[horse_luvr83]

I have a queston, my friend has a stud colt and they think he got to his full sister,IF she is pregnant and carries to full term what are some of the dangers of brother to sister breeding??? if there are any. he is well aware that this baby may have problems, bu he got to he before they cut him.(he is now gelded,but the mare is getting huge!! and they know 100% sure there could be no other stallions. the mare is 6 and the colt is only 3. any more info would be appreciated so i can relay it to him.

[Chaz]

if she is pregs how far along is she?

[JBandRio]

That's inbreeding as opposed to linebreeding.

Any issues should be pretty apparent at birth. If the foal is healthy, chances are he won't have any issues later on from the close breeding.

[Kicks]

By cutting the gene pool in half you potentially have a higher chance of inheriting 'defects' that run in that line but you also have a higher chance of inheriting the good points. I know of an App stallion who did quite well in Dressage whose sire and dam are full brother/sister. He has produced quite a few foals, none with any problems. One of his colts did quite well with limited showing this past year in Dressage. The colt's dam's sire is the same stallion that is the sire's grandsire. These were not accidental breedings, they were bred by a now deceased breeder.

[horse_luvr83]

if she is preggers,she is 9-10 mths along. so pretty close,tht's why i asked. well, i hope for their sake this baby is fine,but he does know to expect the worst outcome b/c of the close breeding.

[horse_luvr83]

Originally Posted by Kicks

By cutting the gene pool in half you potentially have a higher chance of inheriting 'defects' that run in that line but you also have a higher chance of inheriting the good points. I know of an App stallion who did quite well in Dressage whose sire and dam are full brother/sister. He has produced quite a few foals, none with any problems. One of his colts did quite well with limited showing this past year in Dressage. The colt's dam's sire is the same stallion that is the sire's grandsire. These were not accidental breedings, they were bred by a now deceased breeder.

wow,that's interesting to know. well, like i said,i hope the best comes from it.

[Little Red Dun]

If you mean direct health problems, then the chances are pretty low. It's a bit of myth that brother-sister mating will create "deformed" babies. I'm not advocating it, just saying, people seem to think the resulting foals will come out as horrible mutations or something. Unless the horses in questions have a history of some genetic disease, then I doubt the foal will have something like that wrong with them.

Conformation-wise, that depends on the mare, stallion, and grand-parents in question. You might get some bad flaws from a generation or two back because the recessive genes could have doubled-up. Or you could get something better than either, or about the same. Even this close in genetics, there is chance.

Historically, brother-sister matings are pretty common in some breeds, such as Arabians. Some extremely beautiful Arabians have been created by close line-breeding and/or inbreeding. Here is an Arabian farm that still practices some very close breeding, and their horses are just beautiful and in pretty high demand as I understand it: Phara Farm - The Ultimate in Classic Crabbett

So chances are the baby will be healthy and have no problems, but the conformation could be a toss-up.