The selection process must maintain the most exceptional individuals. Greatness fades quickly. We have found that the very best hunting dogs are produced within two generations of trial caliber parents.  About half of our females fall into this category. They produce great NSTRA dogs or class foot hunting companions that are exciting to watch and have excellent manners on birds.  We do not select on range.  We match to personal preference and need based on environment and the species hunted.

Our selection of a stud is equally vigilant. We won’t breed to a dog just because it’s a champion. We select stud dogs we believe will produce dogs that meet our criteria. (see below) We then take the very best offspring to participate in our program. Each year we sell several excellent young dogs that in our view are not exactly what we are looking for in our program.