[Analysis of the current population of the Hanoveranian Scenthound bred in the kennel club Hirschmann e. V].

The Hanoveranian Scenthound is a purebred hound with a long breeding history and an exceptional high hunting performance. The kennel club Hirschmann e. V. has the goal to conserve the very high level of performance in the small population of the Hanoveranian Scenthound. Therefore, the structure of the current population was analyzed by estimating the gene contributions of the founder breeds of other European kennel clubs, coefficients of relationships, rates of inbreeding and coefficients of inbreeding. All current dogs (n = 334) were included in this study. The pedigrees had a degree completeness of 73.3% for 10 generations. The large influence of the Hanoveranian Scenthound bred in the Austrian kennel club was obvious. The gene contribution of these dog population was with 46.5% much more higher than the gene contribution from the German population with 29.8%. The gene contribution of Czech, Swiss and Hungarian dogs was between 4.3% and 7.6%. The mean coefficient of inbreeding of the current German population was 9.2% with the maximum at 15.6%. For the last 10 generations the increase of the coefficient of inbreeding per generation was 0.71%, regarding the degree of completeness of the pedigrees the coefficient of inbreeding per generation increased by 0.96%. For the last generation the rate of inbreeding amounted to 0.09%. The rate of inbreeding expected for the next generation is 0.02%. Also the effective population size (N(e)) in the current population of the Hanoveranian Scenthound being 70.9 exceeds the critical value of N(e) = 50. The mean coefficient of relationship in the current population was 11.2% with the maximum at 73.6%. The present incrossing of Hanoveranian Scenthounds from other European countries reduced the coefficient of inbreeding.