This is my first time posting, so hopefully I do it correctly. I am looking at a eight-year-old gelding that has Impressive going back six generations. The gal who owns him told me she had his hair (not blood) tested and he came back negative. She also told me that since his sire was negative that she didn’t need to do the testing, but did it anyway. When I look on all breed pedigree it does show his sire (Kids Classic Design) as being HyPP N/N and OWLS N/N. Nothing is showing under is dam, just that she is a paint.
So I’m curious if it’s true if one parent carries the HyPP N/N than anything he produces won’t have the gene? And also, can you test using just hair?
No, that is not the case. The seller is woefully misinformed. An N/N horse can produce HYPP affected get. It is an autosomal dominant trait.If the mare is N/P you have a 50% chance of a N/P offspring. You must test the mare. I don’t know why the registries have not gotten their act together and eliminated this disease (which they could have done decades ago) but please do your part. Test the mare and don’t breed horses that carry HYPP.
A horse that is N/N will never produce a positive horse unless need to a positive horse. HYPP doesn’t skip generations. Often a good idea to have it done if the status of a parent is unknown. I’m not sure if APHA requires testing yet or not. I haven’t been keeping up with things for a while.
As for the hair test, it’s been done that way for years.
AQHA has required testing for years now and if other than N/N, there are restrictions, If I remember correctly.
Call the AQHA for more information on that, if your horse is double registered, some paints are.
It sounds like this horse is only a paint?
The sire being N/N means he doesn’t carry the gene, so that is in the clear.
Not knowing on the dam’s sire, I too would have tested.
It seems like the seller did and the test was negative.
If so, best I know, the horse should be ok.
Now, “trust and verify” applies here.
I expect that is why the OP is asking.
I would verify that there is actually a proper test on that horse and that he is N/N, if the OP wants to be sure the horse is free of HYPP, or run her own test.
If the horse is not registered and the breeding mentioned is a guess, I too would test, if in doubt, is the only way to be sure HYPP is not in there, some times why the papers were “lost”, if that were the case here, we don’t really know.
Does the dam go back to Impressive? If not no real reason for her to be tested…but in any case if the sire, and more importantly the horse you are looking at both test N/N you shouldn’t have any worries. And as stated above the test is done by pulling mane hair, not a blood draw.
The huge caveat is the UNLESS. The seller told the OP that a N/N stallion could NOT produce a horse that is positive for and/or a carrier of HYPP and that is an untrue, ignorant and dangerous statement. There are many HYPP horses in the Paint bloodlines. OP, do test the horse that you plan to buy… The seller obviously does not understand this condition and how it is passed along.
If you are interested in the horse and are strongly considering purchasing him, do the genetic health panel. I don’t believe they are especially expensive, and certainly cheaper than affording the care for an affected horse.
Perhaps you could chat with the seller and see if she’s willing to let you go through with the genetic testing. If need be, you could put down a refundable deposit that ultimately goes towards the purchase price in the event he’s N/N. Don’t hand over any money without a written agreement and documented proof, though.
APHA only required HYPP testing for stallions as of January 1, 2017. Does the dam go back to Impressive? If not, then as others have said the gelding would be N/N. Just an FYI, even N/H horses can be symptomatic.
If I was serious about buying a horse that hadn’t been tested, I would run the full panel testing on him. HYPP isn’t the only genetic disease you need to worry about. The small expense of the test could save you a lot of money and heartache down the road.
That this has to be said at this point in time, when many N/H horses have not only been “symptomatic” but have died from this preventable condition, is a sad commentary on the AQHA’s concern for the breed.
The AQHA and other registries that have bred to the “Impressive” line have knowingly allowed this condition to propagate for decades and have shown an obvious lack of concern for the people who trusted that the association had their members and horses interests in mind. The breeders that went all in with horses from the “Impressive” line seem to have had more import , especially with the AQHA ,and that is a shame.
Too many innocents believed the AQHA’s inaction meant it was no big deal, and have had their faith rewarded by having to try to understand, and then explain to their children, why their horse is dead.
When HYPP was first coming to light, the AQHA had just lost a tremendous amount of money fighting a lawsuit they lost, that determined how far the AQHA could go requiring which horses could be registered and why and why not, given two duly registered parents.
That lawsuit they lost at a great cost to the association was the white rule, that was put in place decades before to try to keep paint genes out of quarter horses, best they understood that then.
That legal decision didn’t permit the association to designate that, because of HYPP, now those horse’s offspring are not permitted to be registered, not without a lengthy process, that involved years.
That is what the AQHA had to do, give breeders all those years to, slowly, phase out any HYPP horses, by testing parents and offspring by putting restrictions in place piecemeal over many years.
Crazy result as a breeding rule, but the rights of breeders, according to the courts, came first, if it makes sense or not.
Some times, lawsuits bring out crazy results.
It was not, as you seem to accuse the AQHA:
" The AQHA and other registries that have bred to the “Impressive” line have knowingly allowed this condition to propagate for decades and have shown an obvious lack of concern for the people who trusted that the association had their members and horses interests in mind."
The AQHA had it’s hands tied, could not afford another lawsuit, just didn’t have the money for it, so it had to abide by what the courts had designated was the right process of law to take any breeder’s rights away to register offspring when it deemed it not in the best interest of the breed.
Now, why breeders kept breeding to defective animals and some still do?
Why other horse associations, that didn’t have their hands legally tied, didn’t go ahead and put the proper restrictions in place?
That I don’t know.
The AQHA was very proactive and put restrictions on HYPP in place as fast as it could do so, being legally and financially responsible.
I understand that the AQHA had a very difficult time over the white rule. I don’t agree that they did their best with HYPP. It took decades for them to refuse registration to H/H horses and N/H horses should have been banned years ago as well. I don’t think you can blame the legal process entirely for this disaster.
Allowing HYPP horses to continue to be bred and registered had as many, if not more, financial repercussions than stopping the condition in it’s tracks early on would have, and the suffering of the affected animals didn’t seem to be consideration at all.
We’ll have to agree to disagree about your last sentence. I think the AQHA was anything but “proactive” regarding HYPP.
The AQHA did what their legal team recommended, that was what the lawsuit determined according to the rights of the horse owners of duly registered parent’s rights to obtain registration for the offspring of those parents.
Disagreeing with what they could have/should have done is immaterial.
They didn’t have any options, short of more lawsuits they could not afford.
I think the blame lies less with the AQHA than it does with the owners/breeders of halter horses, who would in some cases select breedings in hopes of producing horses that were N/H because they tend to have the abnormally bulky musculature that pins well in the halter classes … and fought to continue to allow registration and competition of affected horses.
it is true that an N/N horse cannot produce an affected horse if it is bred to another N/N horse or one that does not descend from affected bloodlines (unless a new mutation occurred in that particular horse, which is extremely unlikely). A horse that is N/H may or may not show symptoms but had a 50% chance of passing on an affected allele to its get.
Understood. It is too bad that they were not able to afford to do the right thing for the breed, though somehow I think that there is enough money in the business that the funds could have been found.
Of course when those with the money are the ones who were perpetuating the breeding of the affected horses? well there you are … If the AQHA had been full of people willing and able to push on through the court system I believe the side advocating the integrity and health of the breed would have won.
However,the breeders that did not care one bit about the long term consequences of their short term greed were well entrenched in the AQHA.
Sorry to have wandered off topic. The OP needs to have the horse tested before purchase (if the dam has not been tested) because the seller is misinformed regarding HYPP.
Boy, you mean to run down the AQHA no matter what is explained to you.
The AQHA had spent all it could to, as you say, “do right for the breed” already, why it had depleted funds.
To accuse them of any other is ignoring the facts of the situation.
There was much teeth gnashing that they could not do any more.
Why go bankrupt trying again, when following the law as the judgement gave them was their only recourse anyway?
The lawsuit was about restriction of trade, the association could not just change rules, no matter how much sense they make for the association, as the lost lawsuit did show.
The law was against any other than what they did, how hard is that to understand?
No matter how much they would have spent again to defend any other than what they did would still not have changed the law, it is what it is.
Just trying to explain that, for those that may not know and may want to have an open mind about why the long process was needed.
Other breed associations were following all this very carefully, because it could have been their association that had such problems.
It was eye opening for all.
I understand more than you think. Spending all of their funds on the “white” rule is not an excuse for being unable to follow the AQHA charter, their own rule regarding the protection of the integrity of the breed.
They failed to stop an easily preventable (as in don’t breed this terrible defect into your stock) condition from affecting an entire breed (and some other registries that bred with their stock).
“No money to do the right thing” as an excuse is a pitiful one. I watched while this debacle happened, as I’m sure you must have. I thought It was a disgrace. Again, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around and excuses for the failure have been made for many years, but the AQHA must take their share of the blame. “Proactive” they were not.
The problem was well known yet disregarded for much too long, and it could have been stopped well before the issue was presented to a court if not for the folks who’s bottom line would have been affected and whom also happened to be big powers in the AQHA.
“In 1993, it was estimated that more than 55,000 Quarter Horses, Paints, and Appaloosas world-wide bore his pedigree.”
So if they changed the rules, 55,000+ horses would have had their registries revoked and been deemed worthless. Higher slaughter numbers anyone?
it was several YEARS at stud when HYPP was discovered and linked to impressive. Considering he was THE halter horse and also a top race and performance stud, he had a ton of babies already. A large number of AQHA members remained uninformed of the problem, while Impressive kept breeding and his get kept winning. It literally spread like wildfire.
