Important news!! WFFS is finally recognized

[Tigre_Horse]

@vineyridge

Since the test was unknown before 2012, people would not have been be concerned about carrier status

Manni - now that there is a test, they can study whether or not there are other effects on carriers that are unknown at this time. There is nothing wrong with being cautious until more studys are done, in fact, that’s the prudent thing to do. I think that’s what most of us are saying. Sometimes you don’t even realize that a certain “symptom” is linked to something else and then suddenly all the pieces fall into place . . .

My hope is that all reputable breeders and owners will test. There will always be those that won’t; hopefully, they will be in the minority.

[JB]

@snaffle1987

When you start talking about forced culling mandated by a breed society for preservation purposes; you are setting yourself up for a giant lawsuit and breed societies do not have the bank to stand up against the investors in the industry

Precedence for something of that nature has definitely been set, with the AQHA losing a lawsuit regarding registering clones. It’s slightly different, as that was a suit to get something added, rather than a suit to prevent something removed. And, it wasn’t about known health risks.

Sensible breeders would not breed tested carriers but we know there are plenty of greedy people in this business who are willing to take the risk and allow it to happen.

Unless and until there is any known or even highly suspected benefit of a hetero WFFS horse, I don’t know why a breeder would risk the 25% of a dead foal. It happens in the APHA world, too often, because willfully ignorant breeders continue to think they have a higher chance of producing a Frame foal by breeding 2 Frames together. They don’t, it’s the same 50/50 of a living Frame foal as they’d have breeding nO to nn.

I’m not sure how greed would win out here - there’s no (currently known) benefit to producing a carrier. There’s a 25% chance that you will have wasted your year-long $$ investment in the breeding.

I can’t see any situation where there is 1 and only 1 match for a carrier mare, and he happens to also be a carrier.

In the APHA world it is a bit difference since they are purposefully breeding for that Frame pattern, and it’s clearly a bit harder to find suitable nn stallions for a nO mare, so some do totally get greedy and take the change.

I think ignorance will play a much larger role, and will continue to, until and unless all breeding stock is required to be tested to have registry approval. Even then, given the number of unapproved mares and stallions being bred, it will always be an ignorance problem.

[halt]

@DownYonder

Editing my own post to add more info:

There was something nagging at my brain about Donnerhall and Duerkheim being related, so I dug further back into their pedigrees. Sure enough - they share the same tail male line. For instance, they both have the 1922 Hanoverian stallion Detektiv (five generations back for Donnerhall, four generations back for Duerkheim).

But I want to emphasize that since it is quite possible (probable?) that Sternlicht and Don Principe have other common ancestors, it would be very irresponsible to put the blame on Donnerhall until more is known.

re: Detektiv --> Drosselklang – i have been told Drosselklang is not a sire you want to linebreed to. i have always wondered about his pasterns. unrelated, but related in a way.

[SnicklefritzG]

“Greed” to me would be:

*Breeders not testing for carrier status in their mares but breeding anyway to untested stallions and taking a 25% chance that the foal would have to be euthanized shortly after birth.
*Stallion owners with carrier stallions not insisting on mares being tested for carrier status prior to breeding.

If further investigation determines that being a carrier does not impact a horse physically then I don’t think breeding a carrier to a non-carrier would be a problem.

[Simkie]

@snaffle1987

I will say that if I had some nice horses in my barn who tested as carriers; why should I have to send them to the meat man even if I have no plans to breed them?

When people are talking about culling in this thread, they are talking about removing from the breeding pool. Not breeding carriers. I don’t think anyone is using the term “cull” to mean “kill.”

[Marydell]

Don Principe’s dam is deceased- he is 19 yr old and was born in her later life.

There are several breeders doing pedigree research and I wait on the results from what they are studying. Speculating that De Lowe or Detektiv are the source- no way on earth to know. This disease has been around and discussed since the mid 90s in Europe. It is obvious that many people who are saying breeding a carrier increases the population and risk, you really are uninformed about the type of mutation this is- it is a very recessive mutation that actually “hides”. Also, even if using the number of 50% of the offspring of a carrier will also be carriers, you are also incorrect about increasing the population as 50% of those will end up being geldings and not adding significant numbers to affected horses.

With testing,which is the responsible way to control this, we can reduce the number of carriers and the risk to foals. BUT it will end up being a mare driven spread. Stallions who are not tested should not be used if the mares are not tested as well. If you test your mare, even if you sell her later, and the information is utilized, we can breed healthy horses. If the mare owners put it only on the stallion owners,- what about the European frozen stallions for which we have no data? According to the testing lab, many people in Europe have been using the test since it became available but no one is sharing results. In fact, there is a high profile, highly used with hundreds of offspring and popular jumper stallion who is N/WFFS positive carrier. He is owned by a prominent stallion station and has had foal who were lost to WFFS. Stallion owner will not release the results of the test. But it was done back in the early release of the test.

For those who advocate culling- that is a less than ideal solution. Don Principe is older and has no negative effects from being a carrier as he competes at age 19. Culling a healthy breeding animal from the general population will significantly effect the genetic pool of traits we are breeding for

[SMK]

I think it would be positive news if this comes from a far back D-line sire. You cannot pick a line that has better withstood upper level competition. It’s certainly not proof, but it would make me worry much less about a heterozygous phenotype.

I think it makes more sense to test prior to stallion approval, rather than toss out current stallions that are showing soundness at upper levels. It’s certainly not enough to turn me off to Don Principe offspring, which I’ve been keeping an eye out for for the last few years. His production record is unquestionable, and I’ll continue to look for him as a sire or grandsire. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

I’m disappointed to hear European breeders are not being more transparent. Hopefully the culture will evolve with increasing awareness of the disease.

[Highflyer]

Whether culling carriers would have a significant effect depends on how widespread the gene is. If it only affects 10-20% of the breeding population (and presumably not every horse of a proven successful line) it’s probably not going to affect the gene pool. If it is already much higher than that, it’s going to be necessary to test everything and make very careful decisions going forward.

[Manni01]

Interesting how opinions can change

[mvp]

[QUOTE=snaffle1987;n10098185]

I will say that if I had some nice horses in my barn who tested as carriers; why should I have to send them to the meat man even if I have no plans to breed them?
/QUOTE]

To be clear: Killing the animal before it reproduces and simply not breeding it are synonyms, so far as population genetics is concerned.

[vineyridge]

I think what is so shocking about the whole thing is that Marydell says that WB breeders were talking about this back in the 1990’s and just thought it was a “small” problem. It took the Swiss to produce scientific papers on foals with this condition, which is heartbreaking. It not only causes the foals to be seriously damaged, but it causes spontaneous abortions, and some other effects on the pregnancy that I can’t recall right now.

What the heck have the Germans/Dutch/Danes/Swedes been doing on this since the 1990s? If foals have been showing up, why wasn’t the German/Dutch/Danish/Swedish animal establishment demanding science once the horse genome was deciphered and published? Why didn’t they let the rest of the world know these foals were appearing? Why did they keep it a dark secret?

I honestly cannot understand why the affected European WB breeding establishment wasn’t in the forefront of research. Heck, one doesn’t even need a test to understand that a condition has a genetic basis. We all knew about lethal white long before any genetic testing was available.

[Laurierace]

@snaffle1987

the idea of culling all carriers is ridiculous. It will never happen. And the Society will never dictate such actions to occur. Why not? Because even though the breed society is the governing body; they are the minority. They are not the ones whos businesses and livelihoods may be at stake; the ones who have invested perhaps millions of dollars in breeding stock. When you start talking about forced culling mandated by a breed society for preservation purposes; you are setting yourself up for a giant lawsuit and breed societies do not have the bank to stand up against the investors in the industry

I will say that if I had some nice horses in my barn who tested as carriers; why should I have to send them to the meat man even if I have no plans to breed them?

Sensible breeders would not breed tested carriers but we know there are plenty of greedy people in this business who are willing to take the risk and allow it to happen.

the only thing a breed society is going to do is continue to help fund research to identify the animal in which the allele started and continue to identify known tested carriers.

It is up to the breeders to make a call on the stallions they stand and up to the mare owners to test their mares and require stallions they wish to use to be tested and identified.

Seriously? Your go to for a horse you can’t breed is slaughter? No one was talking about killing animals but you.

[SMK]

@Manni01

Interesting how opinions can change

I damn well hope people’s opinions can and will change as more information becomes available, otherwise I’d call them obtuse. I absolutely think it needs to be studied, and commend Hilltop’s decision to hold off for now. I’m quite sure none of us want there to be a n/ffs phenotype.

It sounds like a perfect small USDA grant; does anyone know if that’s happening right now? Not to actually elucidate what’s going on with the homozygous defective LH1, that would be a serious undertaking. But to do some genetic analysis and necropsying/biopsying carriers and non-carriers. If it is similar to EDSIV, we at least have a nice starting point of knowing where to look. I’ve done work with glycosyl and glucosyltransferases, and their ubiquity can make things a tad complicated, but what we’re asking is really the end result, not necessarily the enzymic activity.

I looked on grants.gov and didn’t see anything currently out there.

For folks interested, the Monthoux et al., 2015 BMC VR and Salo et al., 2008 AJHG (human) are worth a read.

[snaffle1987]

@Laurierace

Seriously? Your go to for a horse you can’t breed is slaughter? No one was talking about killing animals but you.

what do you suggest Culling means? What are all these breeders going to do with “culled” broodmares; especially those in Europe where breeding warmbloods is a much bigger game.

[snaffle1987]

And to clear the air, a carrier and the root of this gene can be found even if the original animal is dead. Get some of these big schools on board with researching the origination of it; many of them have in-depth experience and great results with finding these issues in food producing animal populations. The results will not be overnight but the original animal who started this mess can be found; even if he or she lived 30+ years ago. These scientists also developed tests for the issue once it was identified for the current population (living). German researchers recently found a deficiency gene in cattle; perhaps the same scientists in Germany could assist with this.

[snaffle1987]

@Manni01

Now I would like to ask you… What risk are those greedy people willing to take. And what is going to happen… I am really curious! Thanks in advance for the answer

The risk would be spending many of thousands of dollars to breed a mare only to get a foal who comes into the world in pain and suffering only to be euthanized. You, the breeder and owner of the foal are a significant amount of $$$ out of your own pocket and have nothing to show for it. For the small breeder or the competition rider who has a successful mare they’d like to breed; this result could be devastating. For the breeders who have large broodmare bands (like Europe), one foal death out of 30 that year is nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

The Greed comes in when we have breeders who refuse to test their mares, or breed to untested stallions or stallions who are positive, and knowingly take the risk of producing affected foals. Greed is stallion owners who have tested their stallions but refuse to release the results (this would be a major red flag that the stallion is a carrier). When a breeder chooses to breed to a stallion who is a carrier because they outweigh the stallions success in performance and the breeding shed over the fact that he is a carrier and they would be continuing on that gene; that is greed,

The majority of the breeders are out to produce performance horses. Performance buyers don’t honestly care if the horse is a carrier or not. The breeding careers only (usually) come after a successful performance career or testing approval which is secondary to producing and raising successful performance horses. Current stallion testing and approvals do not require a stallion or mare to be tested in order to receive approval. Perhaps, if they started doing this ASAP; opinions would change in a flash. This would not affect current approved stallions and mares in the gene pool but it would prevent further approved stallions and mares from entering the herd book.

Breed associations could mandate that all new registered animals have the test performed and any identified carrier could not be registered. But then that could hurt registrations as each test is slightly more than $50.00. The breed association is a gate keeper but they are also a business. So, while this method could be very good for the future of the breed, it could also significantly affect the associations financially.

[SnicklefritzG]

I think this is the right way to look at it. If Don Principe is competing successfully at age 19, that is a great achievement. Some dressage bred horses never make it to FEI and then not all stay sound doing it into their later years.

It is smart in this case to require mare owners to test before breeding, but to remove Don Principe from breeding would be ridiculous.

@Marydell

For those who advocate culling- that is a less than ideal solution. Don Principe is older and has no negative effects from being a carrier as he competes at age 19. Culling a healthy breeding animal from the general population will significantly effect the genetic pool of traits we are breeding for

[Laurierace]

@snaffle1987

what do you suggest Culling means? What are all these breeders going to do with “culled” broodmares; especially those in Europe where breeding warmbloods is a much bigger game.

Culling by definition means removing from the gene pool. They certainly don’t need to be dead to do so.

[SnicklefritzG]

If they are broodmares only, not used as riding horses, in their teens and not a likely candidate for someone wanting to start them (as opposed to a 3 or 4 year old), then culling might be tantamount to exactly what others are implying.

If there are known carriers that are competing successfully into their later years, I don’t think people should be running around screaming that carrier status is bad. It just means people should test before breeding and more work should be done, but making blanket statements is ridiculous. Not directed at you Laureace, but to other comments in this thread.

@Laurierace

Culling by definition means removing from the gene pool. They certainly don’t need to be dead to do so.

[mvp]

@snaffle1987

what do you suggest Culling means? What are all these breeders going to do with “culled” broodmares; especially those in Europe where breeding warmbloods is a much bigger game.

Fine, but that choice (which has been practiced for other reasons) as to what to do with ex-broodmares isn’t a good reason to keep breeding them, right? No breed organization should be blackmailed by breeders threatening to slaughter their stock.