Horse DNA Results

[Jackie_Cochran]

As a kid I lived in Chile and Uruguay, and I rode horses which were rented out to trail riders.

Criollos are great little horses. Thinking back I am utterly amazed how these little tough horses were so forgiving of my totally ignorant attempts to “ride” them. I was strictly a passenger.

Do not let any weaker looking hindquarters fool you. The Chilean Criollos we got to ride handled going up and down the STEEP foothills of the Andes mountains just fine. I did not get to ride really good Criollos, I remember the ones in the trail riding strings often stumbled. This is not totally surprising, none of the ones I saw ridden had riders that showed any knowledge of how to improve on a horse’s musculature.

My favorite breed by far are Arabians, however if a Criollo magically appeared on my land I would consider keeping it. TOUGH little horses.

The best book showing the true soul of Criollos is “A Tale of Two Horses” by A. F. Tschiffely, a Swiss guy who bought 2 Argenting Criollos, Gato and Mancha, and rode them from Argentina, along the Andes Mountains and hitting jungles in the valleys, through Central America up to and through a decent bit of the USA (he did skip Nicaragua, they were having a revolution).

This book was reprinted by the Long Riders Guild. It is well worth reading. Both of them got shipped back to their native Pampas and turned free.

This book is where I learned about Trapalanda, the horse paradise. When I die I hope I find my way there.

[Jackie_Cochran]

I looked at your pictures again. Her expression, I would be pierced to my soul if she appeared, lol.

She looks like she could go anywhere in any conditions safely. I hope she is a good trail horse!

[BatCoach]

@candyappy

I know. My mom and her sister did those ancestry tests and they came back completely different…
We know for a fact my grandma wasn’t fooling around

The human tests are quite accurate compared to animal ones. Full siblings
only share about 50% DNA, so variance is expected. It’s also a developing science so not every element of every test will be perfect.

Good article on sibling variance

Quote from that article:

“That’s why siblings can get different reports from DNA ancestry services (even though they share the exact same relatives). “It’s possible that your brother might have inherited a piece of DNA from one of your ancestors that you did not,” Pickrell says.

Recall that you inherit half your DNA from your mom and half your DNA from your dad. But your dad may not pass on to you all the genes he inherited from, for example, the Sardinian side of his family.

As you move further and further back in time on your family tree, “there’s some possibility that you’ve inherited no DNA from one of your ancestors,” Pickrell says. Does that mean you’re not related to that person? No. Does that mean you’re barred from making pierogis with their time-worn recipe? Of course not. They’re still a part of your family tree, and a part of your heritage.”

[Fiesta01]

She sounds like a special girl. It warms my heart to know she has found her “person” in you.

[Scribbler]

It’s important to keep in mind that neither “breed” nor “race” have actual genetic markers. Both terms really just mean “family lineage.”

So it’s fairly easy to run a DNA matching test to see that a given animal or person shares about 50 % of their total genes with the parent, and confirm that’s the biological parent.

When it comes to determining “breed” or “race” the researchers need to figure out what genetic differences are typical and unique of that family line, and if they are a reliable indicator of that family going back say 10 generations.

I understand that each animal breed testing lab is working from their own algorithm. So they might focus on different markers and name them differently too.

Registered closed stud books are relatively new in horse breeding, except for Thoroughbred (going back to the 1600s) and Arabians (going back to antiquity). Registries like Quarter Horse were created in the mid 20th century by type. They evolved out of Western working and sprint horses. Different lines are going to show Spanish ancestry from the mustangs, TB (which could show as Turkoman or Arab), Morgan, and Percheron in the Foundation QH. But there is genetic overlap between draft and pony breeds too, as original cold blood horse type especially in England.

I think the human genome database is much bigger. I also think people mostly run breed testing on horses of unknown provenance. It would be really interesting to see what happens when you run DNA tests on registered horses! You might get absolutely crazy results