A question on 3x3

[Lauren Haggerty]

Okay, I am very confused about the whole 3x3 or 4x3, ect. What does that mean and how do you figure out what it is?

[Ara Davies]

It describes pedigrees of inbred horses. The numbers refer to how far back in the pedigree the horse in question is.

A horse inbred 2x2 to Storm Cat has Storm Cat two generations back on the sire's side (so Storm Cat is the sire's sire) and two generations back on the dam's side (Storm Cat is the damsire). The first number refers to the sire's side, the second to the dam's side, although people aren't always strict about that.

2x3 means the horse appears on the sire's side in the second generation and on the dam's side in the third generation. An example of 2x3:

----------------Contest
----------Canoe
----------------Rain Dancer
Jet-Ski
----------------Sports Jersey
----------Kayak
------------------------Priceless Forever
----------------Cascade
------------------------Rain Dancer

As you can see, Rain Dancer appears two generations back on the sire's side and three generations back on the dam's side.

2x3 (or 3x2) is VERY close in real life, but is not as unusual in the SIM although even here it isn't advisable unless both sire and dam are pretty sound and you know what you're doing. I'm a big fan of 2x3 but I think Eric's backing off on it until we see how close inbreeding works in the new SIM.

[Eric Nalbone]

3x3, 4x3, or any notations resembling that (4x5x3, whatever it is you want to come up with) refer to inbreeding notations. It's often difficult to find pedigree crosses that are complete outcrosses, and it turns out that in pedigrees, a certain amount of inbreeding is often useful and beneficial, if you're careful with it. The numbers refer to the generations of a pedigree in which a horse appears. To figure out what these would be, its often most beneficial to bring up the hypothetical mating tool, since it'll lay the pedigrees out for you to see by generation, so when the SIM is back up after results are done, put the following mating into the tool so you can follow along with what I'll describe:

Impressive x Loki Paradise

The inbreeding that I'm going to trace here is to the stallion Event Of The Year. Impressive (in the 1st generation of the hypothetical foal's pedigree) is sired by Tremendous (this is Generation 2), who in turn is sired by Event Of the Year (Gen 3). Loki Paradise (Gen 1 on the female side) is sired by Priceless Forever (Gen 2) who in turn is sired by Event Of the Year (Gen 3). Since Event Of The Year appears in the 3rd generation on the sire's side, an in the 3rd generation on the dam's side, the horse would be inbred 3x3 to Event Of The Year.

Hope that made sense.

[Eric Nalbone]

Heh, Ara beat me to the punch!

[Lauren Haggerty]

Yeah, it does. Thanks