Too close for comfort?

[Mood Swings]

I was reading a mares catalogue page for an upcoming mixed sale and couldn't help but notice that she had been bred and was in foal to her dam's half brother
Does anyone have any statistics on the success or lack of on such close inbreeding?
I've personally never heard of any success stories, so why do people do it? Just curious.

[clh]

YUCK! Just seems pretty wrong to me - but then I tend to personalize everything and think of horses in "human" terms. Am not thinking I would want to be doing my mom's brother

[summerhorse]

Horses don't mind a bit!

But that's a little too much of a good (??? is it) thing there I think.

[Nancy T]

Why are TB folk so against inbreeding and line breeding? its very prevalent in other breeds such as AQHA and probably most present in Arabians.

[Sam]

Why are TB folk so against inbreeding and line breeding? its very prevalent in other breeds such as AQHA and probably most present in Arabians.

Because in performance based breeds like TBs and some branches of QH, it's almost useless. That and it rarely ever works in producing an effective RACEhorse. It does occasionally produce a nice breeder, though.

Inbreeding like that is done to set a PHYSICAL characteristic -- like extremely dished faces in Arabs. NOTHING a racehorse is bred for is a physical characteristic; it's all intangibles. Things like "Heart" and "Speed" and "Soundness." You can breed for some physical characteristics that may lend themselves to some of those intangibles, but the fact is and always will be that you can breed two sound horses with perfect conformation and great speed and still get a broke down plodder who's good for nothing but dog food.

[petersd]

Then again, every Arabian horse I've ever met has been nuts.

[freshman]

Imbreeding or linebreeding, whatever you want to call it, is most often seen in QH bred for halter and with some frequency in reining and cutting bred horses.

But I'd argue that they are hardly the models that TB breeders should look to for soundness or performance--these same breeding practices have bred HYPP, navicular, and other diseases into the breed. Not a problem that TBs want to get into, surely.

The other problem with the cutting, reining, and other performance QHs is that a great number of them do not make it in these sports and are discarded along the way. TB's already have that problem.

I'm not very knowledgeable about QH racing, but I assume that similar breeding patterns have been attempted with these horses. From what I can tell, QH are regularly outcrossed to TB blood to produce successful runners. Hopefully someone more familiar with QH racing can provide more info...

[Barbaro06]

Don't get me started on the inbreeding of Arabians. I know they inbred them in the desert to keep them "pure," but enough is enough. Bred the brains out of them...

[freshman]

Don't get me started on Arabians.

There are great Arabs out there, and my first 'significant' horse was an Arabian gelding, for better or worse... I will say that when I showed up recently in a professional capacity and learned that I had to deal with Arabs, inlcuding taking blood and urine samples from them, I despaired and, watching these horses fly around the ring, snorting and bucking, cried out, "why me! I'd rather gouge my eyes out..."

I ended up getting kicked by only one horse, a hackney/arab cross that kicked like a camel and caught me, unexpectently, on the thigh after ALL owners had cautioned me about their horses to the point that I was pretty bold when entering the stall. Not bad at all...

The Arabian that I grew attached to was a polish gelding bred for endurance and trail, and he was more like a welsh pony than a A-RAB in temperment and appearance. He was smarty and savy, very cute and educational. Too bad these fine horses were bred to the point of their current reputation.

[Prairie]

Why are TB folk so against inbreeding and line breeding? its very prevalent in other breeds such as AQHA and probably most present in Arabians.

You answered your own question!

Arabian temperaments are often the result of inbreeding and Quarter Horses have HYPP and HERDA to thank for their inbreeding efforts!!

[llbean]

These articles have some very good information on the subject:

http://www.pedigree.me.uk/Articles/closeup.htm

http://www.pedigree.me.uk/Articles/closeup2.htm

Also, its not just nonracing highly inbred QHs that have had success, after all, did the great QH Stallion Leo (2x2 to Joe Reed) not contribute greatly to QH Racing?

And what about Dan Tucker and Barney Owens?

Or what of King (something like 3x3x4 to Traveler) or Yellow Jacket (2x2 to Lock's Rondo and a noted match-racer)?

-llbean

[Sam]

These articles have some very good information on the subject:

Stat spewing is not "very good information." Whoever that is didn't offer anything but "Hey guys, this is the number of Group 1 winners inbred 3x3 to this sire."

Not sure who that is but he's already working on flawed methodology since he's only focusing on the successful inbreds and not bothering to see how many unsuccessful ones there are. There are a HELL of a lot of horses inbred to Northern Dancer (820 stakes winners alone and that was as of 2001) in the first 4 gens... God knows how many are NOT stakes winners.

I'd like to see something a little more indepth than just a bunch of stats. There wasn't even much of an opinion presented in that blurb.

[llbean]

More than just SWs were looked at in the article; that is why numbers (valid or not) could be produced in said article on the % of SWs...

Also, the small numbers of inbreds are largely the result of the article being based on a sample of horses born from 1995 to 2002 and the fact that Adrian Parry only looked at the very small % of horses inbred 3x3 or closer.

The article was not about inbreeding in general but I thought it relevant to this thread given its subject ("Too Close For Comfort?").

-llbean

[Tucumcari]

Then again, every Arabian horse I've ever met has been nuts.

Small heads.... does that mean small brain?
I suppose with the amount of inbreeding they are just lucky that they don't have two heads.... would that make them twice as smart, or dumb to the second power?

[Lei Owen]

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/as+rebel Top Deck Thoroughbred

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/mucho+mucho+bars Three Bars, another thoroughbred.

Remember, you all said only the dam count's.

HYPP and HERDA are gene mutation's that have been continued through breeding stud and mare that carry this gene. There is a test for HYPP. To date, there is no test to determine if the horse carries the HERDA gene. HERDA has also been found in other breed's including thoroughbred's! These gene mutation's are NOT FROM IN BREEDING NOR LINE BREEDING.