Similar breeding on Dam and Sire's side

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imafluffybunny

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Just wondered peoples views on horses being bred with similar breeding on the sire and dams side? I have recently been offered a covering by a donnerhall son for my De Niro mare, De Niro obviously also being by Donnerhall, I turned it down as it is way too closely bred for my liking but do people actually do this?
I have noticed a few youngstock for sale recently with the same stallions on both sides, i was always of the view that you should breed with totally different breeding but maybe I am wrong? What do people think?
 
From researching breeding lines it appears to be common practice across the board. I have seen it in Arabs, Welsh, TB's, Traks, QH's, as I said the list is endless. Line breeding is more common the interbreeding, whether it is good or bad is in the proof of the pudding. I would have thought that if the risks were too high it would not have occured across the breeds the way it has or as often.
 
I too have noticed this trend with some breeds.

However, the Cleveland Bay population is so small that we have a selected mating scheme called 'SPARKS'. We have a computer programme developed from Zoo breeding which encourages genetic diversity and avoids 'in-breeding'. I don't know if other breeds use such a scheme.

For me it means that each year I can obtain a list of all stallions with their relationship my own mares.

Andy Dell who developed the computer programme was given an award by the RBST for his work.
 
Zangersheide believed in line breeding. I'm not convinced that it is a good idea - too much like in-breeding for my liking. Certainly some of theirs produced from closely related, extremely talented horses, had nothing like the ability of their parents.
 
The SPARKS programme gives important information on inbreeding If you only look at parents grandparents you may be be misled into thinking your mare is not inbred when she actually is. This of course only happens with small populations so for most of you, you have a very large selection of stallions to choose from. My mare is also one of a group of mares with the rarer bloodlines/family groups. Putting her to any very common line would just dilute the gene pool. So if I select on the basis of physical attributes I come up with a very small number. Then if I select from these on basis of SPARKS I am left with 3, one of which is the father of my yearling.
Oh, well I suppose it makes decisions easier !
 
It's a very successful technique and has been used by humans for thousands of years to fix type and create breeds of plants and animals.

But there are dangers and it must be used carefully. It has been proven to be very successful in the TB over several hundred years and is used in breeding programs for performance.

Inbreeding is considered as having any common ancestor in the first 5 generations and linebreeding is any common ancestor from the 6th generation back. Though some use linebreeding to describe close matings, after all it sounds better!!!

Big Brown 2008 KY Derby winner has a good example of quite close inbreeding in TB's. Generally speaking though it is taboo to go closer than 3x3 (Same ancestor 2 times in the 3rd generation of a pedigree).

http://www.pedigreequery.com/big+brown

In Big Browns case he is inbred on Northern Dancer through 1/2 brothers Nureyev and Danzig 3x3, in this pedigree, there is also an inbreeding on Damascas 3x4 through the 1/2 sisters Edge and Syrian Circle, both of whom are granddaughters of Round Table on their dam side so Big Brown is also inbred on him 4x5.

It is also quite a common practice to inbreed using a horse that is itself inbred, rather than inbreeding on an outcross pedigree.
 
Yes that is quite common especially in North America where some describe a father daughter mating as linebreeding!

In Big Browns case he also has quite a good example of line breeding on his dam line to a mare called Goody Two Shoes (1899) by my calculations she appears 7 times in his pedigree as a line breeding 8x9x10x10x11x11x12 !!!! But I could have missed one.

The theory is that being this inbred usually leads to a loss of performance, called inbreeding depression, but he did not suffer this, being a top class performer. So if he is bred to unrelated mares a then a phenomenon called Hybrid Vigor kicks in, sort of like drinking red bull on a genetic level!

Biggest problem will be finding anything free of Northern Dancer to breed to him, especially in the USA where he is standing!
 
I think the main thing to remember is to use the very best.
If you cross to the very best then there is less likely hood of problems. I think as long as you are carefull and don't do it too many times in one pedigree you should breed something very nice.
It's not just in Arabs, there are a lot of Welsh and show ponies too.
 
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