One thing I am wondering about it is the article that someone linked to regarding Everdale…there were references in that article to Dutch breeders and vets who said they didn’t know about WFFS. I would find it hard to believe, particularly if they been breeding WB’s for longer than we have in the US…
What’s up with that?
In continental Europe, the TBs who stand for sport horses rarely, if ever, stand for racing. That’s probably true most places as well, except for France. Sport horse TB stallions are out of race breeding circles, so one of those would have little /no opportunity to introduce the gene into the majority population. Mares can only spread the allele widely if they produce stallion sons, and there are almost no TB mares at all (nor have there ever been) in continental sport horse breeding.
As to why one might think that it is more common in dressage breeding is because the carrier stallions that have been publicly identified are all dressage stallions. The name of the horse who sired the Swiss foal hasn’t been released, so most of us wouldn’t be able to agree that he was jumper bred with a large number of foals.
Well the breeder of the foal which died said it was a jumper bred stallion with a lot of offspring… She did not release the name though
One can only hope that breeders will push the stallion station into releasing the info. As it stands one of the known positive stallions has 2k offspring and approved sons galore yet no noise from the station in order to inform their customers 
Again I would like to mention this article which was written by Sierra Milton “Omertà, the breeders code of Silence”. I think the answer for your question is explained in the article…
It’s been very easy to overlook for decades because of the lack of live births. If you accept the high morbidity (And I do - it’s the only possible explanation) then most of the WFFS pregnancies ended not in a foal whose skin is sloughing off, but in EED or abortion. And it may be assumed that the WFFS foals that made it to term were septic, as that can also result in skin separation. So I have no doubt that 98% of the European breeding community had no idea. While the test may have been available in 2013, it the subject wasn’t published until 2015 and that was not widely reported either - nothing presented at AAEP… I haven’t talked to a single vet here in the US that was aware of it. Why should Europe be any different?
I’m not buying into the whole “vast conspiracy since 2013 thing” either here or abroad…If it’s not presented at conferences, and it’s not published in the veterinary periodicals, how exactly was the word supposed to spread?
What IS important is what happens going forward. Not what happened yesterday.
Well I just learned of a case in Germany where the foal was born and died soon after. The breeder was under shock, (she pulled off the feet of the foal when she tried to support the birth) and culled the mare from breeding and the stallion continued to breed. :(. And by now I believe there were more cases but I assume the breeder are ashamed and are willing to cover it up because they were scared that nobody would buy foals from them :(. I think the situation is really worse then you would think
In the bolded part of your post: do you know this for sure? Did you speak with the breeder and the stallion owner? Do you know the stallion? You write that you “assume” that they are willing to cover it up. This is exactly how a rumor gets started, something you have criticized. You might consider using more careful language if you are going to express your own thoughts, making clear that what you write is your opinion.
Suppose a breeder is (or was) unaware of the WFFS condition; even vets may not be familiar with the syndrome. A foal that arrives as you describe would be a shock, and if the breeder and vet didn’t know about WFFS, it is my opinion that they may have thought it was a one-off tragic event. Looking forward, with a test now available and the growing awareness of the condition, there could be better reporting of WFFS prevalence.
Believe what you want to believe. Just think Everdale produced 900 foals. Look at his stud fee and then you know how much money is involved, I admire every stallion owner who is honest but so far not many are. Please tell whT have you heard from Germany about this so far?? And the test is available since 2013. I admit I do not know whether that foal was before or after the test was available. And I wonder why the mare was culled and the stallion not??
What do you mean when you write, “Believe what you want to believe”?
In your post #282, you wrote:
[I]The breeder was under shock, (she pulled off the feet of the foal when she tried to support the birth) and culled the mare from breeding and the stallion continued to breed.
[/I]The mare owner can only make decisions about his/her own horses, including removing a mare from the breeding program. A mare owner cannot control what a stallion owner may say or do.
But it is my opinion that a mare owner may rightfully say, “I bred my mare to Stallion X, and unfortunately the result was a WFFS foal that did not survive.” The mare owner can state the facts, and does not need to say “Stallion X is a carrier for WFFS, test your mare if you consider breeding to him”. Any breeder who understands the concept of Affected/Carrier/Clear can come to his/her own conclusions about the status of Stallion X. Ideally, a stallion owner would openly disclose that information, as we have seen here in this thread.
Why do you mention Everdale? Is that just an example of how many foals a stallion may produce? I am well familiar with stud fees and how many mares a stallion may have in his book per year, and what amount of money that converts to. Money is a powerful motivator, but money cannot change genetics. (It can, however, fund testing and research.)
I wrote believe what you want to believe because it sounded to me like you were doubting what I wrote. And I know the mare owner wrote the truth and she did not mention the stallions name, so I don’t know. But on the other hand I know that Stallionowner keep track of the breedings of their stallions. They have to for tax reasons and also because if a breeding fails the mare owner usually gets another one next year. So I am sure most SO know the %age of abortions or other problems with their stallions. So if there are cases, the owner should at least make a guess that something is wrong. And if a mare owner approaches a SO with a problem like I told about, I think its weird to cull the mare from breeding but not the stallion… And I know by now already 2 cases where this happened. And Everdale is a carrier. His owner went public about it (after a mare had a foal with WFFS with him). So thats why i used him.
And my point still is… Very easy… Everybody needs to test their mares and refuse to use any untested stallions. Thats the only way to get this under control!
I am just catching up on the FB thread and see that Everdale’s owner made public his WFFS status.
As far as your post:
I wrote believe what you want to believe because it sounded to me like you were doubting what I wrote.
If I was doubting what you wrote, I would have said so and asked you questions to clarify. I did not write that I doubted you. I will write what I mean, in a polite way of course. If you are interpreting what I post differently, then I would welcome a PM from you, to clarify what I have posted so you understand my view. 
I am very glad that this topic is now being discussed in different places on the web, openly.
I am very glad about it too!!! Remember I started the thread. And I am kind of proud because I participated in the thread here in 2013 and also I started a thread in Germany about the same topic in 2013 because I believe in transparency!
I think its a very important topic for breeders and the more information is going around the better it is!!!
Sorry if I misunderstood, but you did write “do you know this for sure”" The mare owner did post it in a discussion board in Germany. So of course I don’t know it for sure. But somehow it did not sound like she was making it up.
And about the covering up. If you are a breeder in Germany you had no chance but to cover it up if you bred a foal like this.
A very simple question for you… Would you buy a foal from a breeder who has huge issues with his foals health wise… like foals dying at birth?? Would you buy from him if you would know about it??? Would you want to buy a foal from lines which might have horrible health issues??
Just think about it. And please don’t tell me of course you would… With a genetic test for this condition you could but without knowing anything about the condition and the reasons you would not…
So if a breeder still wants to sell foals (and some people make a living from it, they have not much of a choice) So its not a rumor I am spreading but the simple truth… If its your hobby its different.
And not sure if you read the statement from the dutch university about it… they did not even know that this condition exists until now… How can they write something like this?? There is a genetic test for it since 2013. A University is not updated on recent development on something?? I was shocked when I read this…
And from Germany there is no statement at all yet…
I’ve spoken to Dr. Schulze-Schleppinghoff about the matter and he is onto it. Dr. Christmann from the Hanoverians was away in RSA. I don’t believe it is wise to go into panic mode or rush into decisions without gathering more information and solid data first. Let’s face it warmbloods have survived this mutation rather well without any intervention and I’m sure if we research for long enough we are bound to find a whole bunch of other SNP with rather unfavorable traits coded.
I am all for testing and there definitely needs to be more transparency or should I say ethics in breeding. However the matter has gained more attention only over the last few weeks so it’s not surprising that the Verbands have not launched any statements as of yet. What are they supposed to say other than ‘we are aware of the situation and trying to work out a sensible solution’? They don’t have any more information than the veterinary public.
Looking forward to their statement. Still what I am concerned about is the rising number of carriers. This year there are already 2 known cases of dead foals maybe there are even more where the owners did not come forward with. The more carriers there are in the population the higher the risk is that there will be carrier to carrier breedings… IMO its really necessary to collection information about the actual numbers of carriers by testing them
and IMO the best source for information right now about WFFS is this FB group which collects all the available info and even has a database with tested horses. https://www.facebook.com/groups/WBG.WFFS/?fref=nf
As far as I can tell from a less than detailed review, the only common ancestor of Aliska K and Don Principe Is a 1897 horse named Schwabenstreich who comes in through Duerkheim’s dam with descendants in several other places (Donnerwetter has him through Disput) in the Don Principe nine generation pedigree; and he comes in through Amor in Aliska K.
Just found another one–an SF stallion named Condor who is more recent. He’s a 1946 model. Sternlicht also has Condor through Donnerhall. This is wrong. Aliska K carries Condor’s 3/4th brother Brule Tout. One is a 1946 model; the other was born in 1945. They are, according to the information on webpedigrees the only two stallions from their sire, the TB Foudroyant by The Mac Nab who was used for WB breeding in France and seems to have sired no full TB foals from the limited free information available . The two stallions share the SF damsire Issu d’Amblies.
But I’m still working with the 9 generation pedigrees, and it will take more time.
I am the owner of the NA foal tested positive for WFFS. I am now going to set this record straight once and for all having kept my silence for nearly 3 months n order to allow Hilltop and the Van Olst family to get their ducks in a row. Firstly the foal is by Everdale out of a Westfalen mare by De Kooning. As soon as Texas A &M made the hypothesis we tested dna. I notified Hilltop immediately, this was in February. As soon as the confirmation came back, I sent the results to Hilltop still in February. Knowing what a sensitive subject this was going to be I readily agreed to give them time to process the information and talk with Van Olst. I also removed the birth announcement and parentage details from FB. Hilltop bravely went ahead and tested their stock and followed through with the announcement about Sternlicht. The story of an owner with a carrier wanting to breed was a smoke screen I was not happy about but they were still at in discussion with Van Olst so I while I told them I did not appreciate being pushed under the bus I let it go. In the meantime they contacted various registries and got the discussion going. Eventually I posted in a closed breeders group that I was the owner of the foal and was happy to answer questions due to the amount of mis information flying around FB. At no time did I openly reveal the name of the stallion. I agreed to write an article of my experience for Warmbloods Today as long as the sire was not mentioned, and this article was also picked up by Eurodressage. By now we were in mid April, lots of great information was out there, people were testing and NA owners were mainly on board with being open about results. I had been receiving by lots of private communications from EU breeders about foals born there with similar symptoms and that they felt no-one wanted to know, or were too nervous of the reaction if they went public. I also took quite a bit of abuse for ‘scaremongering’ even though I had tried to be as informative as possible without blowing the lid off the known EU connection. When it got to the end of April and the WBg WFFS FB page was opened U decided to post on my own page a photo of our foal with n s pedigree and #WFFS. The Van Olst family then went public accusing me of being hysterical and obsessive and of contacting registries. None of which is true but I am very tired of being blamed and used as the beating board when all I did was inform the semen brokers and my fellow breeders of a nasty avoidable death sentence for their future foals. I hope this sets the record straight .
@mary , thank you for posting. I am so sorry that you lost the foal, but I am thankful that you are able to share what has happened. Getting accurate information out is essential, and it sounds like you were put through the wringer in doing so.
Mary Huge hugs to you!!! You are an extremly brave and amazing person for doing this! The more I learn about this, the more I think that it is important to raise awareness for WFFS now because if breeders continue to hide it, there will be a point when too many horses are carriers Its so easy to test and plan the breedings and its so sad that so many horse owners are hiding it.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
