AVK is a measure of inbreeding. AVK stands for AhnenVerlust-Koeffizient, which roughly translates to “ancestor loss coefficient.” Retriever Results calculates AVK as another measure (in addition to COI) on dogs with pedigrees of at least 5 generations.
COI measures the OVERLAP or Common ancestors BETWEEN the sire and dam pedigrees. AVK measures the number of times an ancestor occurs in the dog’s five-generation pedigree.
COI increases as the dog becomes more inbred. For labs, the average COI is around 4.1%. AVK decreases as the dog becomes more inbred. For labs, the average AVK is around 91.2%
No. Both COI and AVK are indicators of possible "genetic risk." Breeders, owners and prospective puppy buyers may take these, and many other, factors into consideration before breeding or purchasing a dog. AVK and COI are just numbers; they are not absolute indicators of a good or bad potential breeding.
RR uses five generations in the dog's pedigree for the AVK calculation and up to 15 generations for COI.
If there is no inbreeding, AVK is 100. The lower the AVK value means the dog is more inbred.
AVK = 100 * (Unique dogs) / (Total Dogs in the pedigree)
Example 1: If the sire has been line bred and the dam has not. The AVK values will be lower and suggest the resultant breeding will have inbred genetics whereas the COI might be very low and suggest the resultant breeding might not be inbred.
With a complete pedigree, a five-generation pedigree has 62 dogs. Thus the Total Dogs = 62. If there is no overlap, then the number of UNIQUE dogs is 62. AVK is 100 * 62/62 or 100. If the Sire has one ancestor that appears twice, the Dam has one ancestor that appears twice, and there is one dog that appears in both the sire and dam's pedigree, the number of Uinque dogs is 62-3 = 59. The AVK is than 100 * 59 / 62 or 95.2%