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Wild horses just make me so emotional man just look at those living cave paintings

And once more we’re talking about horse genetics. Let’s take a look at the frame overo.

Here’s a look at how a pairing of two overo horses might look. 50% of the resulting foals would be overos, 25% would be solid colored horses, and 25% would be lethal white foals that wouldn’t survive more than a few days.

suspiciousmammal

This is part 2 of a small series on the genetics behind horse colors. We’re talking about the cream gene today! oh god

So far all of the genes we talked about were either dominant or recessive. Cream, however, is an incomplete dominant gene:

While I used the chestnut as an example here, Cream has very different effects on the different base coats:

As you can see, while black pigment isn’t entirely unaffected by Cream, the diluting effect is much more obvious in combination with red pigment. Some Smokey Blacks look identical to regular black horses, or they get mistaken for a slightly sunbleached black horse.

Telling apart the different types of double dilutes is tricky. Both Perlinos and Smokey Creams have manes and tails that tend to be slightly darker than their coat, while cremellos tend to have manes that match the color of their coat. But this also varies between individuals. Sometimes a gene test is your safest bet to identify what’s hidden under a double dilute’s coat.

snailtongue

[ID: Two horses walking side by side in a field. They both have their ears back and look a little ornery.] via

horsesarecreatures

Hi ok so this may be a stupid question bc I know maybe like a whole two things about horses but how similar/different is clicker training in horses compared to like dogs?

Oh great question! I'm just going to speak from my own personal experience rather than generally because I haven't clicker trained many animals that aren't my own and have only read like a book per animal on the subject, but I would say horses are far more likely to get overwhelmed or frustrated during clicker training sessions if they don't understand something. I've found that it's really important to keep sessions short with them, especially in the beginning, because if they don't understand something or feel like they are not being awarded quickly enough for their efforts they will put their ears back and might nip or try to grab the treat. With dogs, the sessions should still be kept short because they learn better that way, but I’ve never had a terrible consequence for starting with 20 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes when working with them.

If my dogs don't understand something, they might get fidgety and break their focus by spinning or yapping at me. But their tails will always still be wagging. I don't think I've ever clicker trained a dog and had the dog get upset. But with horses, especially when I was starting out and just assumed that they would love it, I've actually gotten some very explosive reactions. For example, when I was teaching my old horse Chip to do some stuff at liberty like back up, I got an angry rear once when I delayed rewarding because he had gotten the basic concept and I wanted him to do it a bit faster. It's very, very important to make the sessions short with horses and quit while you're ahead. Here is a link to one of sdequus' videos where she was doing liberty work with her colt; she does a great job of explaining how to keep their energy level low. Sometimes you have to quit training whatever you intended to teach them for the session and just reward them for exhibiting relaxed behavior when they're prone to getting overexcited or frustrated.

With dogs, the first thing you do with clicker training is get them to make eye contact with you then reward. But with horses, the first thing you teach them is not to mug treats from you and respect your space, because most will become pushy and even dangerous if you skip this step.

I would say horses are also more likely than dogs not to be food motivated, and you may have to find some other way to reward them like massage.

mother-of-friesians

Is colour breeding inherently bad?

Personally, I don’t think so.

But the way it’s done decides really. I don’t have a problem with breeders who aim for colour, but thoroughly go through their options, pick and choose which sire and dam would fit each other the best and mostly, improve.

Everything has to start somewhere. A lot of people have been saying “a good horse doesn’t have a colour”, but a lot of those people would also pass on a palomino or cremello warmblood simply because they assume it must be poorly bred. Right now, perhaps I would agree, many of the ‘special coloured’ studs are not necessarily on par with the ‘normal coloured’ studs. Let’s take a look at KWPN’s own Edmundo:

Edmundo falls under the branch Gelders Paard. Gelderse & Groningse paarden were the foundation of what is today KWPN, but they still have their own branch within KWPN, besides the Harness horse and the dressage/jumping branches. They were originally intended as the ideal all-round horse that could be used for farm work, as carriage horse and riding horse. Edmundo is currently Third Level (I think!) dressage. Excuse me if this is wrong, because we use a different class system here. He also performs at intermediate driving level. See below:

Would there be more correct Gelderse studs? I’m sure there are. If you breed purely for that, then I’m sure some breeders would pass on him.

On the other hand, I really don’t see why some of us SHOULDN’T want to achieve both: a nice colour and a quality horse. Edmundo is not a good fit for every mare and certainly not my favourite palomino out there, but he does have qualities that some breeders would like to improve their mares on. (Do keep in mind that these different branches exist for different reasons: Edmundo is a descendant of Saddlebred Holland’s Golden Boy, a saddlebred who was brought here to bring fresh blood to the harness horse breed. You will see a different type of horse than a dressage or jumping bred horse.)

When this question was asked in other communities, the majority of replies said ‘breeding for colour is not done, quality should come first’ and I find that a narrow minded and kind of simple train of thoughts to some degree. If you turn it around, the answer becomes totally different. Often I see people have requirements for their next studs such as:

- no grays

- preferably no chestnut factor

- would prefer a black stallion

etc. Those are not shunned. In my opinion, that is a form of colour breeding as well, the difference being that with these colours there is a lot of quality choices you could make. (And even then, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s also the right stud for your mare.)

Back in the day, painted warmbloods were not accepted. Even good painted warmbloods were turned away, simply for their colour. Was that not bad? Is that okay, simply because the horse has spots on it’s body? Now that times are changing, and people actually WANT a horse other than your typical bay, black or chestnut, in the warmblood pool we are suddenly seeing that people want to breed for painted horses but there is simply not a lot of (good) options. Those options are limited in my opinion partially because at some point in time they were turned away and thus didn’t spread their genes very much.

Another issue in this line: due to the lack of painted studs, most painted KWPN horses nowadays have a stallion common in their line: I introduce to you, the legendary Samber.

Samber, pictured here at age 26, was approved for KWPN as a three year old. Born in 1976 by Pericles xx out of a Gelders(e) dam, Samber soon proved to be versatile. I believe he competed at 1.30m show jumping and eventually would go on to GP dressage:

The issue then became that there was not much choice - if you were trying to breed a pinto coloured horse - that was not somehow related to Samber. If you’re breeding a painted warmblood to a “”normal”” warmblood, this wasn’t much of an issue, but to further the pool of these horses it ran kind of dry. Nowadays, one of the most frequent requirements when people with a painted mare or wanting to breed one is: “stallion must not contain any Samber blood”. That’s not so easy when there is so little choice.

We see the same in Friesians, who did not all USE to be black. KFPS singlehandedly made sure that there is very little chance of a non-black Friesian foal. And if there is… Well, you can’t really do much with that. This is also a form of colour breeding, whether we like it or not, and I don’t believe it is for the greater good (because honestly, if you exclude all the stallions - or mares - that carry the chestnut gene, it’s not really doing your genetic pool any good). I have seen various chestnut Friesians as well as black Friesians with white markings with a full Friesian pedigree, who look and act just like our ‘classic’ Friesians, but simply will not get anywhere near the studbook simply because of their colour and marks.

Colour breeding can be good. Look at riding ponies. Why would it not be possible to breed good quality coloured warmbloods, when there’s an abundance of good quality coloured riding ponies for example? The breeding is behind in quality perhaps, but certainly doesn’t mean that to breed for a coloured warmblood is inherently bad, as long as the breeder intends on breeding quality into it and not breeding a coloured horse simply because it has a special colour and could potentially spread that.

Coloured horses in any breed where they are rare will never be of good quality if there is no one to achieve that dream.

That still does not mean I support all colour breeding - while I myself like these rarer colours, I certainly also value responsible and well thought breeding the most. That being said, there will not be a magical quality palomino, cremello or tobiano. They don’t come falling out of the sky, we have to get it there. I’m kind of sick of hearing judgements just by seeing a colour as if colours are the devil.

pogphotoarchives

African American cowboy George McJunkin –who was also an amateur archaeologist and the discoverer of the Folsom Man site– riding the horse “Headless”, New Mexico Here is a good summary of McJunkin’s life and discovery

Date: 1911? Negative Number 050884