HGG Community Forums

I use the alphabet. I pick a letter to represent a gene and then add it as a suffix to their name. Capitals represent homozygous genes and lower case letters represent heterozygous genes.

Some examples of my codes:
K=KP
G=GP
T=satin
U=mushroom
A=shatterglass
L=chinchilla

So a horse with KP, GP and chinchilla would be " (name) KGL"

I don't label everything, because my lines are mostly all mixed together anyway. But I might label chinchilla and mushroom separate, just with a ch or mu. Many things like satin and shatterglass genes can go in any line so I don't label them

I also use S for superior colts like S 3G Zuko and BIP for Best Of Pasture so like S 3G Zuko BIP

I don't worry too much about all the genes - unless it's something I would cull on, I don't see a need to get specific. My bootstraps are all marked with B and nothing else because it's just a free-for-all, and then past that I only mark them as part of the line they're in. My snowflake/kp line is marked SK with gen number, so 2SK, 3SK, etc, and if they're missing the hom for either gene I'll drop it to 2K, 3S, etc (but most of those get culled anyways, and only stick around if there's something else I like.

My Ch/sa/prl line I've given the nickname "shine line" so they're just marked with SL at the beginning of their names. mushrooms (though I got rid of that line a while ago) were 2H/3H/4H etc.

I think the first thing you need to ask is why do you need to keep track of what they have - is it to pair straws and eggs easier? to cull? to organize? Answering that will help you decide which ones you really need to mark. For myself, I cull visually so I need to have their pictures up in search anyways (so their genes are right there) and I organize by line and generation alone, with each line in its own barn, so the only reason I really need any sort of code is just to keep lines distinguished when I'm in the advanced breeding lab and to make it faster to pair straws with eggs/mares. Because of that, my code can stay super simple. The more strict your lines are, the more likely you might need to get specific with your code.

Gen 2 and Gen 3 I code with a Sire abbrev, and the Generation. I screen out horses without the gene combos I want here so I know who's carrying what because of what their sires carried.

Ex SSRG2E is Second Star To The Right

SSRGoCP is a colt with Second Star and Ghost of Christmas Past for sires

Gen 4 and up, the horses are tracked into major lines Mushroom, Chinchilla, Ice, Snowflake, and Hatter (Tobiano Appie). Some of the horses have double designators if they represent two major lines well, ex SNFHatterG6E is a Gen 6 horse that carries Hom Snowflake and Lp/PATN1 +Tobiano

BtSt is a high PT showline designator.