Part breeds breding

[Bitapetrone]

I'm still confused by the 7 gen COI thing. lol and then near it there's percentage numbers...Eg: 7 gen COI 6.80%
How do you use them numbers to get a good foal that will excel in something rather than suck in everything? lol

I think I understand what you're asking. There is no magical COI (Coefficient Of Inbreeding) that makes a foal good or bad; it's simply a percentage showing how much/little inbreeding has taken place in the horse's pedigree (This is in layman's terms as I am by no means a genetic expert).

Now, the percentage itself doesn't mean much as far as creating a 'good' horse is concerned, BUT, inbreeding or line-breeding can help you to achieve certain goals with your herd. Personally I am breeding for a particular build and an aptitude for Working Ranch. With this in mind, I first started by working towards a build I wanted and finding horses who had a knack for Working Ranch (really the only way to figure out if your horse will be good at a certain event is to compete in that event and see how they do). Once I got a few horses I liked I bred them to together multiple times and eventually got a second generation of foals who were a little better than their parents. This is where line-breeding came in for me. I wanted to perpetuate and enhance the traits of the horses I had, so I bred relatives within 1-6 gens of each other together over the course of many generations while occasionally adding in new blood from the adoption center or outside stallions. If I got traits I didn't like in certain offspring I culled those horses from my program and only continued to breed the ones with the traits I liked (COI can work against you and you can inadvertently perpetuate traits that you do not want). Eventually I ended up with a herd of horses of very similar type and VERY prominent genes--which enables them to pass on their traits quite consistently and I have been able to watch my Working Ranch scores steadily grow over an extended period of time.

If you look back in Coin's pedigree you'll see a very consistent type and quite a bit of line-breeding: http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/28266

[Ms. Trouble Maker]

ok ok I think I get it. So if one of my mares has a good gene and I breed it with a brother that has a bad gene then it probably wont turn out as good...whereas if I breed it with its parent that has a good gene then the new foal would turn out better??

[Nate]

COI is a theoretical number. To my knowledge, it represents the % of genes that are likely to be homozygous based purely upon inbreeding. A horse with a really high COI could be more consistent in its foal quality than a horse with a low COI. Of course, COI is only tracked 7 generations back, so if you have a horse herd that had all of its typesetting done more than 7 generations ago, those horses would be consistent producers with low COI. It can be useful, but it isn't a guarantee either way, especially since it isn't an actual measurement of homozygous genes in a horse.

[Bitapetrone]

Well I'd recommend looking at the whole picture and not focusing on one thing explicitly, but if the particular trait you're looking for is bad in horse A and good in horse B, then it would probably be best to go with horse B. But again, make sure you don't miss out on the whole picture; a horse can be crap in one area in great in others.

[Ms. Trouble Maker]

ya that's true...Guess I got some experimenting. lol I'm mainly working towards Friesians X Forest horse mix or just plain Friesians