Inbreeding/linebreeding...

I'm not a big fan but then Lipis are pretty inbreed so I can't say too much !

Inbreeding and line breeding is the same thing but the difference is degree, what that degree is , is not defined but personal..inbreeding is only as dangerous as the gene pool you own, it wont MAKE things go bad or good, it just shows it sooner or buries it. So many folks put human feeling on the practice ( morals yada yada) but in alot of cases it is the only way to bring a species back from the brink and sometimes when used when someone KNOWS their family of animals it can be a very useful tool. I have done it with terriers and have had it in my family of horses, it was successful and in another case faliure, its only as good as the family you keep 8-) It wont CREATE a problem that isnt already there.

If done right it can "set" characteristics and make a true breeding bloodline. If you think about it breeds are only the same thing on a bigger scale. Personally I can ony breed one foal at a time so I go for something pretty different to minimise risk of a cull but larger farms do use inbreeding and linebreeding with success (they cull a lot and only keep the good ones untill they've pretty much bred out anything that they don't want). Sort of the difference between Weiscamp and Waggoner horses. Weiscamp loooooved linebreeding, Waggoner did not aprove of it. Both are good but Weiscamp horses are extremely consistent, Waggoners have a lot more variety. In both you sometimes have to do a bit of research and make shure the horse you have or want is not a product of culls. Fancy name does not allways fancy horse make, some of them left the ranch for a reason.

Inbreeding correctly is a slower process. In both cases your goal is to eliminate undesirable traits. If you inbreed you first cull the dominant bad traits, THEN you have to deal with the recessive ones that keep popping up untill they are pretty much gone. At that point breeding is easier and consistent but you have to watch out for problems from lack of diversity.
With outcrossing you are forever culling dominant traits but you dont get so many recessive suprises and the horses would be hardier.

This is a topic close to my heart. The practice is used a lot in Arabians, because it was believed the Bedouins did it as well. And when I say a lot, it's used by almost everyone. When it comes to linebreeding/inbreeding - Arabians tend to corner the market. So they talk about it a lot. Bazy Tankersley says "don't do it unless you know what you're doing." Dr. Hans Nagel believed only two mares within the breed, Hanan and Estopa, were good enough to linebreed with, and also that Arabians wwould weather the practice better than other breeds because their stock was so sound.

Unfortunately, breeding practices of the modern era have rendered the practice nearly unsustainable. In the last several decades, excessive linebreeding has uncovered a number of genetic diseases in several breeds, most notably Quarter Horses and Arabians. These disease have then been propagated because people do not breed and do not cull responsibly.

Yes, just look at Dobermanns....there was in and line breeding in them right form the start, and although we have now, possibly, got Von Willebrands under control we fond out along the way that due to the inbreeding ALL Dobes have a poor clotting factor!!
All my Dobes have also had Spondylitis...ALL my Dobes, even though their breeder denies all knowledge of it and she is an honourable woman...I think it notices /shows up in my dogs because of their extreme activity...every day they free jump up to four foot of fences just as Th norm, and I did Agility at Competition level with them up til four/five years ago...so I notice things that maybe "pet" owners would not, and I can see that the dog I have at the moment has it, and he is the same breeding as my bitches and extremely inbred.
OK, that's dogs...how about horses??
I inbreed, I bred Rabbit on his own mother five times and got the kind of results you dream of...BUT I then went to a complete outcross for the next generation ...then in a few cases I bred the granddaughters back to Rabbit, and again, I got extremely good results.
I guess what I am saying is it's OK if it works, what some people seem seriously to lack is the ability to tell when it is [i]not[/i] working, and the ability to use common sense to say "No, that is [i]not[/i]going to be a good cross, even though it will make me a shed load of money, so I won't do it"

How do you "smartly" linebreed/inbreed??? You never know which traits will show up in the foal and I would think you would need a somewhat large control group to figure out if it's working or not. How do you determine it's a good cross or you just got lucky? Do you have to worry about deformed foals if you breed 2nd cousins to fathers' daughters??? I have no idea!
Breeding in general is the same way I think. I've seen people who want to breed thier (excuse the term) fugly mare to a super nice stallion. Either the foal will be nice, fugly, or somewhere in between. If it's nice, it doesn't mean Miss Fugly should be bred again...
I think the results of any particular breeding, whether the parents are related or not, will be what you put into it. Like begets like. If two individuals aren't stellar, then don't do it. Especially in this economy!

I can see the point to it but personally, I would not do it. Like Morgan mentioned I breed on a very small scale and see every foal as a huge investment AND an animal I'm going to have to be responsible for forever if it doesn't turn out right. So, I feel that on an emotional and economic level, I just can't afford it. I know the way I cross breeds does not guarantee good foals but it's worked out for me so far! Even my only "purebred" foal, Peanut, is a cross of two sections and the two sides share no ancestors for many, many generations.

[quote]How do you "smartly" linebreed/inbreed??? [/quote]

Well, that's the thing. One breeder said others study pedigrees and line up show results; he just has a feeling. One trainer talked about her father, a breeder, and how he bred similar phenotype to similar phenotype, often using horses she didn't think had a chance in h*ll of producing well; but he consistently produced champions, whereas her breeding decisions produced good, but not great, animals. That's it. I think it's the ability of a great breeder, and some have it and some just don't.

[quote]You never know which traits will show up in the foal and I would think you would need a somewhat large control group to figure out if it's working or not. [/quote]

Great breeders can predict exacty what they will get, and they get it. I've seen it. The number of horses that can be looked at to study this is overwhelming. All breeds practice inbreeding/linebreeding to some extent; racing TBs; cutting horses; whole breeds like the Friesian and the Exmoor are highly inbred.

[quote]Do you have to worry about deformed foals if you breed 2nd cousins to fathers' daughters??? I have no idea! [/quote]

The reality is that close inbreeding producing deformity is rare in horses. If you push it long enough, I'm sure you can manage, but you would not believe the amount of inbreeding a horse can come from and be completely normal. It's more common in humans and dogs, for instance, who are far more inbred as species, and who have high incidences of genetic disesase within the population.

I don't see a problem with inbreeding and linebreeding if it is done correctly as the others have said, but you would have to deal with the foal if it turned out bad and worrying about somone breeding it if it was sold.
I've looked a little bit into inbreeding vs linebreeding and basically they are the same except undesireable traits have a much much higher chance to show up in inbreeding than linebreeding since generally with linebreeding you would breed horses that are not mother/son etc.., more likely cusins.

We have a little paint mare that was accidentally inbred (stallion broke loose) and she is terrible;hog backed,very short (espicially since the stallion has had foals that are 15 hh+) and she has terrible feet and very unusual behavior (which may or may not be from genetics, but it is certainly different).

[color=#8000BF][b]I guess its a matter of opinion & preference.

I personally will NOT ever inbreed/linebreed. I find the practice repulsive, but thats humble opinion.
There are a lot of nicely bred studs out there that are not related to either of my fillies.

I think thats why so many halter horses look like they do as they are so inbred, with Impressive & his offspring.
I think thats where they get that UGLY "hanging" hip.

As they say " to each his own."[/b][/color]

We linebreed (i.e, breeding horses with a common connection a few generations back). The closest we've come to "inbreeding" is nephew/auntie matings, and have been pleased with the results.

The trick to knowing how to do inbreeding 'smartly' is to understand conformation and understand it extremely well. Recognising faults, strengths, how stallions nick with mares, that's the key to making any sort of breeding work. Personally, relying on pedigree alone, I think, has done much to promote the "spread" of genetic problems. Many breeders have lost (or haven't had) the ability to actually rate horses and how they will fit together, so run to the Big Name of the Month cuz that stallion has ribbons and shares a grandsire or whatever with their filly-milly-babykins. But that's a different soap-box... :laugh1

Diane :angel

[quote="PamelaTX"][color=#8000BF][b]
I think thats why so many halter horses look like they do as they are so inbred, with Impressive & his offspring.
I think thats where they get that UGLY "hanging" hip.
[/b][/color][/quote]

Not sure if that is from inbreeding or just what wins in the halter ring. I know alot of halter horses have that look and win with horrible conformation because that is what 'enhances' the muscle. IMO halter horses with the hip thing and post legs are very ugly to look at...no idea how anyone could [i]want[/i] their horse to look like that.

OK....when my Vet was the head of Obstetrics at the Royal Veterinary College (yes, I am name dropping because he , literally, wrote the book on a lot of this)...anyway, he had a small herd of basically Welsh ponies that he used, well, as he wished, basically.
One of the stallions was used as a blood donor, some of the pregnant mares were used for sterile foetuses, this was the real world and these ponies were there for a purpose.
He did not practise "vivisection" per se, but he did do unnecessary surgery on some of the animals.
A lot of the foals born he renamed with his students, a few went back into the herd as future breeding animals.
He had just the one stallion.
Next year same thing happened (he did keep the fillies separate til they were two years old)
Next year same thing happened....fillies by the stallion and out of mares by the stallion went back into the herd whenever they were needed (I got all this spiel when I asked if it was safe to breed Rabbit to his Dam)
He reckoned by the time I asked he was into the seventh generation of this!!!
He only put sound animals back into the herd, but his criteria was breeding sound, rather than exquisitely pretty, so the animals were plain, basically Welsh, ponies.
He NEVER had a deformity.
NEVER.
End of.......
I sited Human problems with close breedings, when "incest" has taken place and all the problems inherent in the children.
He told me this was mostly "hype" that whilst it is true that the human gene pool is more limited (not actually sure that is true but that was the belief at the time) "close" matings do not necessarily cause problems of any kind and that, at one time, it was almost accepted behaviour in the isolated villages of the Black Country for brother and sister to live as man and wife, or even faster and daughter if the wife had died...people turned a blind eye to it.
There were few if any proven problems.
I think the problems would come, with people at least, with the following generations, if the result of a brother sister relationship then joined with a close cousin, maybe, if there were poor genetics in the first place, problems would occur....this happens in animals as well, we are, after all, only animals, but in animals intelligence is not ranked as highly as it is in humans, so if children of low intelligence were born this would be immediately noticeable....see "Deliverance" :laugh1
Rabbit is still so sound, at 30, that I would not and do not hesitate to put him, routinely, on his daughters.
One of the foals I have just had born is by Carlos , who is a complete outcross, out of Pagan, who is a father to daughter mating from Rabbit....the foal is drop dead gorgeous, it really is, it sparkles.
I have been blessed with my horses, but then I started with sound as a bell mares and a wonderful stallion (Rabbits sire, Fred)
I have been ruthless with "weeding out" anything and everything that I do not feel comes up to my standards, and I have sold animals my friends have told me I am mad to sell, and kept animals that they also think I am mad to keep!!!
I am about to "weed out" again, and I have around ten animals I could sell, and slowly will do so, I do not ask the silly prices you normally see for Minis as this is my hobby and I can see no reason why my "cast offs" should pay for my hobby, they are my responsibilities, there is nothing wrong with them, they are, in fact, all show quality, but I shall eventually find them homes merely because they do not fit in my breeding programme!!!
Ruthless and constant "weeding" is the only way to get the kind of horse you want, irrespective of the breed, and in and line breeding are both totally secondary to the good eye of the breeder. :-bd

I think the relationship between human incest and horse incest is humans have alot more 'problems' genetically that we have all sorts of medication and treatment for, but the genes are still there even if the problem is fixed.
With horses, any of them with major problems either die or are not bred so they have less problems in general.

I know it may sound bad but that is what makes the most sence to me.

I know with cows you can sometimes see things crop up after 3 generations. Our neighbor tried 3 generations of father daughter breeding and had at least one problem crop up. It was a hermaphrodite. Of course I suppose that it could have just been a freak thing that would have happened anyway but it seems he had other problems as well although I can't remember what they were.

I've always heard the rule of thumb is one generation of father daughter breedings then change bulls.

With horses, I've sometimes heard the rule to outcross after 2 or 3 generations.

Humans, as a rule, are pretty inbred if you think about it. You know the old rule that we're all related by 6 degress? And we all trace to one "Mother Eve?" I think we have the most genetic conditions of any species.

This is Raffles, he was probably the most well known example of inbreeding in Arabians. He's a good example of how (and why) the practice is so entrenched in Arabians. His dam was bred to her own sire to produce him. He became a very famous sire of Arabian horses in the U.S.

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3396/349…]

What an intriguing picture.....

Have you not ever seen that one of him? Or do you think it's pretty bad? Here's the famous rearing one. He does look much more elegant and horse-like here, rather than a fat white pony..

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3550/349…]

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/machos+…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This was my old stallions pedigree, you can see that three bars bred his daughter, bar annie, this mare MIss birthday was a strong producer for AQHA and APHA, my Stallion was a AQHA champion and that DOSENT happen much AT ALL anymore, horses just dont compete in halter AND ride, and Machos Lady that is on All breed his sister had a bunch of pooints and was undefeted in the WP ring for a long time...she had quite the record going for a while and then im sure someone started to knock her off her thrwn.

The only thing that I know of that is noted in constant linebreeding/inbreeding is fertility can drop. Natures way of telling you its time to outcross.

If I get a good family going someday you can bet on me linebreeding pretty darn close to set type.