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Berger Picard — BetterBred Breed Page – BetterBred.com
BetterBred Breed Profile

Berger Picard

Temperament: A true working shepherd's dog, the Berger Picard is lively, alert, and confident, yet aloof with strangers. They are energetic and need real daily work - intelligent, biddable with their people, and wary enough to make natural watchdogs. Early socialization and consistent training are important.
Height: Males: 23.5-25.5 inches (60-65 cm), Females: 21.5-23.5 inches (55-60 cm)
Weight: 50-70 pounds (23-32 kg)
Life Span: 12-15 years
Outlier Index ?
0.38
Born before 2016: 0.41 Born after 2024: 0.42
Avg Genetic Rel. ?
0.00
Born before 2016: -0.01 Born after 2024: -0.02
Internal Relatedness ?
0.08
Born before 2016: 0.01 Born after 2024: 0.05
Berger Picard
#NameGender OIAGRIR
1 Flywire Sin-Tillating Sapphire at Sylyn F 0.43 -0.10 0.08
2 Idee Fixe Visa's Maxed Out F 0.42 -0.02 0.05
3 Eclipse Lust for Life F 0.37 -0.07 0.19
4 Sportingfields Eclipse Legally Blonde F 0.29 0.04 0.21
5 IOM Green Girl F 0.32 0.05 0.12
6 IOM Pink Girl F 0.47 -0.09 0.07
7 IOM Red Boy M 0.38 0.08 -0.13
8 IOM Blue Boy M 0.44 0.00 -0.04
9 Sportingfields Eclipse I Am Groot M 0.30 0.06 0.19
10 Idée Fixe That's A Keepah! M 0.42 0.02 -0.02
The Berger Picard is the indigenous sheepdog of the French agricultural region of Picardy, in northern France. Thought by some to be the oldest of the French pasture breeds, it is closely related to the Briard and Beauceron. The breed was devastated by both World Wars, which swept through the breed's home region, and was nearly extinct after 1945. Dedicated French breeders have rebuilt the population from a very small post-war base, and the breed remains rare worldwide. The AKC recognized the Berger Picard in 2015.
View Official Breed Standard →
Hip dysplasia and progressive retinal atrophy occur in the breed. Autoimmune diseases and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have been flagged as rising concerns by the breed community. As a small-population breed, breeders should stay attentive to any patterns that emerge.
VGL has reported Berger Picards carrying an average of around 4.16 alleles across the 33 STR loci, with an effective allele count near 2.02. Those are among the lowest numbers recorded for any tested breed - a direct reflection of the severe post-war bottleneck. In VGL testing, several STR loci were effectively homozygous across the tested population. Every rare allele is especially valuable in this breed. VGL testing has found Berger Picards with observed heterozygosity essentially equal to expected, giving an inbreeding coefficient near zero. That is a reasonably good breed-wide signal given the severity of the breed's 20th-century bottleneck, but the underlying diversity pool is very narrow.

Average metrics by birth year for dogs with recorded birthdates in the BetterBred database.

A 3D genetic map of enrolled Berger Picard dogs in the BetterBred database, based on allele-sharing distance across 33 STR loci. This is not a complete picture of the breed — it reflects only dogs whose owners have enrolled them. Drag to rotate · scroll to zoom · hover for dog names (public profiles only).

Historical founders — oldest 25% of enrolled dogs     Current gene pool — most recent 50% of enrolled dogs
Building plot… this may take a minute for larger breeds.

The Dog Leukocyte Antigen (DLA) region controls immune function and is the most polymorphic portion of the canine genome. Every dog carries two sets of DLA haplotypes — one from each parent — which almost never recombine across generations. Frequency percentages reflect how often each haplotype appears across all allele copies in the breed, not the percentage of dogs carrying it.

Class I Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
1227
89.5%
1052
10.5%

Class II Haplotypes

HaplotypeFrequency
2067
89.5%
2017
10.5%

Class I & II Combinations

Class IClass IIFrequency
1227 2067
89.5%
1052 2017
10.5%

The Canine Diversity Test from UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory is the foundation of BetterBred’s breed management tools. Testing your dog adds to the breed database and gives you access to the full suite of breeding analysis tools.

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Eclipse Kennels
Minnesota, United States
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OI
Outlier Index

The Outlier Index (OI) measures how unusual a dog’s allele combination is relative to the tested population of its breed. A higher OI means the dog carries alleles at lower frequencies across the breed — genetic variants that are underrepresented in the population as a whole.

Dogs with high OI are genetically valuable because they carry diversity that most other tested dogs don’t share. Breeding them thoughtfully into the broader population helps redistribute lower-frequency alleles rather than allowing them to become even rarer over generations.

The breed average shown here reflects all dogs tested in the BetterBred database. The senior and youngster comparisons show whether diversity is trending up or down in recent generations.
AGR
Average Genetic Relatedness

Average Genetic Relatedness (AGR) measures how similar a dog’s DNA is, on average, to every other tested dog in the breed. It reflects the dog’s mean kinship — how closely related it is to the population as a whole.

A lower AGR means the dog is more genetically distinct from the majority of the breed. Dogs with low AGR carry alleles at lower frequencies across the tested population, making them higher-priority candidates for inclusion in a well-managed breeding program.

AGR is conceptually related to mean kinship used in conservation genetics for managed species populations. A declining AGR average in younger dogs suggests the breed is successfully redistributing genetic diversity across generations.
IR
Internal Relatedness

Internal Relatedness (IR) measures how much identical genetic material an individual dog inherited from both parents. IR is a useful indicator of inbreeding: lower IR generally reflects lower inbreeding, and it is widely used and reported in the scientific literature.

A high IR is not the cause for alarm it might appear. Elevated IR can often be resolved in a single generation by pairing with a dog whose ancestry is less represented in the breed. It is a signpost, not a sentence.

BetterBred reports IR for reference, but it is not our primary breeding guidance tool. OI and AGR together give a more complete and actionable picture of a dog’s genetic value to the population.

AGR tells you which dogs are genetically unusual relative to the population. OI tells you which dogs are most valuable to preserve. OI specifically weights mid-frequency alleles, identifying dogs whose ancestry is underrepresented in a way most likely to benefit the breed.