Mine’s also got Royal Charger. http://www.pedigreequery.com/hot+elvin
Huh. How interesting!
Does anyone remember the OLD pedigree query message board from eons ago? There were a few people there who were VERY opposed to linebreeding on Turn-To, and said it was a great source of unsoundness and frailty. It’s not a sentiment I’ve really seen consistently anywhere else, but intriguing considering all this…wish I could remember who was so vehement about it.
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My money is that it’s something through Phalaris or earlier in time along his lines. (Which would, in turn, include grandsons Royal Charger and Turn-To, as well as Nasrullah and Nearco)
The degree of Phalaris in modern horses has already been scrutinized.
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I read somewhere that Turn-To had crooked front legs and tended to pass that on, which was the source of the unsoundness.
Dug this out of my files:
From: “The Congenital Malformation of the 6th and 7th Cervical Vertebrae in Horses” Presenter: Sharon May-Davis At the Bowker Lectures in 2013, Sharon May-Davis presented a discussion on; “An Observation in Thoroughbred Horses of a Congenital Malformation in C6 and C7.” Since then it has been published in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science 34 (2014), pp. 1313- 1317 DOI information: 10.1016/j.jevs.2014.09.012 under the following title; “The Occurrence of a Congenital Malformation in the 6th and 7th Cervical Vertebrae predominately observed in Thoroughbred Horses.”
Since publication, the new stats are 23:60 Thoroughbreds and 3:4 Thoroughbred derivatives AND a C6 unilateral absence of a CVT on the left side has now been reported in a STANDARDBRED. This breed stems from two Thoroughbred foundation sires born in the latter half of the 1700’s, notably Messenger and Diomed. Both stallions were exported to America from the United Kingdom and became prolific sires in Thoroughbred and Standardbred breeding programs.
DOES THIS HELP?
The blog post partially answers your question: They know which TB bloodlines this can be found in, but those are so widely distributed within the breed that it’s not terribly helpful to specify those.
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Also, Impressive was a relatively recent horse. If the relevant mutation arose in him, and if the breeding patterns within the quarter horse population were pretty “siloed” (i. e. halter horses bred to halter horses, cutters to cutters, HUS horses to more of those types), it would be a much easier proposition to circumscribe the individuals that carried the genetics for the problem.
If you find the genetic origin further back in an interbreeding population and/or (or and/also) the breeding patterns in the population are less focused, you will have a harder time isolating the relevant sub-population carrying this heritable trait.
Messenger and Diomed… that’s really far back… And interesting.
I hope that this doesn’t come across as a stupid question but could high/low shoulder come from this malformation?
My gelding is a KWPN TB with Ribot on the sire side and Native Dancer Neartic on the dam side. He definitely has one shoulder higher than the other and right fore hoof is different from left fore.
This malformation
may not have anything to do it but reading this thread made me wonder.
Any insight would be appreciated.
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That is a super interesting question. I know someone local to me who might have an idea. I’ll see what I can do about asking her.
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The shoulder is a reflection of the rest of the horse and how they move since the front legs are only attached with soft tissue. Most horse have higher and lower shoulder or not even front to back. Very rarely do I have a horse that has mostly even shoulders. It is something I check as a saddle fitter.
If you are really diligent and there is not structure reason your horse moves asymmetricaly, you can even them up. I did it with my 23 year old tb after years of unevenness. It took over a year of hard work.
If your horse has high/low hoofs or hooves that are not the same, it radiates up the front legs to the shoulders.
Not saying that could not be playing a part of your horses uneven shoulders, but I would not use it as an indication that your horse has the malformation.
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Thank you both. I wasn’t too worried about it. But I did wonder if there is a correlation. A lot of horses are asymmetrical.
On myelogram, my 2x Seattle Slew mare was found to have severely malformed C6/C& and more than 60% compressed spinal column. My money is on Slew.
I have one post pending, but figured I’d pop in about this. A malforned C6/C7 is common modern breeds like WBs and TBs, it’s not from a recent ancestor (like Slew) and, it’s not a precursor to development of clinical signs of cervical arthritis. Meaning horses can have the malformation and not have cervical arthritis or clinical symptoms.
Slew was older (26?) when he had his basket surgeries. That’s well and advanced in horse years and some degree of narrowing or arthritis in the spine of a successful racehorse and successful sire is to be expected. That’s a life time of hard work on one body. So it doesn’t raise flags for me – or it didn’t – until I started running into offspring of his with who were demonstrating ataxia, CA, ‘wobblers’, narrowing channels, and/or compression.
There’s definitely a connection between Seattle Slew and cervical arthritis in his offspring, but it doesn’t seem to be consistent, and I don’t understand the mode of inheritance myself. It’s not always related to any sort of malformation in the C6/C7 either, from what I can see. AP Indy, his best son, doesn’t seem to have the same predisposition, and his offspring are now old enough where CA would show up in most cases. However, it didn’t escape my notice that Slew is almost all but gone from modern pedigrees unless through AP Indy – and I wonder if that is related to cervical arthritis.
I’ve said this on the forum before, but the only time I let an individual “hard stop” my interest when they show up in a pedigree is when it is Slew twice. Even if through AP Indy, I think it’s risky and until we understand more about the disease, it’s not a risk I can take.
P.S, sorry to hear about your horse. I had a Slew also, and he was 21 when he started demonstrating signs of cervical arthritis. At the time I knew very little about it, my vets too. Cervical arthritis / cervical compression sucks.
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Most everyone else’s money is on a horse many generations farther back!
Interesting, also curious how this ties in to broader research across the species into the disappearance of the nuchal ligament attachments to c7 and c6. https://horsesandpeople.com.au/the-mystery-of-the-missing-lamellae/
Well, that is problematic. It’s hardly practical to have a vet x ray the entire barn. I still think they should list the bloodlines. With line breeding being so common, you would want to avoid line breeding to those particular lines. If they would publish that information.
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My Selle Francias mare had the Bagby Basket surgery on C6-C7 18 years ago when she was a yearling. Her dam side had Royal Charger in her pedigree.
I think they did, someone mentioned above it was Messenger and Diomed. Those are very far back (1700s), and you can’t swing a cat without hitting a TB, WB, QH, or STB with those horses in their pedigree.
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Been following this with interest. I have a young WB gelding from a TB mare who is horribly asymetrical in the shoulders, high/low in front, and has always been a little nqr but nothing substantial we could put our finger on. Just looked and he’s got Royal Charger x2 on damside through Turn To.
