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[RC] Greys and skin cancer - kathy swigart

According to the book _Equine Genetics and Selection Criteria_ in the TB 
registry (where they keep pretty good track), grey horses live, on average, two 
years less than non-greys.? Probably because of the skin cancer thing, but not 
necessarily.? Personally, I consider "grey" to be a genetic defect, right up 
there with a lot of the others that I select away from.? And the nice thing 
about grey is that, being a dominant trait,?it is really easy to select away 
from.? Don't breed a grey horse, you won't get a grey horse.

Greys also, incidentally, have a much lower percentage of winners from foals 
and winners from starters.

Winning TB race horses are disproportionately chestnuts (e.g. 6 of the 11 
Triple Crown winners were chestnuts, while only about 25% of all TBs are).? 
None of them has been a grey.? The number of triple crown winners is so small 
that the fact that there are not any greys in the bunch may not be 
statistically significant; however, they are under represented in the list of 
leading sires as well, which is a much bigger list.

kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)


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