I’m interested in what you all think about roan Morgan horses, or more specifically, in attempting to preserve or reintroduce the roan color modifier gene into this breed. The last two registered roan Morgans were both born in the late eighties, so cloning, or using an outside cross that was quickly and repeatedly bred back to Morgan blood seem the logical options. What do you think about this?
Maybe put this over on the Breeding forum? There’s some real genetic experts over there that could give you a good answer to that.
I suppose it depends on whether the majority of Morgan breeders and owners want the roan reintroduced bad enough to clone (clone who?) or go outside the breed.
The Morgan Horse Registry has a no clones policy, so if you could locate genetic material from the formerly registered Morgan roans and actually create a clone, you could not register it Morgan.
The Morgan registry is a closed book, no crossbreeding allowed. So that is not a way to create a roan Morgan either.
Rabicano and Sabino roans are all that remain in the Morgan registry.
You would be more likely to be able to register a Morgan cross through something like AWR or PHR, if you need to create a mostly Morgan, roan colored horse.
It would take at minimum of 4-5 generations, though and still wouldn’t be registerable Morgan.
Sorry
I feel the need to add that I don’t think the Morgan breed suffers from having roan unavailable as a color option.
(I admit to admiring the sooty buckskins that have been restored into the breed, though.)
http://www.morgancolors.com/othercolors.htm
Scroll down about halfway for a discussion of roans in the breed. It appears that there were some, but the genetic line has been lost.
At this point, there is no “reintroducing” a gene into the breed. After everything it went through with the behind-the-back crosses to ASBs and Hackneys, this is a good thing.
