Preserving Rare Livestock by Breeding Up

Breeding up is a strategy used for building numbers of rare breeds, it is often viewed as a temporary solution.

By Holly Stockley
Published on November 29, 2021
article image
by Flickr/zlithgow

Heritage livestock breeds are often a good choice for small farms and homesteads, due to their adaptability and hardiness. However, the fact that they have fallen out of favor means that their numbers are often small. In an effort to build up a breed, without too much in-breeding, some associations will allow a process called “breeding up.” Purebred males are bred to crossbred females to gradually create a population of new purebred off-spring over multiple generations.

So, how does it work? It starts with a population of foundation females. These are usually selected to be closely related to the target breed, or at least possessed of a characteristic that is important in the target breed. These females are bred to purebred males from the target breed.

The best of the daughters of these crosses are kept, and they are now 50% the target breed. The half-breed females are then bred back to purebred sires. And the new generation of daughters are 75% purebred. The next generation is 87% pure, the fourth generation is 94% pure, and the fifth is 97% purebred.

At this point, these F5 generation animals are usually allowed to be registered as purebred. Some registries will indicate an animal that was admitted via a breeding up program with an asterisk.

Improving Genetic Diversity

The Dutch Belted cattle breed, for example, is quite rare in the United States. Many of the cattle that are registered are scattered about in small herds. Breeding by artificial insemination allows owners of a small number of cows to be able to breed to a purebred bull, without having to locate a bull nearby. But the pool of available animals is still very small. So the breed association allows breeding up.

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