When you are looking at horses, what do you consider to close for same sires and dams?

When you see some papers with the grandpa being the same on top and bottom, is that to close for you?

Does it make a difference if it's the same grandma?  (does that make any difference on it?) 

Unless you intend to breed them, it only matters what the horse themselves are.  I have found some people to be unusually put off by any kind of linebreeding.  But if they only knew what was behind every single horse/dog/cow etc... that is a specific breed they would not own an animal. Any time you have a "breed" that has set characteristics, they got that way by line and inbreeding like individuals to each other. That often includes many crosses to the same animal. Unless there is a genetic defect present in the subject animals ancestors, it doesn't bother me at all.

The whole reason for not allowing people to marry their cousins or siblings is because of the possibility of genetic defects.  Before we had genetic testing the only way to avoid this is to prohibit closely related people from marrying and procreating. 

With animals, many times the only way to root out a genetic defect is to breed father to daughter and study the result.  This is what they did in the early 1900's and before.  Now we have genetic testing that can eliminate the known defects from the breeding herd. If we have tested animals, we can remove the positive ones from our program.  But there are a lot of people who don't test because they don't want to know and lose money on the positive ones. 

I could read your thoughts for days my friend...  

All of that is so true...  and depending on the lines, doubling up may just be the ticket

But don't get me started on human versions lol...

I've ridden a number of babies from daughters bred back to their father. A few worked, a few just did not.

I am looking at a tree with no branches now but it scares me how smooth that tree trunk is! LOL... but I still might get him!

just do it... just do it... lol 

I'm not a fan of the breeding daughters back to the sire, or really sometimes even just the same name twice on the AQHA papers you get. Farther back I don't care so much. And it depends on the bloodline as well, there's some I'd be ok with seeing twice and some not. And when I do see the same stallion twice I like to see different mare lines crossed with each. I'm just one of those weirdos that likes variety. And in today's times I think there's so many options right now that you can go a different stud and still get the same outcome you were looking for. When I go to breed the mare I have now I'm one of those that's going to experiment & try to come up with something that maybe not everyone has done yet. I'm going to breed to what will compliment her strengths & eliminate some of her weaknesses, not even thinking about names. Some people jsut breed for the big names, that's one thing I would look for if I was looking at something with same lines, were they breeding to add big names or were they breeding for traits. And if they bred for traits did they succeed. I'd love to be one to find a new cross that works nicely, but most people prefer whats already tried & true 

now... what if its the same mare.. and lets say the mare has some serious power.... 

Do you feel the same if its on that side? 

I totally hear ya... I don't mind seeing the same names a couple times either, especially when it's good

We breed our Sun Frost son to our Sun Frost daughter quite often with awesome results. When linebreeding we like to make sure that there are no common ancestors on the maternal line if we are linebreeding off the paternal side and vise versa. Sun Frost and Driftwoods in general are proven to linebreed well though---so that helped a tad in our decision making. Here is one of the results as a baby and same girl at two.

Cute babies!  

So you are saying basically that when you are line breeding on the paternal side, you make sure that same line isn't on the maternal side or visa versa?

Meaning, if your driftwood is on that top side, you keep it on the top side?  nothing on dame side says Driftwood... or vise versa?, correct?

Yes, that is what I was taught. PLUS---say you are linebreeding off od Sun Frost on top----you do not want like ancestors on the bottome of the pedigree--say for both of them to be Top Moon on the bottom. 

If it works its Linebreeding, If it doesn't its inbreeding

I like mare power more than stud power, a power mare twice on the papers is something I'd be more interested in than the stud. Like if Mulberry was on the papers twice, I'd take that over say DTF on the papers twice. But would still have to be a **** nice mare & a **** nice horse I'm looking at buying. 

If you look in the cowbred world, pretty much everything goes back to Doc Bar (and usually more than once or twice), but the closer up on the papers you see more variation. In the race bred world, a lot of the big names like DFC, FDD, DTF, etc. are still pretty close up for a lot of horses (still seeing sons of FDD versus no sons of Doc Bar out there), so in my mind, I would be less inclined to breed something that's already DFC bred to something else with DFC, whereas I would be more likely to breed something with DB to something else with DB, and have the closer ancestors be different/unrelated. I believe the barrel racing and quarter horse racing industries are becoming too closed in regards to bloodlines. If you look at the Heritage Place or Los Al sales that have been going on, there's some horses that are quadruple bred DFC (and only one generation off the papers sometimes). At least in the cowbred world they tried to create more variation moving forward from Doc Bar. There are a lot of people in the cutting world now breeding sons/grandsons of HBC to daughters/granddaughters of HBC, and that gene pool is starting to close again. So many people in the barrel racing world think that "if a little is good, a lot is better" because yes, it does seem to work and there are some great winners produced. However, what you don't see are the ones that fall apart mentally and physically.

Oregon posted about genetic defects- what really irks me is club feet. DFC is well known for throwing clubby foot horses, and to me that is a defect. There are people breeding clubby footed DFC/FDD/DTF bred stallions to clubby footed DFC/FDD/DTF mares and getting horribly clubbed feet horses. Some people don't care about club feet and just see it as another form of maintenance, some people don't even know what they're looking at, and others care about conformation to where they won't breed the horse and pass that along. It's the same with the 5 panel genetic testing, some breeders don't care if their horse is a carrier for a disease and will breed them, others won't breed that horse and some won't even buy that horse.

I still don't quite understand how a DFC bred stallion is a "great outcross" on DTF bred mares.

About half my horses go to DFC. Some more than once. I have yet to have a clubfooted horse. I also look at a lot of horses and pictures of horses. I haven't seen a clubfooted DFC son or daughter yet.  Maybe my definition of clubfooted is different than yours.  Most horses have a pastern angle of approximately 55 degrees.  Foot angles should be identical to that.  A clubfooted horse would have to have angles steeper than their pastern.  

I agree with you that a club footed horse would have a hoof angle that is steeper than the pastern angle, but our definitions of what a club foot looks like must vary. Flared toes (not just from being long), ie "ski sloped" hooves, contracted heels- those all are physical evidence of club feet. The grading scale with club feet goes from mild to severe, and some are so mild that most horse owners wouldn't notice. There's also horse owners that don't feel it's a club foot unless it's so severe that the horse has surgery for it. I personally have seen numerous DFC bred horses with clubby feet, and I feel it's an issue that keeps being perpetuated. I'm not insinuating that all DFC bred horses have club feet, obviously that is not the case; however, when you have a double bred DFC mare with a horrendously clubby foot and you breed her to a DFC/FDD/DTF stallion knowing he throws foals with club feet (even if he may not have one himself), I say that's a bad idea. But to each their own. 

I've done a lot of reading for the cows, but I don't see why they wouldn't cross over.

If as a breeder you wanted to test the waters of line breeding two specific lines, the safest ways is to go cousins first and come down closer but that takes years and years. Most say that if you breed two half sibs together, it gives you a 12.5% coefficient, and that'll typically give you an insight on any hiccups in that breeding without giving you something totally disfunctional.

Line breeding doesn't scare me anymore, as long as I know I get along with the lines (I'm a peppy person), and the farm has proof that they know what they're doing. Obviously look it over and treat it like another horse. You can't eat a horse like you can a cow if it goes wrong so there's more pressure to make sure it's right or the breeder is out whatever possible dollar they could make.

And genetic testing is wonderful, we don't have to breed sires to 100 daughters to figure out what they could have wrong in there LOL!

So say you have a half brother and half sister, they share the same Dam... would you breed those to a stallion that has no like breeding?  is that too close? 

For me, the breeding a mare to her father is to close.

oh.. yea.. when it comes to confirmation defects, I wouldn't breed to anything with a like defect... if I had a great great mare, that proved herself with something like this, I would pick a stallion that was correct there... and known to throw correct.