Background: Understanding the relationship between genetic admixture and performances is crucial for the success of crossbreeding programs. Use of small sets of ancestry informative markers (AIMs) is a cost effective option to estimate the levels of admixture in situations where pedigree recording is difficult. In this study we select AIMs from Ovine 50KSNP data (SNP -single nucleotide polymorphism) and validate their ability in estimating the contributions of parental breeds to get information about optimum admixture levels for smallholders.