What does COI mean?

[Chloeholmes373]

Hey!

What does a horse's COI mean?

Thanks

[BlackOak2]

Hey!

What does a horse's COI mean?

Thanks

You may want to swing by our help section. There are many topics that cover a lot of the basic questions. Also running a brief search in the help section may find your answer immediately and in depth.

To answer you question directly:
COI stands for the Coefficient of Inbreeding. This is a direct estimated percentage of how many identical genes there may be from repeating horses in the past seven generations.

[Chloeholmes373]

Brilliant, thank you! So the higher the percentage, the better the foals or the worse?

[BlackOak2]

Brilliant, thank you! So the higher the percentage, the better the foals or the worse?

Neither. It comes down to what you're looking for. If you don't care about COI, then breeding for a higher COI may be what's right for your project. What I mean by this is that it may get you to what you're aiming for at a quicker pace, less generations pass.

If you do care about it, or consider that you might want to keep it lower, then injecting unrelated blood every few generations will help to keep it lower. At the same time, this does not mean necessarily that your project will take longer to complete.

In the future at some point, random negative (or possibly also positive) mutations from inbreeding is what's planned, but for now, it's only a number determining how inbred the horse is.

So what does it come down to? It comes down to your project and what you're aiming for. If your project may benefit from inbreeding (such as breeding longer and longer ears), then it might be to your advantage to inbreed a lot. On the other hand, if your project is for a certain visual conformation (what a horse looks like), adding a lot of new blood and avoiding inbreeding may be the better way to go, not only to add in the genes from a horse you want, but to prevent a gene type you don't want from getting too imbedded.

Or... you could just entirely ignore COI. Until you're looking to sell your stock, COI may be entirely meaningless and even then there is a wide market and each player has their own qualifications for what they want in a horse. Some players are looking for high COI, some for low or no COI and yet others don't care what the COI is. It's more about finding your niche and playing the game the way you choose.