Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2008

Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and environment can change how your genes work—without changing the DNA itself. It’s about how genes get turned “on” or “off” based on things like diet, stress, sleep, toxins, or even emotional experiences…

Some houndsmen and women have said on this forum that their hounds never ran trash, that they didn't need breaking because they were natural coon dogs…this sounds like a good example of epigenetics...if the dam was hunted in the last 3 weeks of her pregnancy, striking, trailing, treeing and mouthing and fighting coons…all this affects the unborn pups in a positive way especially if the momma loves treeing and catching coons…

Back when I was a boy I read any dog article I could find…the three dominate magazines found most any day always had one article each on hunting dogs…these magazines published monthly and most waiting rooms had these laying around…not so today…

One day I found an interesting article…at first I thought, this guy doesn't make any sense and is off his rocker…i kept reading and he had me hook line and sinker…
He said; if I take my redbone female hunting and she strikes a coon and she gets excited and her hormones go wild and adrenaline starts pumping and she starts barking on track…she inhales the scent deeply and that travels throughout her body…and the pups will pick up on it, and also pick up on the chemical reactions taking place in her body…all this affects the pups…and when she is shaking the coon and fighting it besides all the chemical reactions they feel the vibrations of the fight…and once the pups are born they will have a better chance of becoming a coon dog or hunting dog…well I bought into it right then and there…that was 40 years before epigenetics…we just called it pre exposing the pups to their environment…

Again…Epigenetics does not change the DNA…that is fixed before we are born…but the environment can change how the genes will work…the environment turns on genes and turns other genes off…that is what happens when manipulating the environment…if we know what we are doing we can get the best out of our pups and dogs…
Even in training sessions to much can work negatively…like the kid who makes himself sick with eating too much ice cream…if done too many times he just wont crave it anymore…same principle with training pups…if done right you can actually imprint the pup to love the game…but we got to have a pup who wants to work and maybe hunting the female while carrying pups gets you those pups that want to work…

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

Last edited by Reuben on 09-11-2025 at 02:29 PM

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Registered: Sep 2009
Location: Monticello, Wi
Posts: 788

I've tried this in the past and don"t know if it worked or not. But many times I've seen the same mating between two dogs with different results and if you would have gotten the second litter first you wouldn't have made it the second time. That being said, I have seen the offspring from the third cross produced from the same parents to be the best of all three litters.

Did the pregnant females exposure to the environment affect the litters more than the DNA variance? Often the owner of the female doesn't hunt her and take risk of loosing her after she produced an exceptional litter. Is it possible that this is the cause of the poor quality second litter?

Environmental stress on the mother when the pups are very young will definitely affect the young puppies. Pups with the higher intelligence are affected more as they do not require repetitive stimulation to learn.

Exposing the Mother to the game that you hunt while she is pregnant could be the most cost effective investment that you could make. What have you got to loose?

The higher the intelligence, the less the handler or trainer can error. Highly intelligence animals do not always forget and forgive. Highly intelligent animals are often mistaken for being shy from mental defect when they are just cautious.

As ever, Ken Risley

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Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2008

When I was about 6 years old we moved down a gravel road…only one neighbor to the east about 1/2 a mile down the road and to the west about 2 mile on that gravel road was the other neighbor…no neighbors to the north or south for a few miles and no road other than a winding dirt and gravel road towards town…when you live way out like that people will throw their unwanted dogs away on these types of roads and I would try and keep them all but that didn’t happen much…at about 8 or nine my mom and grandma went to visit some kin folks I had never met before…they were country folks and they had a collie dog…wasn’t long me and the two Boys got to talking, they said they had a live rabbit if I wanted to see it…well we went out to the barn and sure enough it was a full grown wild rabbit…the boys said the collie caught the rabbit…I said that dog couldn’t catch that rabbit so they took that rabbit to the pasture and called the dog…turned that rabbit loose and that dog ran that rabbit down and caught it…well that got me to thinking…we had a cow dog named blue and a female had showed up a few days before…I named her spotty, about 25 pounds soaking wet…she must of been a hunting dog possibly a rat terrier and Fox terrier cross but more than likely a fiest…it wasn’t long like the first time out she was on her way to make one heck of a hunting dog…she was white with black spots and a little tan around her face…blue was a really nice looking dog around 55 pounds with one brown and blue marbled eye and the other dark brown …he didn’t hunt much but he watched spotty and when she struck a rabbit she would be yipping hot behind the rabbit and blue would catch about half of them …we got pretty good at it and we caught all I could carry about each time we went out which was every day if I had the time…
Well old blue got spotty pregnant and I hunted her every day in the summer and sometimes after school…I wasn’t 10 yet and I was a dog boy through and through…

Ole spotty looked like she had a watermelon inside of her…and one day she didn’t want to hunt and I didn’t understand then but it was time to whelp…she had her pups in an old 1940s Al Capone type car out in the back…one day I decided she wasn’t spending enough time with her pups so I tied her in that car…I went out later to check on her and she was dead hanging out the window, her back feet a few inches from touching ground…that made me sick to my stomach at my mistake…that slowed down my success rate…my dad let me keep two pups, one the color of spotty and the other the color of blue and both the size of spotty maybe a few pounds bigger…they weren’t even 6 months old and they were rabbit striking machines just as good as spotty was…

I told a long story to say I believe it was epigenetics at work to help in making these pups hunt as they did…most my dogs diet was rabbit on account there wasn’t many leftovers to feed…and that is also epigenetics at work eating rabbit daily while pregnant…the environment was perfect to waken the right genes and turn off the wrong genes and whatever else was happening that science still hasn’t discovered…
Doing the right things at the right times matter…

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

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Registered: Jan 2023
Location: North Central OH
Posts: 62

I ran across this subject about a year ago and tried to dive into it. So a study was done on Buck deer with this in mind. Turning on genes that are already there AT Mississippi State Deer Lab. They took fawns from big rack states and fawns from small rack states and raised them on the same nutrition. After the 1st generation the small deer produced bigger deer and by the 3rd generation they were all the same size. The nutrition turn on the genes. The environment had turned the genes off based on the food. I love this subject.

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Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2008

There’s quite a few different studies out there…one is about two groups of mice and all were clones…

The females were decided in two groups but they were all fed exactly the same and the environment was the same as well…so all females lived exactly the same but were divided…

The males were divided in two groups as well, one group was having a comfortable life in a controlled environment…
The other males were kept in a very cold environment…the males that endured the cold bred their females…
The males in the comfortable environment bred their females…the offspring of the males in the controlled environment became overweight with diabetes and other negative conditions…

The other offspring who were sired by the males that endured the cold, the offspring from those males were slender with better health and lived longer than the siblings from the other side…not only that but it kept reproducing the same types for three generations…
So that is really good information to know…


Epigenetics has always been with us but now we are starting to understand and have put a name on it…it’s evolution at work and the more we understand we can manipulate the environment to a certain extent…many of us are already doing it we just called it different names depending on who you are talking to…

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

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Registered: Jan 2013
Location: ATHENS,TN.
Posts: 357

I have always heard of domesticated pigs were turned out to roam free range that in a short period of time they would start growing tusks and longer hair to survive being out in the wild. Is this a example of epigenetics? Are these genes laying dormant, then become activated when needed?
Also heard polar bears and animals in solid snow situations color would change to white after being in that environment for so long. Is this a form of epigenetics again where the genes are there but become active when needed?

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Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2008

https://youtu.be/AvB0q3mg4sQ

I used to raise hard hunting mountain curs and the hardest thing I had to break them off of were running deer…At about 5 or 6 months deer scent and a cattle prod broke them quickly before it could become a problem…

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

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Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2008

quote:

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Originally posted by KEVIN MOSES
I have always heard of domesticated pigs were turned out to roam free range that in a short period of time they would start growing tusks and longer hair to survive being out in the wild. Is this a example of epigenetics? Are these genes laying dormant, then become activated when needed?
Also heard polar bears and animals in solid snow situations color would change to white after being in that environment for so long. Is this a form of epigenetics again where the genes are there but become active when needed?

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

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Registered: Nov 2011
Location: Freeport,TX
Posts: 2008

I believe I told this on here before but I will repeat it as I saw it years ago…my grandson was about 5 years old and was having a birthday party at my house…a relative of his 1st cousin came to the party and he was slightly younger…they were playing in the back yard and my grandson and the rest of the kids came running in…my grandson wide eyed was telling me Caden was eating my birdeye peppers…these peppers grow wild in southern Texas and they are small and plenty hot…I asked Caden if he was eating them and he shook his head yes…I didn’t see tears nor a red face…so I said show me…bring some peppers in so I can see…he came back in and no peppers…so I said ok what happened to the peppers and he opened his mouth and all I could see is seeds and red peppers…he chewed them up and ate them like m&ms…I said no more and when his mother showed up I told her what happened and hopefully her son wouldn’t get sick…she laughed and said one morning when eating breakfast he stood up in his baby chair and grabbed a jalapeno pepper and started eating it…she also said when she was pregnant with him she at jalapeño’s in the daytime and anytime and would send her husband to the store at night if she ran out…3 or 4 years later Caden got a new baby brother and he does the same thing from what I hear…
This story was amazing to me…I thought about the man’s story I read years ago and that story and this story made perfect sense…the environment had changed while the mom was pregnant and the fetus recognized and developed a taste for the peppers without affecting the baby negatively…a few years later I realized it was epigenetics at work…Caden is about 23 or 24 today…

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Training dogs is not so much about quantity, it's more about timing, and the right situations...After that it's up to the dog....A hunting dog is born...

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