Hi everyone,
Just a quick question.
I've had a Wheaten Terrier for 4 years now and have recently been enquiring about her pedigree. I've found her inbreeding percentage, and i am just wondering what is considered to be bad/accaptable/good/excellent in terms of inbreeding. Her father is a Ch and she has a good pedigree, if this makes any difference.
Thanks

Really need to know how closely inbred the dog is.  In some circumstances it's good but only from a breeder who knows the lines etc.

Thanks, well she is 6.2% inbred and i've no idea if that is good or not. Champions on her fathers side go back over 5 generations, and similar on her mothers side but not so much.

I would think that the Wheatens don't have too large a gene pool, so the 6.2% is actually quite good. One of mine is about 11% (different breed, but a small gene pool) Quite often breeders will do grandfather/granddaughter matings which is fine, so long as you know what you are doing. Other close matings, even half siblings can be done, so long as you are aware of the problems that may occur. I wouldn't be worried about this %age.

Edited to add: I would think that this is more line breeding than in-breeding, but without seeing the pedigree it would be difficult to say.

I would agree this is line breeding not in-breeding. 

Oh ok, well what's the difference? Is this better? Although i suppose it doesn't really matter so long as she is healthy any happy anyway.

I personally think 12.5% >    ( And less)

Is it usually 4 or 5 generations these persentages are calculated on?

I always thought line breeding is when the litter is lined to common ancestor(s) on the fathers and mothers side but they are not close relatives themselves...
Inbreeding I thought was when close relatives are used eg father and daughter, step sisters etc...

The pedgree program I use takes 10 generations into the calculation.

It is not that simple to look at the first 2 generations 

For example. One of my girls was mated to a total out cross not only an out cross to her but a dog with a very low co-efficient % resulting in a very low co-efficent daughter.   Now technically because her % is so low I could mate her to a half sibling through the father and still have relatively quite a low co-efficent % which although half brother certainly in % terms would look very low.  Now if I mated her to a half sibling from the mothers side that would be a totally different ball game as the mother herself is line bred with a line bred %. Mating a a half sibling from that side would be far too close.

I wouldn't personally do a half sibling mating either way but wanted to try and show how different the outcome could be.

I understand it is not as simple as looking at first two generations. But when it comes to terms what is the "scale of" the two terms?

But for a numptie like me putting half siblings together, even if they have very outcrossed backgrounds, the term would still be inbreeding?
With "tight" line breeding you obviously also end up with less variance in the genes too but would this not still in theory be called line breeding?
With both you would be narrowing the genes in the puppies and possibly increasing the risk of recessive illness popping up?

My breeds breed-club in my country of origin as a general rule will not recommend litters over 6.25% breeding in 5 generations or 10% in 9 generations (breed of less than 300 registrations a year)....

Obviously the risk, if there were a risk, would depend on what the dogs in the pedigree possibly recessively carry... This is where the knowledge comes in!

I find it all a bit confusing but very interesting and am trying to learn and take in as much as I can :)

To be honest the difference between linebreeding and inbreeding is only degree. 

some people consider inbreeding to be the closest relatives, siblings, parent and offspring and grandparent to grandchild.

Others would consider half siblings to be inbreeding others linebreeding.  Less closely related individuals like cousins half uncle etc as linebreeding.

Others consider linebreeding as that of animals with common distant ancestors but no obvious closer relationship.

I agree with Barbara BUT I think the differences with people thoughts  is because of lack of true understanding. 

A lot of people cant get their heads around how half siblings can be mated but one be inbred and the other not based on a +12.5% thinking.

You also have to remember that recessive genes are not the biggest problem in dogs Polygenetic faults I believe are the highest and these cannot be work out easily or by finding carriers.

I think it depends of peoples experience what way they tend to move forward.  IE  Someone has started with a line that only produced the odd little thing , they do their first out cross mating and get X & Y in the first litter. They dont do it again.

Someone else may have had X & Y in their first line and by out crossed didn't produce it again or add to it so they then believe outcrossing is the way BUT outcrossing can also produce carriers of both recessive and polygentic gene carriers without you knowing..

All very complex indeed :-)

does anyone have a percentage in mind? i have done matings that showed 0%  and 20% and variants in between but no one seems to really be able to say whats about right, obvously all depending on the breed and its genetic diversity, which in our case is small

Hi Sam,

I personally believe in type breeding whether out crossing or now. If you stick to good quality of that particular type you seem to get the type you want.  As a rule of thumb ( not that I follow it)  it seems 7.5 -12.5% is preferable.

Just for an idea of what that means roughly what would a half sibling mating be?  First cousins?

No, I think it would be closer than that. Half-siblings share a parent, whereas first cousins share grandparents.

In humans half-siblings aren't allowed to marry, whereas first cousins are.

Half siblings share a parent (and two granparents), but cousins share two grandparents as one of their parents is a full sibling of a parent of the other, so technically have the same proportion of common ancestors, but yes I think with the co-efficients they score higher, I just wanted to know what the inbreeding co-efficients are for some combinations, not saying those tow were the same. :D

I ecpect I'm wrong but that still seems incorrect to me. Half-siblings have a mutual ancestor (a parent - and therefore two grandparents in the generation previous to that) in the first generation back - first cousins don't have a mutual ancestor (the two grandparents) till the second generation back.

And that's assuming that the hal-siblings other parents were totally unrelated to each other.

Yep but the proportion of the same breeding is the same as they have a parent each that is a full sibling to the other.

Both breedings have the same proportion of grandparents, same amount of linebreeding to the grandparents, but in the first through a common parent and in the second through two siblings.

Hit it on the head there Barbara. ( Sorry I have been absent I am so busy with work and dogs not had much spare time to even log in)

I guess some people can look at pedigrees and guess the %  and knowing the dogs in the pedigree I run the program which uses 10 generations. It is incredible when run properly just how much it changes the % ..

I think looking at pedigrees can really give us a good indicator of the risk or benefit factor but you can obviously huge differences in type by mating to a half sibling from outcross parents even though on paper it looks quite close.  This is where I think type has to play a part in it also.  I think also from my converstions with others that people have such tight type in their bitch lines that they can afford to do out crosses.

I can think if two stud dogs in my own breed both have out cross pedigrees with low % of co-efficents, one seems to produce a high % of similar type to himself, the other just doesn't but both seem to be popular dogs.     The first dog is typing to his ancestors , I don't think the 2nd dog is.