Genetics 101 [was *Bask]

[Lif Strand <fasterhorses@gilanet.com>]

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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