With the information we have about the disease and it’s cause is there any “excuse” for having a lethal white foal born today? I don’t have any experience with color breeds but even I know enough to look into the possibility when breeding colored horses. There was a colt born today on Marestare and I was wondering if that is something that can still happen by accident or were they either too lazy to look into it before breeding or too uninformed to be color breeders? Your opinion?
AFAIK, there is a genetic test for it. No?
Yes, you could test or you could not breed two colored horses together (I think)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_white_syndrome
Oh there’s always an excuse. Ignorance tops the bill along with the mindset of not wanting to hear new things, call it mental laziness to be kind shall we?. Thinking that a $25 test is going to break the bank and hey, she’s never thrown one before and did I tell you what a great deal I got on the pinto stud she’s bred to?
Yes you have touched a nerve, thank you.
Yes, there is a test for it.
http://www.horsetesting.com/LWO.htm
No, I don’t think there is any excuse for it happening. Same with any genetic defect that can now be determined by testing: HYPP, SCID, LFS, HERDA, CA, just to name a few. As far as I’m concerned, breeding horses without testing is just totally backyard.
:mad:
This person said something along the lines of she didn’t get her papers until after she bred her. People are offering their condolences while I was looking for torches and pitchforks.
$25!!! I can’t believe it is that inexpensive and still they elect not to do the test.
It seems like a matter of ignorance, since having papers would not tell you squat. (though I think HYPP status is now required on the papers of Impressive breds). Though the AQHA continues to register and allow breeding of N/H which I find incredible.:mad:
I am not an expert, but this is what I understand from reading casually about lethal white: The thing that makes it tricky is that even horses who don’t appear to be frame (like a tobiano) can still carry the frame gene. So I can imagine a scenario where someone thinks they don’t have a frame paint/pinto, breeds to another paint/pinto, and since they didn’t test, ends up with a lethal white foal. They relied on appearances rather than the cold hard facts of the genetic test. What is equally disturbing about this is that the stallion must not have been tested either. So you have two, ah shall we say highly uninformed people breeding. A recipe for disaster as you saw.
And I don’t understand what the papers had to do with it, but as I know nothing about paint/pinto papers, I will refrain from saying what I really think.
Poor poor foal. Didn’t have to happen, and that’s what makes me maddest of all.
Somebody is keeping the mods busy over there so it must not just be me who is disgusted. I am a cam owner there otherwise I would risk being banned.
Here is part of the post. It sounds as if they did test and therefore knew this was likely.
when I bought pocket I lost her papers , by th time I got her papers and sent off to have her tested I had already bred her
[QUOTE=Laurierace;6845887]
Somebody is keeping the mods busy over there so it must not just be me who is disgusted. I am a cam owner there otherwise I would risk being banned.
Here is part of the post. It sounds as if they did test and therefore knew this was likely.
when I bought pocket I lost her papers , by th time I got her papers and sent off to have her tested I had already bred her[/QUOTE]
Was the stallion tested? If she bred to an untested stallion, she really did a dumb thing IMHO. I think she’s just trying to cover her posterior at this point. Way sad and totally unnecessary. Poor baby foal!
No excuses. I have a SOLID Paint-bred mare who I haven’t tested, so I make 100% sure that the stallions I choose for her are tested/documented negative, regardless of their phenotype. So one can even be lazy (that’s all I can attribute my lack of testing to – oh I’ll get around to it) and ensure that there is no lethal white foal.
I was just browsing a website today and they have N/H foals still being born. That means either mom or dad is H/H or N/H and they are breeding this selection on purpose.
ETA: Just went back and looked at the website. The stallion is N/H. Nothing is said about any of the mares.
The AQHA will no longer register H/H horses but does accept N/H. So, the breeding of horses with a terrible and easily solved, (as in don’t breed horses that have an autosomal dominant genetic disorder) continues…:mad::mad:
[QUOTE=oldernewbie;6845915]
Was the stallion tested? If she bred to an untested stallion, she really did a dumb thing IMHO. I think she’s just trying to cover her posterior at this point. Way sad and totally unnecessary. Poor baby foal![/QUOTE]
I don’t know. I imagine they aren’t going to give anymore info than they already have.
[QUOTE=skydy;6846022]
The AQHA will no longer register H/H horses but does accept N/H. So, the breeding of horses with a terrible and easily solved, (as in don’t breed horses that have an autosomal dominant genetic disorder) continues…:mad::mad:[/QUOTE]
I don’t have a paint or QH but I did spend some time around some breeders and they believe that horses with an H get bigger muscles, a look the halter breeders like. So they go ahead and breed them, even though you end up with some H/H ones, and some symptomatic N/H ones. They sent the H/H ones off to auction, I think. I knew of some other folks whose N/H stallion died of an HYPP attack, so that didn’t work out so well either.
And even if AQHA wasn’t registering the N/H ones, so far the paint registry and the Appaloosa registry (I think) will register both N/H and H/H, so HYPP is still rolling around out there.
Not a pretty picture.
No, there is absolutely no excuse. None. Ignorance abounds though, well, it’s worse than ignorance because you can fix that by education, but you can’t fix stupid.
There are still Paint breeders who INSIST, despite the very simple concept of the Punnet Square, they have a better chance of a colored Frame foal if the breed nO to nO.
There is ONLY a 50% chance of a live (nO) foal no matter if you breed nn x nO, or nO x nO.
The nO x nO breeding gives you a 25% chance of nn, and 25% chance of OO - lethal, where nn x nO gives you the other 50% as nn.
The stupid Paint breeders still tell you the 25% chance is not right, and that it’s really lower than that :rolleyes: :no:
Anyone breeding anything ought to be required to pass a basic competency test on lethal breeding situations, which goes beyond Lethal White. There are other breeds with other lethal consequences, and there are other breeds besides Paints that have LWO issues, including TBs (though just a very few lines).
that test ought to include knowing or learning that an absolutely 100% solid horse not a single white hair, can be a Frame carrier.
So no, there is no excuse.
Breeding is fraught with heart ache and worry in the best of situations. I can’t imagine rolling the dice like that.
It is too true Oldernewbie.
If the AQHA would have dealt with this oh…20 years ago, perhaps HYPP wouldn’t have made it into the gene pool of other breeds. It just boggles the mind that breed associations are so irresponsible and short sighted. How many horses suffer only because the breed association lacked the guts to take the obvious measures as soon as HYPP was discovered?
It’s not in the gene pool of other breeds - it didn’t jump ship 
It’s on the gene pool of mixed breeds.
If the AQHA had put a stop to registering ?H horses when the test became available in 1992, it would not be NEARLY the issue it is now. But, it would still be around, because it was 17 years between Impressive being born and the disease even identified, which meant at least 12 years of people breeding to him, then to his nH sons, breeding his nH daughters, in/line breed to create the HH horses, and by then it’s just too late 
