If you subscribe to email digests you will often see pedigrees presented in a tail-female format. For example:

ln this case, the tail-female pedigree indicates that Le Sancy was a grey colt foaled in 1884 and sired by Atlantic. His dam Gem of Gems was foaled in 1873 and sired by Strathconan. His second dam, or his dam's dam was Poinsettia who was foaled in 1866 and sired by Young Melbourne, and so on. The sire's pedigrees are not given, as the stallions are usually well known and their pedigrees are available from other online resources. In this example, the number underneath the pedigree indicates the Bruce Lowe Family number, but you may also see numbers with prefixes, such as Family A1, Family C1, etc. These prefixes stand for American or Colonial Families. The above pedigree ends at Alice Hawthorn because she is a modern taproot mare and the rest of her pedigree may be ascertained from the English Families page. It may help if you mentally put the dam number in front of the successive dams, as shown below:

Stud books also present pedigrees in tail-female format. Here in the Early Studbook we follow the General Stud Book presentation of the tail-female format. The same information is shown in a horizontal format. The horse is still shown with his dam, 2nd dam, 3rd dam, etc. However, in the Early Studbook pedigrees we've added the family numbers, where they are known, and 1st sire identification for convenience. Horses with a suffix of (GB) were foaled in Great Britain; horses with a suffix of (USA) were foaled in the United States; horses with a * prefix were imported. Using Squirt as an example, his tail-female pedigree looks like this:

SQUIRT (GB) (ch.c. 1732) by Bartlet's Childers (b.c. 1716 by Darley Arabian) - Snake - Grey Wilkes by Hautboy - Miss Darcy's Pet Mare - Sedbury Royal Mare. Family 11.

This means that Squirt was a chestnut colt foaled in England in 1732 and sired by Bartlet's Childers; Bartlet's Childers was a bay colt foaled in 1716 and sired by Darley Arabian. The rest of Squirt's pedigree should be read the same way as in the example of Le Sancy given above.

 Squirt's 1st dam was sired by Snake; his 2nd dam Grey Wilkes was sired by Hautboy; his 3rd dam Miss Darcy's Pet Mare was sired by an unknown stallion, so no sire appears; his 4th dam Sedbury Royal Mare is the taproot mare for family number 11, and her breeding is unknown.