RE: Genetics 101 [was *Bask]

["Kathy Mayeda" <kathy_mayeda@atce.com>]

The only thing that is sure is that you breed two chestnuts, you will only
get chestnut - unless there's a wierdo dilution gene running around that I
don't know about!  Doesn't matter if the chestnuts have grey or bay
parents - they don't have those genes to pass on.

Horse color doesn't a whole lot in breeding a good horse, but it's fun to
talk about, and it's more easily defined - like wrinkled yellow peas.

Kathy

-----Original Message-----
From:	Lif Strand [mailto:fasterhorses@gilanet.com]
Sent:	Tuesday, April 25, 2000 10:50 AM
To:	Ridecamp
Subject:	RC:  Genetics 101 [was *Bask]

At 10:07 AM 4/25/00 -0700, David wrote:


So then it really wouldn't be fair to say that Bask lineage is
neccessarily a bad thing?


Right, it wouldn't be fair.



It would probably be a lot better to think about excluding his lines
where the mares weren't the stock you need for endurance.  After all,
with as many horses as have his genes, there are going to be lots of
good and bad.

Plus, as you point out, there is still a bit of an element of chance in
the whole thing - you can breed the same 2 parents several times and get
different results.



Well..... unless *Bask was the perfect endurance type horse himself AND
he didn't carry ANY recessives that would be undesirable in an endurance
horse.... then you could only worry about the mares *Bask was bred to.
You breed the same 2 parents several times and get different results
just because you can't tell a horse's genetic makeup solely from what
the horse looks like or how it performs & there's all those "unrevealed"
genes that have a chance to combine with the other horse's genes when
you breed.  That's why you could even take a full brother and sister,
cross them & get foals that were different.

That's why Paul calls breeding "genetic roulette".  On the other hand,
you can improve your odds.  As Heidi has said, if you study the traits
of a horse's ancestors (the performance ability as well as conformation,
etc) enough, you can get a good idea of which genes are being passed
along.  For instance, if you looked at a stallion & saw that both his
parents were chestnuts & did well on the race track, and both of their
parents were chestnuts & did well on the race track, and then bred that
stallion to a mare who had 2 or more generations of chestnuts that did
well on the race track, you have a better chance of getting a chestnut
foal who does well on the race track than if you bred a bay stallion
with grey & bay ancestors and only a few track successes to a grey mare
with chestnut & black ancestors with no track successes but some that
were good at pulling plows.  EVEN IF both sire & dam were great on the
track, if all their recessive genes decided to combine, you wouldn't get
a racetrack success.

So go from there to breeding endurance horses.  Lif







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