Skip to main content

Lines & Coefficient of Inbreeding

Two things sit on this dashboard. A ranking of your lines on the numbers that matter — growth, dress-out, litter size, show legs — and a distribution of inbreeding across the whole herd, so line breeding stays a decision you are making rather than a drift you notice years later.

Neither says anything until you have assigned rabbits to lines.

Comparing lines

Each line gets a row:

ColumnWhat it means
RabbitsHow many are in the line
Avg ADGAverage daily gain, in ounces per day
Avg dress-out %Across processed animals from that line
Avg litter sizeAcross the line's litters
Show legsLegs won by rabbits in the line

That combination is deliberately awkward to argue with: a line that grows fast but dresses out badly, or wins on the table but throws small litters, has nowhere to hide across four columns.

The caveats are the usual ones, and the dashboard flags them rather than hiding them. A line needs animals in it before its averages mean anything, and it needs the underlying records — weights for ADG, processing records for dress-out, litters for litter size — before those columns fill in at all.

Reading COI

The coefficient of inbreeding is the probability that two copies of a gene in an animal are identical because they came from a shared ancestor. This dashboard reports it across the herd rather than for one pairing:

  • How many rabbits have a measured COI at all, against how many rabbits are in scope.
  • The minimum, 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile, maximum, and average.
  • A distribution in buckets, so you can see the shape rather than one summary number.

The median is usually the number to watch over time. A rising median across seasons is the signal that a closed herd is closing further.

COI is only as deep as your recorded pedigree

A rabbit whose ancestry stops at its parents has few paths for a shared ancestor to appear on, so its COI comes out low — not because it is unrelated, but because OmniBurrow cannot see far enough back. The measured count against the herd count is the honesty check: if only a handful of rabbits have a COI, the percentiles describe those few.

Confidence is high at twenty or more measured rabbits, medium at five, low below.

Values are calculated by Wright's path method with the standard correction for inbred common ancestors. The canonical relationships come out where you would expect — full siblings 25%, half siblings 12.5%, first cousins 6.25%. The full method, and how it is used at pairing time, is in Genetics Engine and Predict Offspring.

What you must record

  • Assign rabbits to lines. Nothing on the left-hand side of this dashboard exists otherwise.
  • Record pedigrees deeply. Every extra generation makes COI more truthful, not just larger.
  • Weigh, process, and record litters, since those are the columns being compared.