• Ancestors

  
  There are many ways to portray ancestory. The standard pedigree is the most usual. However, family trees and lineages are also very useful as the can show many associations not previously noticed in a standard pedigree.
  

  • Pedigrees
  • Lineages
  • Family trees

• Breeding Plans

  
  Many types of breeding programs are used in producing animals, such as inbreeding- its variations such as closebreeding and linebreeding- outcrossing, crossbreeding and hybridization. Today we must also include cloning as well.

  • Inbreeding
  • Closebreeding
  • Linebreeding
  • Crossbreeding
  • Outcrossing
  • Hybrid
  • Clone
  

CROSSBREEDING is the mating of animals from different breeds.

Because animals from separate breeds usually carry different genotypes crossbreeding can produce an increase in vigor and fertility caused by a sudden increase in diversity. The possibility of each parent contributing identical alleles to their offspring is remote.

New breeds are sometimes established by crossing members of two or more breeds and carefully inbreeding the original crossbred offspring. Crossbreeding initiates the desired change, while inbreeding increases the ability of each generation to breed "true to type". The variations of the Siamese cat colors which have been made in the recent years were the result of outcrossing. The lynx point, flame point, lilac point and chocolate point came from careful breeding and selection for the traits required.