Breeding Question

[hhpminis]

I agree that linebreeding can be beneficial and I am not opposed to it at all. In fact the majority of my herd is line bred, some very heavily. Not by me but by a person much wiser than I that I admire very much, Audrey Barrett, who was the talent behind the Arenosa line.

I also agree with the comments that this can not just be done at random. It takes a lot of research, trial and error and you have to be willing to subjectively cull your herd.

Sometimes the best crosses on paper dont work, whether they be line bred or not. As breeders it is our responsibility to look subjectively at our horses and see their faults, so that we can be honest with ourselves in our expectations of future results. There are no guarantees in this business, no matter what aspect of it we indulge in, but especially the breeding end of it.

Some choose to breed Overo to Overo that both carry the LWO gene, personally, I dont but that does not make it wrong, I have just made a educated decision that I am not willing to deal with the smaller chance of having a double LWO foal. My personal feelings.

This decision is just another one that breeders must make for themselves. But...do it with the research backing to make an educated one.

If you look at your herd and see nothing but beautiful perfect creatures, than linebreeding is probably not going to work for you as there is no such thing as a perfect horse and we need to be able to see that as well as the good qualities.

These are just my thoughts, not saying anyone is wrong or right, I can only make that decision for myself.

 

[sfmini]

Absolutely have done so and will do so again. As the others have said, you must take care and consider the individuals before doing so, and also be prepared to live with the consequences should a bad recessive rear its ugly head.

We just bred a mother to her son and are looking forward to seeing the results of this cross. This mare is the best producer we have ever had, the son is the best she has ever produced.

We have on our farm an arab mare out of an extremely close cross. Her sire and dam are by the same stallion and both are Fadjur grandget so they were just about brother/sister. She is a beautiful horse, could not have asked for a better outcome. Almost 16 hands tall and just gorgeous! Here is a pic of her.

 

[StarRidgeAcres]

[SIZE=12pt]Fascinating subject!!

: [/SIZE]

 

[anita]

Half siblings bred together is inzest.

Linebreeding is: first create a line out of min. 5 generations the best of the best. It could be out of an excellent stallion or mare. It can done a different way too.

In no case barn name bred to barn name, that's not linebreeding.

Both is fine for me. I prefer these horses over mix and match bred.

Anita

 

[Nathan Luszcz]

Nathan,

Are either of these disorders found outside of Quarter Horse or part bred QH's? I thought HYPP was exclusive to QH's and that HERDA was or "almost" was limited to horses with that breed in them? But, because I have thought that, I haven't educated myself about it.

There's so much pet quality x pet qualiity breeding minis around. I think the people who do entertain line breedig are actually miles ahead of the masses breeding whatever they've happened to come by.

Thanks,

Jill

Those two examples are QH specific, yes. They are just examples, not saying those two paticular disorders will show up in minis.

I haven't done inbreeding and comments I have heard are :

"what happens in the wild"

"it can go either way, either the result is very good or very bad"

IMO there can be problems with the result from any breeding pair, but I don't think I would want to "experiment".

That last comment is very true. Nobody talks about the latter, of course, so all you hear is the former.

As far as the first statement, male colts are kicked out of the herd, and female ones pass back and forth to other herds. Does it NEVER happen? No, it does happen, but not commonly with adult animals. Colts tend to be pretty randy and troublemakers, hence why they are generally booted from the herd pretty young.

I don't like playing with fire, so I will avoid linebreeding and its mistakes (inbreeding).

 

[nootka]

I would not unless there was some compelling reason TO, which I Have not yet ever experienced.

I know some breeders use it with great success, but it's a HUGE undertaking to do the research and be responsible enough to try.

There are enough choices out there to use for breeding that I haven't seen where it's really warranted for my situation.

Liz M.

 

[HGFarm]

Here is a link to an article written on linebreeding and the difference between LINEbreeding and INbreeding. I have done it, with success, a couple of times over the years.

http://www.dailypost.com/%7Esantee/linebreeding.htm

If you look through the pedigrees on the Arabians and QH's you will see sometimes the same horse in the pedigree five to six times! And these are highly successful and well known animals that contributed a lot to the breed, as did the offspring, etc....

Just edited to tell sfmini - hey your 'reject' mare above can reject herself right over to my place right away. Wouldnt want your friends and neighbors making fun of you or her now!!

 

[Nathan Luszcz]

The quick summery is inbreeding is linebreeding that failed

And like I said... those QH's that have the same stallion five or six times in their pedigree... those are the horses that resulted in genetic disorders like HERDA and HYPP. TB's have them too, but they are swept under the rug. Its only when it becomes a major deal that they are made public.

 

[HGFarm]

No, there is a difference as the article states, in inbreeding and line breeding- there is never more than 50% of the genes of the foundation animal allowed in the offspring. It is not breeding full brother to full sister or even father to daugher. The article is very clear on the difference. A careful breeder will study the horses also prior to thinking of breeding this way.

 

[rabbitsfizz]

Neither in breeding nor line breeding is inherently wrong and horses have NO concept of incest- sorry that is just silly!!

In breeding is NOT necessarily a mistake, and it does happen, often, in certain behaviour pattern horses in the wild without it harming the offspring.

Natural selection tends to take care of anything that is not 100% healthy- unlike us who will spend thousands of dollars encouraging, sometimes forcing an animal to live that might well have been better off being left- I guess there is no room for sentimentality in Nature.

There is no "right" or "wrong" here, and to suggest that there is , or that there is a genetic reason not to do this, is nonsense, quite frankly.

I have done both with huge success and shall continue to do so.

Never had a faulty foal that was due to in or line breeding, not once, so I guess it can work after all?

As with all my breeding programmes, I researched this carefully and thoroughly before embarking on it, I was very lucky to have a highly skilled and grossly over qualified Vet, here at the Royal Veterinary College.

A lot of my "research" was just listening to him talk and attending his lectures!

His herd was inbred for five generations- he rarely changed the stallion and he used the daughters to go back into the herd.

These were not animals being bred for any use other than research and were required to be tough, strong and healthy, they were all around 11hands and basically Welsh.

No troubles foaling, no troubles getting in foal, no problems with inbreeding.

I would not do it that close myself as I do not have to, but father to daughter is fine, then out for the next generation and I have just started putting the foals form that subsequent generation back to the original sire, so grandaughter out of already related mare, back to grand father.

The results are outstanding, but you do have to know where you want to go, and sell what is not exactly what you want.

 

[LowriseMinis]

I'm aware it's not the same, but in breeding rabbits we have done a lot of VERY close breedings. Siblings, half siblings, mother-son, father-daughter, cousins, uncles, etc...the benefits of rabbits is they have a reproductive turnaround of 7 months. You do a breeding, a month later you have babies, 6 months later you can breed those babies. So if there are any negative affects of in- or linebreeding (which are different things), you see them fairly quickly.

Of course you have to know your lines well. We have a line of rabbits from England who in the beginning often had bad teeth and were mono or cryptorchid. Obviously you didn't linebreed these animals! Through generations of breeding them to American stock though, people were able to isolate the good traits in these rabbits without passing on the bad ones.

With our own lines we've developed we can breed just about anyone together, because we've owned or known their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, and so on. We know these animals to be healthy long lived examples of the breed free from genetic defects.

Of course, conformation plays a role, but this is a fact in ALL breeding, even in totally unrelated lines. If you take a cow-hocked animal and breed it to another cow-hocked animal, you can't blame the resulting cow-hocked foal on inbreeding!

Based on my experiences with the rabbits, I wouldn't hesitate to do inbreeding with the Minis once we gain a similar level of experience with them. Our very first Mini breeding next year is a distant line breeding (stud's sire is the mare's great-grandsire) and we're comfortable enough to do this.

 

[ohmt]

horses have NO concept of incest- sorry that is just silly!!

I think this is funny as it is proven that in a wild herd situation where a young stallion takes over, as what happens eventually, a stallion will not breed his dam or sisters. Somehow they know. Of course the way we do things a stallion couldn't possibly because of all the interference and lack of a herd situation. But this is off topic I suppose!

We have a maternal brother and sister bred for next year. We don't usually inbreed though we do linebreed quite a bit. The dam to my pair was phenomenal. I think the foal is going to be amazing. We usually keep sisters away from brothers but one day I was looking at the two and thought how gorgeous a foal would be by the two. We have also bred a daughter to her sire I think twice in our 25 years. Both went well.

I agree with Erica that you should throw away the pedigree and look at the horses in front of you and decide which will compliment each other. That's how it should always be in my opinion. If you're bettering the breed...then go for it.

 

[Little Wee Horse Farm]

anitavake said "In no case barn name bred to barn name, that's not linebreeding"

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm not interpreting this correctly, but are you saying that horses who have the same prefix should not be bred because it's inbreeding?

If that's what is meant, your concept is just plain wrong. Like prefixes DO NOT indicate that horses share anything but the prefix. Yes, they come from the same farm, BUT it doesn't imply any relationship whatsoever.

I've sold MANY horses with my prefix on them, TOGETHER AS POTENTIAL BREEDING PAIRS. They were totally and completely unrelated. Please don't assume like prefixes mean like pedigree.

If I've read the wrong thing into your statement, I apologize in advance.

 

[rabbitsfizz]

I'm sorry but that just is not so!!

Horses have NO concept of family, once the family unit is broken up and a young stallion taking over will breed anything that stands still, basically, including his brothers, let alone his sisters!!

Now, there are different behaviour patterns in even Mustangs within America- I think it is three distinct patterns with only one of them involving the brutal, "rape them and cause them to abort" behaviour that happens in one particular behaviour group when a new stallion takes over.

By raping the mares he will cause them to lose the previous stallions foal, and can then cover them to produce foals of his own for the following year.

Once a colt is far enough removed in time and space form even his dam, in all but a few exceptional cases, they will breed even their own mothers.

If they are kept within the family they will not, as she will look at him very hard and he will shrivel up and go to his room, like any good boy.

Once he has left home and become his own man, however, all bets are off.

Native Shetlands belong to the same group as Icelandics in that they will drive out all coming yearlings, and thus avoid mating their own daughters.

If however they raid a herd and steal a few young mares, and they are his daughters, he will not turn away breeding age mares, they go back into his herd.

I think, but am not positive, that Przewalski's horses belong to another group, driving out the colts but retaining the fillies.

I think this is one of the reasons they have taken so long to reintroduce them- the gene pool was so very limited it was necessary to make sure that too close inbreeding did not further reduce it for a few years.

We all know all too well that a stallion will happily mate his own daughters, why would it be any different for his brothers and sisters??

 

[Clarks Ltd Edition]

Thank you all for your input!!

I agree with Rabbitsfizz that if you look back to any breed they go most commonly to one main foundation sire.

Here is a quote out of the book, Genetic Principles of Horse Breeding by John Lasley.

The genetics text Genetic Principles of Horse Breeding by John Lasley, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri, defines inbreeding as "the production of offspring by parents more closely related than the average of the population." His examples of inbreeding include parents to offspring, full sisters to full brothers, half sisters to half brothers and cousins to cousins.

The general definition of a breed is "a group of animals that have certain inherited characteristics that they pass on generation after generation. The root or bottom line in a group of animals ability to pass these traits on is the genetic condition known as homozygosity. We inbreed to set the desired characteristics by increasing homozygosity, which allows breeds to pass their traits on genration after generation."

 

[anita]

anitavake said "In no case barn name bred to barn name, that's not linebreeding"

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm not interpreting this correctly, but are you saying that horses who have the same prefix should not be bred because it's inbreeding?

If that's what is meant, your concept is just plain wrong. Like prefixes DO NOT indicate that horses share anything but the prefix. Yes, they come from the same farm, BUT it doesn't imply any relationship whatsoever.

I've sold MANY horses with my prefix on them, TOGETHER AS POTENTIAL BREEDING PAIRS. They were totally and completely unrelated. Please don't assume like prefixes mean like pedigree.

If I've read the wrong thing into your statement, I apologize in advance.

Sorry, if I interpreted not correct. I have to apologize English is my third language.

I heard some folks talking horses with the same prefix bred together is linebreeding which is not.

Like you said horses share not anything but the prefix. You are absolutely correct.

Anita

 

[ohmt]

rabbitsfizz--

What i had tried to explain...though it was off topic.... is that in wild situations when a young stallion has taken over when not kicked out of the herd previously will not breed his mother nor his younger sisters. Sorry if I did not make that clear. It is not a likely situation as , yes, most colts are kicked out of the herd before they are able to pose any threats to the main stallion. But in the cases where this has not happened the young stallion CAN differentiate which are his sisters (maternal sisters only) and which is his dam and he will not breed them in almost all cases. I have already said that I have bred a daughter to her sire and have bred a brother to his maternal sister for next year actually. The brother and sister had never even laid eyes on each before. Therefore I am not contradicting the fact that stallions will breed close relatives. I'm specializing in equine reproduction and have thus attended my fair share of lectures on such matters.

Once a colt is far enough removed in time and space form even his dam, in all but a few exceptional cases, they will breed even their own mothers.If they are kept within the family they will not, as she will look at him very hard and he will shrivel up and go to his room, like any good boy.

Once he has left home and become his own man, however, all bets are off.

This is pretty much what I was trying to say only my comminucation ability seems to be in the lacking these days

:

 

[Little Wee Horse Farm]

Anita -- English as a 3rd language? I'm impressed!

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[Katiean]

I have seen full sibling to full sibling in show rabbits. That line when you did the sib to sib it worked awsome. :new_shocked: :aktion033: I can't see that it would be different with horses. However, I don't think I would do it more than once on a pedigree. :no:

 

[PaintNminis]

Okay I have a Question

I own 2 Stallions (Colts) They share their Grand Sire

Do you think it would be unwise to Breed one of their Daughters to the Other One?