Don Principe who is a verified carrier is German bred; Sternlicht’s sire, Soliman is German bred, as are all the other horses in his pedigree, except possibly his dam who is from two German breds. I am certain that Kareen who is in Germany and is working on this would deny that it is not a German problem.
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This is true, so why would Paul S. punt on the testing comment? If many stallion owners and stations elsewhere have said they will test, why won’t he do it? As someone who is thinking of breeding in the near future, I wouldn’t want to work with a stallion owner or station that would refuse to test.
Does he think his stallions prestige is enough that people will come to him regardless?
What I really want to know is why not? The test, as far as genetic tests go, is dirt cheap. I mean, really - horse people are truly lucky – that test in particular is around $100 all told, I believe… that’s a drop in the bucket for many of these big stallion stations.
My assumption, given how staunch he is against a relatively cheap test, that he does not want to know the answer…
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Depending upon the registry here it is $35-45, not sure about in Germany. I think the not wanting to know is spot on however. Hopefully mare owners will pressure him enough he has no choice although I imagine the response will be test your mare so you don’t have to worry about it.
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A few things stick out to me as I’ve been following this story and the discussions related to it.
First, I’m very happy to see that it sounds like more and more people are both discussing it (spreading the news/awareness) and saying that they’ll test. I was dismayed to see PS’s commentary, but it also reported that both Glock and Lodbergen expressed that they would be testing. I think that’s a phenomenal step.
That aside, I think breeding ethics is going to always be a bit of a murky grey area. It’s easy to forget that not everyone’s breeding goals will line up, and people’s options (and opinions) are framed by resources and availability.
There may be someone who has a carrier mare who is interested in eliminating the gene but they also have cultivated bloodlines/characteristics in that mare that they can’t access elsewhere (either financially, geographically, or it simply doesn’t exist). In that position, the breeder may elect to breed to a non-carrier stallion that they feel compliments the mare and works with their breeding program, to get a non-carrier filly to replace the mare in the breeding program. (Multi-generational phasing out of carrier stock, essentially.)
Then there’s people who believe that with information/management, having this gene in the population isn’t necessarily a problem. So long as people know which horses are carriers and can avoid breeding carrier to carrier, it’s possible to avoid a homozygous positive foal. (This of course, is predicated on the accessibility of testing results - first, people need to test. Second, people need to make their test results public. This is especially key for stallion owners to do because if a breeder has a carrier mare and requires a positive stallion, they’re limited by the information they can access.)
There’s also those who believe that carriers should be removed from the population, effective immediately. Those breeding programs that feel this will continue to generate non-carrier horses (stallions that hopefully in time end up getting licensed, mares who go on to breed).
Undoubtedly there’s other “camps” (or nuances of) but at the end of the day, I don’t see why it’s unreasonable that all of these coexist. The ideology doesn’t line up, I understand, but breeders who phase out carriers and those who carefully breed carriers will still have chances of creating non-carrier animals that can also be used by those who believe that only non-carriers should continue breeding. (Likewise, if a program comes out staunchly saying their personal breeding ethics have dictated they only breed non-carrier animals, anything produced by that program will be non-carrier which is of benefit to the other breeding groups as well.)
The idea of a uniform answer/resolution is appealing, but there’s no real one size fits all. At the end of the day, the easiest way to ensure people avoid spending a lot of money for a pregnancy that isn’t carried to term (or results in a foal who has to endure the condition for their short hours of life) is to test. The more people know, the easier it is for them to make an educated decision. Hopefully PS and those that share his opinions find themselves changing their minds and electing to test and make available those reports with repeated queries from mare owners who wish to be able to make informed decisions.
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I admit, this thread was sometimes very hard to bear for me (although I knew this when I started the topic because in dogs it was the same)
but now finally a great great post!! Thanks Edre!!
Thats exactly it!
Thats the best (and the only) way to deal with it to accept each others differences and tp do what you want to do and what you feel good with…
Schockemohle must be OK with the loss of business from the owners of carrier mares who still want to breed them. I can’t imagine any mare owner would gamble on breeding a carrier mare to a stallion that hasn’t been tested.
I really wonder if they (Schockemohle’s people) have read up on the issue. Why would they at this point in time opine that the problem isn’t present in Germany, if they actually understood the genetics involved in WFFS transmission and the fact that (so far) there is no display of any issues in carriers?
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My guess why Schockemöhle is reacting like he is…
First of all he thinks this is a very rare condition and compared to the numbers of foal being born every year not worth looking into it. So for him this is not important at all.
Second he might have heard some rumors about specific stallions being carriers and I don’t think he likes these rumors. Maybe he thinks being a carrier makes a horse defective … I don’t know him but many people who are not experienced with these topics think so. And I am not sure how many horse breeders are really experts on that topic yet. I know he loves his horses so I don’t think he would like to know anything which makes his horses defective…who does…
Then there is the big economic loss. I am sure he does not want to loose money because of some funny ideas of some people…
I think that he is trying to sit it out. it worked in the past so why not now.
But I am not sure whether this is the best strategy. I think in 2013 when the test was developed the stallion owners blocked it and soon everybody forgot about it. But now it is different. And the first stallion owners changed sides already and more are following. The more stallions are tested the weaker his position is going to be.
I think its a matter of time till he will test as well.
PS has a good sense of humor and he isn’t stupid. I believe his statement must not be falsely interpreted. I daresay it is his way of saying that it is not WFFS he considers a problem but a bunch of ladies who want to know about it…
Your assuming he might lose roughly 10% of his semen business is factoring in something as a foregone conclusion that is nowhere realistic in Europe, namely that all mare owners will test each and all of their broodmares. I was talking to Dr. Gunreben yesterday and while I am quietly working away during foal watch nights on my inofficial and confidential case data archive these are yesterday’s new facts: a) Nobody knows how many horses have been tested for it thus far and while most warmblood studbooks keep fairly correct pedigree information that often dates back into the 18th and 19th century there are many horses in WB breeding out there who have incomplete pedigrees. Even some of the most prolific sporthorse sires don’t always have their pedigrees completely known into the days when the WFFS mutation tentatively occurred. There is also nowhere to seek for validated info as to how large a population we precisely have that define warmbloods. Not all WB-registries are WBFSH-governed and even those that are come with a ton of unverified pedigrees, there is the aspect of a quite significant rate of falsely documented pedigrees (which brought on the mandatory DNA-verification of pedigree with many main registries years ago). And we have a situation where nearly everybody is waiting for everyone else to do something (read make their cases and carriers known to the public) while the decision making as far as European registries go is vastly determined by commercial interest not scientific, ethical or emotional concerns.
b) there is no official strategy as of yet except for a few registries who have announced they will require testing of stallions. Stallion testing alone won’t help us because it will only lead to carrier stallions being avoided by mare owners who are too lazy, too cheap or too scared to test their own stock. If mares go by untested we will keep seeing carriers popping up and the incidence is not goig to go down at all as each carrier has a 50% chance with each mating to reproduce the allele. What we do know is that many of the horses identified thus far are highly successful and have been bred to not dozens but hundreds and even thousands of times. So eradicating the diease by kicking carriers out of breeding is going to cause a massive loss to the gennetic diversity and is bound to bring up new and to date entirely unknown defects.
c) There are Holsteiners and Trakehners affected (something I didn’t know for a fact until yesterday.
This is it with my share of negative news so here’s the positives:
Laboklin has reduced their testing price to 35 Euro net and has granted this price through end of July so anybody European no longer has an excuse not to test their stock in the fact that testing is more affordable elsewhere on the planet 
And the other good news is that reportedly quite a few stallion owners have moved forward by announcing their intentions to test their stallions, Lodbergen and Dr. Brockmann being among them. (Again no breeder should use this as a motive not to test their own stock because sticking to n/n tested stallions without knowing your mares’ status will neither stop nor mimimize the condition nor will it release professionals (e.g. regular sellers, vets, stallion owners selling semen) from the liability aspects going with a condition that is available for testing.
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The AES studbook has asked the owners of stallions to have their horses tested. The AES will keep record of test results for all potential breeders to be looked up.
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But with all the reciprocal registries, unless they make a rule that foals from untested stallions will not be registered unless they test clear, what good will that do?
I don’t follow this post-could you clarify? KWPN’s statement (all registered stallions will be tested) had no inclusion of the concept that stallions must not be carriers. They’ll be tested and the results will be made accessible on KWPN’s site so mare owners can make breeding decisions on a combination of factors that they feel contribute to selecting the best stallion for their horse.
KWPN isn’t saying anything that stallions must not be carriers or that carriers must not be bred. Merely that all approved stallions will be tested.
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Yes, but the KWPN accepts foals for registry that come from stallions from other registries that have, as yet, not suggested that their stallions be tested. So the policy that stallions be tested for KWPN licensing will do nothing to slow the spread of the allele.
Unless, of course, you think that the allele is nothing to worry about in the long term.
A colt being accepted for registry is not automatically licensed as a KWPN breeding stallion, is it?
At this point in time the registries seem to be trying to make rules that make information available to mare owners. I don’t think they are trying to eliminate the problem right now. It is early days yet.
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Why on earth would Schockemhole believe that “ladies” are the only breeders interested in the problem?
Stallion owners and mare owners could of course point fingers at each other and suppose that the other will be careless and not test, but let’s hope the situation doesn’t devolve into that sort of idiocy.
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KWPN’s policy isn’t about slowing the spread of the allele. It doesn’t suggest an approach that removes carriers from breeding. It seems to be falling in line with the statement that the GOV released, which essentially is a strong recommendation to avoid breeding two carriers together (going as far to say that owners of carrier stallions should require mare owners produce a WFFS-negative test result before fulfilling the breeding) - and KWPN has approached that by determining that stallions approved for breeding should be tested & their results will be accessible.
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The allele is something that has been around for a very long time- decades, perhaps as far back as the 1800s. We( most breeders) were not even aware it existed until this year due to the bravery of a single mare owner and the advancement of science. There wasn’t even a test for this until a couple of years ago. I find it ironic that so many are advocating culling horses that are carriers now that we have been given a test to identify and control lethal combinations of WFFS.
The breeder who stepped forward has been vilified, called a “hysterical American woman” in the press. Watching some of the public comments about culling and eliminating carriers, on this thread, on FB and in the printed press, many breeders who have tested and have a n/wffs carrier are not coming forward because they are concerned about how they will be viewed, how their horses might be devalued in future sales. This lack of reported numbers effects the ability to track and determine realisticly the actual numbers in the general population.
Being a carrier or even producing an offspring that is a carrier, is nothing to panic over. All this is about is getting breeders to have more information to make informed and ethical choices in their breeding programs. Requiring that all approved stallions be tested allows breeders to avoid a potentially lethal result.
WFFS is not going to suddenly explode due to its recessive nature and being lethal. It is rare and always has been, that’s why nearly no one was considering testing until this mare owner went public. So there is no need to spread panic. Yes it is fatal and yes it should be addressed but with a sensible approach the problem can be solved. We should be a lot more worried over drastically increasing EHV, metabolic disorders and other issues which are causing a lot more grief to both breeders and horses around the world.
The current outcry will hopefully bring more transparency to breeding and then fade away because WFFS really doesn’t have to be a problem.
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Ah. I hadn’t seen the “hysterical American woman” quote. That explains Schockemohle’s statement.
But he is not going to resist much longer… Blue Hors is testing their horses and every stallion in the Netherlands will be tested as well.
