Rather than a detriment, it’s far more likely that carriers receive the benefit of increased elasticity from their heterozygosity. I have read somewhere, but I can’t remember where, that some breeders think HERDA carriers receive that benefit.
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That is certainly possible, and coming back full circle to some comments and thoughts I had early in this thread. To my knowledge, there is zero research going on looking at any effects of carriers, positive or negative. I hope there’s something out there, as I think it’s worthwhile compiling a database to try to determine if there’s any increase OR decrease in performance and/or injury rate. I’m not holding my breath, as that’s a gigantic undertaking to do well.
There was some preliminary look at the structure of ligaments and tendons of hetero HERDA horses and some theories as to what the findings could mean to the performance horse, but to my knowledge, nothing more in depth than that. But for sure, there are absolutely breeders who think it gives the horse an advantage. But IMHO those breeders are looking at correlation = causation, and that’s a dangerous way to think. For all we know, the HERDA carriers are of quality enough bloodlines that it’s the pedigree which is responsible for their success, and it just happens to be that in breeding those successful horses who incidentally were HERDA carriers, they created a subset of “quality horses who also carry HERDA”. It is not valid to state that being a carrier is the cause of their success. Not without the research.
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So to sum it up … Right now there is no evidence that there is anything be it negative or positive correlated with carriers of WFFS. And after beeing around for 170 years I don’t think there is anything to be exspected
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Not true. The mutated Y chromosome in the TB occurred in the mid to late 1700s, and it’s only in the the last 50 years or so that it has come to be present in 95% of all TB sires. (It’s also the Y chromosome for WBs.) We have no idea what it does, but it’s obviously a benefit, or it wouldn’t have driven out the older version. It took over two hundred years for that to happen.
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If the allele for WFFS is i 95% of all TB sires, then why don’t we hear more about it in the racing community?
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what are you talking about??? is this WFFS??
It has nothing whatsoever to do with WFFS. The Y chromosome is what makes a male horse male. Males have YX; females have XX. There are only three Y chromosome variants in the horse, IIRC, two of which are very, very old. The Y chromosome passes unchanged from a father to his male descendants through time unless it is mutated. The TB mutation variant in a son or grandson of Eclipse occurred in the late 1700s and is now in 95% of all horse sirelines that derive from the TB. Eclipse didn’t have it; other sire sons of Eclipse didn’t have it; only the Pot8os/Waxy/Whalebone branch of Eclipse has it, and that is 95% of TBs and horses with TB sirelines today.
I was using the mutated Y as an paradigm for how a genetic mutation can be spread very widely in a population through selective breeding even if the mutation per se isn’t recognized as a benefit.
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Now that Apache has been tested as positive, does anybody know if UB40 has been tested or what line is responsible for Apache’s?
No one knows. I personally have a suspicion that Amor started WFFS in the Netherlands. But that’s just my own suspicion.
How was it determined which branches had this mutation? How was it determined that Eclipse didn’t have it?
I believe the phrase you intended was “I heard a rumor through the grapevine”. Unless you have a similar phrase in German referring to “graveyard”?
At any rate, we know that rumors are not necessarily accurate, and hinting that one knows something because of a rumor is not helpful. Would you please share what you know, or a source for the solution you say the German Registries will have?
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Genetic testing. The Y Chromosome doesn’t change from father to son. Eclipse had another branch (King Fergus) whose line survived to today, and the King Fergus descendants don’t have the mutated Y. Also, there was genetic testing done on Eclipse’s remains. Therefore the mutation had to have occurred in a later sire son of Eclipse. Since it appears only in the Pot8os descendants, it is thought to have occurred in either him, Waxy or Whalebone. It could also have occurred in Eclipse semen. However, Whalebone is considered “the founder”. I’m not sure quite how accurate the timeline is, but genetics folks can determine how old a mutation is somehow.
The English Thoroughbred, which is best known for its use in horse racing, has a complete studbook since 1791 and all registered males can be traced back to one of three popular founders. Among them, the paternal line of Darley Arabian currently represents almost all male Thoroughbreds [47]. Pedigree analysis revealed that all HT3-carrying males can be traced to the single Thoroughbred “Whalebone”, born 1807" a son of “Pot8os”. Hence, the mutation leading from HT2 to HT3 must have occurred either in the germline of the famous racehorse “Eclipse” or in that of his son “Waxy” or grandson “Pot8os” (Fig. 4). The frequency of HT3 rose to 96.5% in the English Thoroughbred and to 41% in modern sport horse breeds in our dataset within 15–20 generations
The cited article says this, along with some interesting information about the horse Y Chromosome in general.
Sorry that I used the wrong expression :(. I probably should have looked it up.
And I will not share yet what I know. But IMO the source is extremly reliable. So as soon as the announcement is made I will share it!!!
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But will they release whatever they plan to do before the 2018 breeding season?
There is a post on the WFFS Facebook group that says that an N/N mare bred to Schockemoehle’s Balou du Rouet has produced a WFFS carrier foal. Stallion is, of course, very popular in the jumping world. The stallion station has not released any results of testing to date, so take that for what its worth. In fact, PS has said this is a tempest in a teapot and will be forgotten in a short time.
I have personally seen the N/WFFS test results of the Balou offspring and its N/N mare, in case there was any doubt.
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I just found this on the Celle website:
[h=1]WFFS[/h]
Dear breeders,
for several months WFFS (Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome) is on everyone’s lips. In the last few weeks we tested our stallions, which we offer with fresh or frozen semen. The results can be found on our homepage at the corresponding stallion. Of course we also publish them in our stallion directory 2019. After all, we don´t want that your mare get a childless foal because of hereditary disease WFFS. However, there are only two carriers of the genetic defect are mated with each other and even then, there is only a 25 percent risk. We therefore recommend that you have your mare (s) tested.
https://landgestuetcelle.de/en/news/wffs.html
So then I did what they suggested in English AND German and couldn’t find test results for any stallion. But since this press release was only 5 days ago, maybe they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
not sure where you looked but the results are there… I just saw them a minute ago when I looked up the page of a stallion
I found them too a few days ago. You have to look on the individual stallion page. Results are on the right with other information.
Agree with the above: I was able to access the information on the website the day of the press release. You simply have to click on the stallion’s page to see status. And keep in mind that searching the german site provides more (all?) of the stallions, rather than the english one so if you want to look at all the pages to find all the carriers, you’ll have to navigate it from the german platform. I believe there are 12 total.
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