Pedigree Query

My question deals with inbreeding to outstanding individuals. For example assume that there are many In Reality stakes winners inbred 3x4. Can I achieve the same result by substituting a sire that is 4x4 In Reality to achieve the same % of blood? Can I use a Sire that is 3rd generation In Reality and breed him to a mare that is 6x6x5 In Reality and thus achieve the equivalent of the successful 3x4 In Reality cross?

Do I gain anything or lose anything by using more crosses of In Reality in the 5th and 6th generations rather than trying to mimic the mating of the 3x4 stakes winners by staying with the exact dupication of 3x4 In Reality?

Tough question. In Reality has been inbred 13 times to produce a GSW. Of those 13 times, only 4 were 3 x 4. Of possibly more significance, however, in the 13 successful inbreedings of In Reality, Mr. P appears in 9 of these - mostly on the sire's side.Goldmine derived results. Any help?

Thanks for the reply and yes it was helpful. My question is actually more general forget In Reality and use any outstanding sire (Teddy, Bold Ruler St. Simon etc). In a mating decision, is a 3x4 to Teddy the same, better or worse than a foal that is 3 x6x6x5 to Teddy giving the same percentage of blood in both cases, (the equivalent of 3x4)?

Please give me your thoughts on the more general question.

I'm not exactly sure and an inbreeding and an inbreeding of 3 x 6 x 6 x 5 might be hard to find just doing a general search of the linebreeding of ANY horse. I THINK it also depends on what else is going on in the pedigree. I did find a 4 x 6 x 7 x 6 that was 9.38%. 3 x 4 is 18.75%. I think 3 x 6 x 6 x 5 would very closely approximate 3 x 4. It could not be more than a few points off. What ever else is going on in the pedigrees of the prospective pair to be mated would be far more important, I would think, than just a few % points. JMHO

Anytime you inbred to foundation sires or mares, you have to research those stallions you want to breed them to.

Example: Before you breed your In Reality mare to a stallion you must check how successful the In Reality cross was before you make the mating.

If the cross is non productive you would not make the mating.

By breeding to successful nicking patterns, you are letting those patterns guide you in your matings.

louis finochio wrote:Anytime you inbred to foundation sires or mares, you have to research those stallions you want to breed them to.

Example: Before you breed your In Reality mare to a stallion you must check how successful the In Reality cross was before you make the mating.

If the cross is non productive you would not make the mating.

By breeding to successful nicking patterns, you are letting those patterns guide you in your matings.

O.K. Louis, I respect your opinions and the fact that you have been around the track for a long time. But when ANYONE makes a blanket statement that if a "cross has been non-productive", then, you would not want to breed that cross, I get my fur a bit ruffled. Here's why:

You would have to have overwhelming statistical proof/validity that a cross does NOT work, before you can call it non-productive or a "negative" cross/nick. If everyone used THOSE rules, we would have no trail blazers. There are just as many great racehorses with no close inbreeding (1-5 gen) as there are those with with close inbreeding.

Each mare and stallion bring a whole new set of individual genes to a "cross", so UNLESS there is a known negative, i.e., Buckpasser to Bold Ruler mares produces a negative nick, per the book Racehorse Breeding Theories, that cannot be overcome with the entire picture, I have real problems with such hard and fast rules/theories.

Buckpasser (per Racehorse Breeding Theories) had 320 foals. 33 were out of Bold Ruler mares, representing approximately 10% of Buckpasser's total progeny. Of those foals, there were 76% Starters, 55% Winners and 6% Stakes Winners. Far below the average stats of Buckpasser's total progeny of 12% Stakes Winners and a whopping 60% Stakes Winners with Northern Dancer mares.

It is opined that Bold Ruler mixed with Buckpasser created a "negative nick" due to Buckpasser's propensity to throw progeny with knee and foreleg problems and Bold Ruler's propensity to throw progeny with arthritis. However, the study does NOT look closely at the 6% Stakes Winners of the Buckpasser/Bold Ruler cross for the purposes of "determining" why those 6% SW progeny faired better than the rest. I doubt it was as simple as just looking at the Buckpasser/Bold Ruler stallion/mare mating. It is also interesting to note, that many were "fooled" by the "win percentage stats" because they didn't look deep enough to see that many progeny of this cross could not withstand training long enough to make even half the average career earnings of the total Buckpasser progeny.

I would think the first thing any breeding needs to take into consideration is the prospective mare and prospective stallion.

Does the stallion have proven class, soundness, versatility, a proven sireline, a proven broodmare sireline and an excellent female family? Does the mare have these qualities? If NOT, you need to first be sure that the stallion improves whatever the mare is lacking, IMO.

THEN, look at the rest of the pedigree to see if everything else ADDS to the mating, and does not throw up red flags along the way. Because any 3x4, 4x4 or 4x5, etc., inbreeding is rarely going to fix what is up front, if what is up front isn't good (well thought out) to begin with, UNLESS it is a known plus or "neutralizer" to any negatives in the mare and stallion cross. (How many of those exist anywhere but our imaginations? )

I think the above Buckpasser/Bold Ruler "negative nick" is the perfect example of taking into consideration what is up front first and then looking at what is behind the mare and stallion that might support or negate the breeding.

In other words, it never comes down to one thing and any mating that is based on such a premise is ill-conceived. (That is from the book.) So, IMO, a blanket statement that an unproductive nick won't produce or is even a statistically valid "unproductive nick", is a dangerous rule to follow as a stand-alone rule. What if, the alleged "unproductive cross" is supported by everything else but the alleged statistically "unproductive cross"... do you walk away from that?

To quote Frank Mitchell, PhD, the author of Racehorse Breeding Theories, at p. 320: "The higher the number of runners that a percentage is from, the more likely the theory works... Any theory that plans matings by pedigree alone, or ranks pedigree above major physical traits, is suspect."

In any event, regarding the Goldmine results of In Reality w/ Mr. P., the cross produced graded stakes winners at a far greater number with Mr. P on top and In reality on the bottom. Does that make the reverse cross "non-productive"? Or, is there deeper analysis required as to what did work of that lower percentage group and why?

Bottom line...who is the mare and the stallion? If they measure up in all of the important areas, then look to the inbreeding stats as to the positives or negatives to be found there.

I am, of course, a newbie and my opinion is probably of little or no value.. but in discussions with some who are far wiser I have gleaned some "principles" with regard to inbreeding.

It can be a good thing if the individual being inbred to is a very superior one. It appears to have more of the offspring if the inbreeding is achieved through a sex balanced cross. It is generally frowned on if it is closer than the third generation.

I have a theory that inbreeding to superior mares is a good thing. Mares like Nellie Flag, Somethingroyal, Shenanigans, etc. Regarding the sex-balanced thing.. the inbreeding is seen as more effective if it comes from the sire's damline and the dam's sireline, or vice versa, as opposed to coming from just the sirelines or the damlines. An example of this is Rocking Trick x Seraphic Storm versus Rocking Trick x Overnight Deposit.
Inbreeding Storm Cat 3x3 and sex balanced in the first case.

Inbreeding for the sake of inbreeding is NOT a good thing. I once met a fellow trying to sell three Thoroughbred mares. He seemed to view their pedigrees with bated breath reverence. At the time I knew nearly nothing at all about Thoroughbred pedigrees but passed on these mares. I couldn't achieve the same reverence the seller had. The mares were Candy Nap, O' Candy and Bonjour Bonita. Bonjour Bonita is perhaps a perfect example of inbreeding that is, well, not desirable.

And then, of course, I could be completely off base

Apparently the $16 Million colt, The Green Monkey, is inbred to In Reality and crossed on the bottomside with Mr. P. http://www.pedigreequery.com/forum/view ... 5539#65539

In your reference that the more mares of one sire line are bred to a stallion will produce more winners and SW than other sire lines with less mares from different sire lines.

Example A:

Meadowlake was bred to 82 mares that traced to the Phalaris sire line. M produced 46 winners and 5 SW.

Meadowlake was bred to 14 mares that traced to the Gainsborough sire line. M produced 10 winners and 3 SW.

Example B:

Hoist the Flag was bred to 117 mares that traced to the sire line of Phalaris and produced 76 winners and 30 SW.

Hoist the Flag was bred to 7 mares that traced to the sire line of Fair Play.
HTF produced 2 winners and 1 SW.

As you can see from both of these examples, just because a stallion is bred to many more mares of one sire line dosent mean he will produce more winners and SW with that sire line.

All these stallions are individuals and whats good for one is not a guarantee that those other stallions will follow suit.

Thats what makes the breeding of superior runners a challenge for all us breeders. If it was easy I would have quit long ago.

There are many roads that lead to Rome, but you must find which road will get you there.

I'd like to comment on the mechanics of inbreeding for a moment.

Genes are passed along on chromosomes, which contain thousands of bits of information per chromosome. So a stallion donated half of his chromosomes (32) to the sperm, and the mare does the same for the egg (32) which combine in the foal to make the count 64.

So far this is basic simple genetics.

So the foal grows up and becomes a breeding stallion. He passes half his chromosomes to his own sperm and continues the breed. However which chromosomes he passes on is random. He could produce a sperm that contains the identical set of 32 that he got from his sire, or a sperm that has all 32 from the mare. Both are pretty unlikely, and what would be more expected is for a sperm to contain a mix of chromosomes from both parents.

The trick is which chromosomes got passed along.

64 foal
32 parent
16 grand parent
8 great grand parent
4 great, great grand parent
2
1

and so on. The math works out nicely, but the reality is that you may get 16 chromosomes from a grand parent or you might get 24, or 6 chromosomes.

The statistical answer to the original question is that you should be able to inbreed more times to a distant relative via different lines and get the same results. However the way the chromosomes assort you are better off inbreeding to individuals that are closer up in the pedigree. You are even better off if you have a physical type in mind and inbreed based not only on the statistics but on the physical type that you are trying to produce.


You know that Secretariat got 32 chromosomes from Bold Ruler. But how many of those 32 chromosomes came from Discovery? The same goes for Native Dancer, how may of the his chromosomes also came from Discovery? The statistical answer in both cases is 16. Did they each get 16? Maybe, maybe not. However were they the same statistical 16? Not likely. Is there a special combination of chromosomes that make a superior racehorse? Maybe.

I'd love to see analysis on Gone West, Storm Cat, AP Indy and Summer Squall, to see which of Secretariat's chromosomes ended up in those grandsons.

Hope this helps.

Could one use the DNA to determine which chrosomes came from each individual ancestors?

louis finochio wrote:Could one use the DNA to determine which chrosomes came from each individual ancestors?

Wow...wouldn't that be great if it could!

We'd all be able to know just who our "well intended" foals really do take after. It might be expensive, but so is trying to get a horse to the races that really doesn't take after the good horses at all

Back in the dark ages there used to be a technique called karyotyping sp? Which could be used to look at the individual chromosomes. I don't know what folks are using today. I'll take a gander around the web and see what comes up.

In a primitive way, you can use color traits as markers for chromosome movement.

YX, is basic. You can sex the foal and figure out if it got the Y--colt, or X filly.

The Grey gene is also easy to follow. Any gray horse has at least one gray parent.

Ditto with the Cream gene, but that's not all that common in the TB genepool.

Base coats get a bit more complicated but can be used.

Agouti (bay/not bay)


That's four possible markers for the hypothetical 32 chromosomes. Anyone else want to contribute traits that are clearly inherited that can be used as markers for chromosome movement?

So as an example, and bay daughter of chestnut Secretariat will have the black base coat gene (and chromosome) from her mother, and a red gene ( and chromosome) from Secretariat.

If she has a chestnut foal, you know that the foal carries one chromosome from Secretariat, and one from another red base coat ancestor.

The real trick is to figure out what else lives on each chromosome.

BJ you would have to identify all genetic markers in order to determine what chromosones were passed down by who-correct?

Also-mathematically how many mating samples would be needed in order to get a scientifically factual mating trend?

In general about 100 is the number folks like to see to prove/disprove any given gene. So if a bay stallion sires 100 bay or black foals from chestnut mares, its pretty clear that he's a double black base coat.

In some cases it is much easier. If a bay stallion sires one chestnut foal you know that he carries the chestnut gene in addition to the bay. This can happen with the first foal.

So it kind of depends.

By the way the gray gene is carried on horse chromosome 25. Now the trick is to figure out what else is on that chromosome. Folk wisdom was that gray horses weren't all that speedy, but could run all day, suggesting that there are stamina influences lurking around on this chromosome.
Anyone want to come up with horses to prove/disprove this theory?