What is the best place to have your horse’s DNA ancestry tested? Not for genetic issues but for genetic makeup.
I don’t think there’s any way to find out 100% what you have in a grade horse, but you can get in the ballpark with the right DNA test. I would trust the research universities more than random DNA money-makers online, and UC Davis and Texas A&M are the ones more people seem to swear by. I think UC Davis tests more for genetic issues and Texas A&M tests for breed makeup. A&M gives you the top three markers, so you can see what your grade horse is likely to be. That’s my understanding.
Thanks. I do have copes of both parents bloodlines but wa curious about the pre-documentation blood.
Those breed tests can give you a general idea of which breed groups your horse may have come from (such as draft, warmblood, pony, iberian, etc) but they are really not accurate enough to nail down specific breeds or percentages. Especially since you already know your horse’s bloodlines, I’d go into it with the expectation of not gaining much more information. (Maybe you’ll get a surprise! But if it’s super weird I’d still question it.) Horse breeds are simply too inter-related to build an accurate test, at least with current knowledge/technology.
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I’m guessing my horse has some Spanish Mustang blood as she looks very similar to a Kiger Mustang. It would be fun to see as long as the test isn’t too costly.
I wouldn’t bother. The results are usually pretty off, a registered TB was shown to be Clydesdale, Shetland and something else, and a purebred Arabian was just as off. Someone sent donkey hair in for testing and the results were equally as hilarious. I’d save my money and use it for an animal communicator for the entertainment value.
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Do you know which service gave these results? The people I know who have sent in samples to Texas A&M have received accurate results on registered horses.
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Texas A&M doesn’t test for mustang since mustangs have influence from too many different breeds.
But what were those horses registered as?
The only “accurate” results I’ve seen are from horses that usually pop up high on the “most likely” list, like QH and Hanoverian, or an actual “pure bred” that’s also in the list of 50 they use as a base
It’s just a fact that ancestry/breed dna testing for horses is highly inaccurate, only showing you the most likely shared blood. That does not mean that if Welsh pops up that the horse is part Welsh. It only means your horse shares similar blood
Right on the TA&M site, they say:
" Horse ancestry testing at Texas A&M University is based upon comparing the DNA genotype of the subject horse to a reference panel of 50 horse breeds."
"We then report the three breeds with the highest probability that the subject horse could have come from the breed in order of their probability of being an ancestral breed. The results cannot give the proportion (percent) of the breed that the subject horse may have. That really isn’t possible because horses are so genetically similar. The test is reasonably good but there is no way to determine how accurate it is. "
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Yes that’s true, but this is what comes after what you quoted:
If a purebred horse is tested it will almost always be assigned to the correct breed. When a two breed cross is examined, the two parental breeds will almost certainly be given very high probabilities although not necessarily the 1st and 2nd assignments. The more breeds involved in a cross the lower the probability that a good result will be delivered.
They provide the top three hits in different clusters they have designated. You may get a #1 hit for Shire when your horse looks like a Clydesdale, or a #1 result of Belgian for something much smaller that looks like a Haflinger. They make it clear that they are testing for markers in those clusters, and those breeds are in the same cluster. The people I’ve seen that have gotten way-off-base results were from one of the random horse DNA services you find by googling (not UC Davis or Texas A&M). It’s not too different from Ancestry dot com and services like that for people. Just because you get a result that you’re 9% Belgian doesn’t necessarily mean you are Belgian, you may be Dutch or German or French, or another northern European population. It’s still valuable information for some (or at least fun).
I don’t know anyone who’s used a different service, they’re all using TAM, and even those who know the horse’s breeding and it’s not “pure”, almost always get ridiculous answers. Registered QH’s come up as Hanoverian and Shetland. 13h gaited pony came back as “mostly Warmblood” (she listed them I just don’t remember them). Purebred Arabian came back with draft results, and full siblings came back with different results.
" horses are so genetically similar" is the problem. It’s random guesses when there’s too wide a range of data to choose from
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If you’ve seen TAM results, they don’t have anything as “mostly”, they just give you 1, 2, and 3, and say it’s not necessarily the “correct” order (because they can’t give percentages). They don’t test for “warmblood”, so I guess you’re saying the pony came back with (for example) Trakehner, Hanoverian, and one other breed (or something along those lines)? TAM does make it clear they can’t necessarily give a “good” result on a horse that’s a real Heniz 57, so maybe this gaited pony has too much of a mixture to be able to get a helpful result.
I’ve heard about people getting really bad TAM DNA results on this board–I wish they would post a picture of the horse in question plus a scan of the results document. People posting their results with a picture of their horse–whether the results seem good or not–would be a great thread here.
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Yes, I don’t remember which ones she listed, but 2 of the 3 were a WB of some type - “mostly warmblood”.
And that’s exactly the problem. If you don’t know your horse’s pedigree, then whatever you get back could be somewhat on the mark (like if he’s just an unregistered QH), or listing a 13h gaited pony as “mostly warmblood”. And if you DO know the pedigree, why are you testing?
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All breeds that originated in the British Isles, including TB, Clydesdale, Shetland, share a common ancestry. Back in the centuries an equine, of some type, was the progenitor of what eventually became the Shetland but that same equine type was also ancestral to what finally became the TB. Go far enough back, the equines in the British Isles apparently arrived up the Atlantic margin from the Ice Age refuge on the Iberian peninsula. Irish legends link their horses to Spain. Go into medieval history and Spanish horses were, for example, used at stud in Wales to breed war horses. All this means that a DNA test on an ISH or a Welsh will likely show some TB, some Shetland, some Clydesdale and some PRE because the genes are all mixed into the current breeds.
DNA testing becomes less helpful the further back into
the pedigree one goes. Presumably, with DNA required at studbook registration, more information will become available in future.
Great information! Thank you.
Glad I read this. Occasionally considered having Grandma’s Pony tested. We’ll stick with Faux Fell Pony and spend the money on apples and carrots.
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