Building Accurate Pedigree Data

Every part of the Pedigree tab — the ancestor and descendant trees, siblings, inbreeding coefficient, breed composition, progeny performance, and the pedigree PDF — is calculated from the Sire and Dam links recorded on your animals. This article explains how to build lineage data that makes the pedigree complete and trustworthy.

The Foundation: Sire and Dam Links

Pedigree isn’t entered on the Pedigree tab itself — it’s assembled from the parent links on individual animal records. To assign them, see Assigning Sire and Dam in the Animals knowledge base. In short, you can set a sire and dam:

• Quickly from the animal’s summary, by clicking the Sire or Dam field.
• From the full edit form, in the Calfhood section.
• Automatically, when you create offspring from the calving screen — the dam and sire are prefilled from the breeding record.

Use Reference Animals for Outside Genetics

A sire or dam must exist as an animal record before it can be linked. For genetics that never physically joined your herd — AI sires, leased or borrowed bulls, purchased females’ parents — create them as Reference animals. Reference animals then appear in ancestor trees, feed the inbreeding calculation, and contribute their recorded breed to composition.

Record Breed on Ancestors

Breed composition is only as good as the breeds on your ancestor records. Set the breed on foundation cows, herd bulls, and any Reference animals so their descendants’ composition reflects real genetics instead of falling into the Unknown slice.

Record Weights and Sex on Offspring

Progeny performance draws on offspring records:

• Birth and weaning weights feed the average-weight stats and their sample sizes.
• Sex feeds the male/female split.

The more offspring that carry these fields, the more reliable a sire’s or dam’s progeny summary.

Go Deep for Better Insights

The pedigree looks back and forward up to three generations, and the inbreeding coefficient is a lower bound limited to the ancestry it can see. Linking grandparents and great-grandparents — by recording sire and dam on the parent records too — lets Cattle360 detect shared ancestry and produce sharper estimates.

Common Data Gaps and Fixes

Tips

• Assign lineage at birth. Recording sire and dam as calves are added keeps the whole pedigree deepening automatically over time.
• Keep one record per animal. Duplicate records for the same cow or bull split siblings and ancestry across two nodes — merge or avoid duplicates so links resolve to a single animal.
• Reopen the tab after edits. The pedigree recalculates each time it loads, so changes show up as soon as you revisit it.