Previewing a Mating

The Preview a mating tool on the Pedigree tab estimates the coefficient of inbreeding for a hypothetical calf between the animal you’re viewing and a mate you choose from your herd. It lets you check a pairing for shared ancestry before you breed.

How to Preview a Mating

1. Open the Pedigree tab for one of the two animals you’re considering pairing.
2. Scroll to the Preview a mating section.
3. From the drop-down, pick a mate. If you’re viewing a female, the list offers sires; if you’re viewing a male, it offers dams from your herd.
4. Cattle360 immediately calculates and displays the projected result.

Reading the Result

The result card shows:

• Projected coefficient of inbreeding for the offspring, as a percentage, with a risk badge (None detected, Low, Moderate, or High) using the same thresholds as the inbreeding card — below 6.25% is Low, 6.25% to below 12.5% is Moderate, and 12.5% or higher is High.
• Shared ancestors — each ancestor found on both the subject’s and the mate’s side, showing how many generations back it sits on each side (“this +N / mate +N”) and how much it contributes.

If the two animals share no ancestors in their available pedigrees, the card notes that no shared ancestors were found and shows no detected inbreeding for the pairing.

How It’s Calculated

Cattle360 treats each candidate parent as the head of its own line, walks up both ancestor trees, and applies Wright’s coefficient over every ancestor the two lines have in common. In effect it’s asking: if these two animals had a calf, how inbred would that calf be, based on the ancestry we can see? Like the inbreeding card, it’s a lower-bound estimate limited to the recorded pedigree.

Requirements and Limits

• Both animals need recorded ancestry for a meaningful result. If either side has no ancestors, the projection can only show what it can see.
• Mate options come from your herd. The candidate list is drawn from your recorded sires or dams, so add outside genetics as Reference animals to include them.
• It’s a planning estimate. The preview doesn’t create a breeding record or change any data — it’s purely a what-if.

Tips

• Screen several mates quickly. Change the drop-down selection to compare projected inbreeding across candidate sires or dams before committing.
• Watch the shared-ancestor list. If one ancestor is driving most of the projected inbreeding, choosing a mate from a different line usually brings the number down.
• Pair it with the breeding workflow. Once you’ve chosen a low-inbreeding pairing, record it on the Breeding page to start the reproductive cycle.