Horse Genetics Resources
The other big project is the launch of our coat colour calculator. We will set it up to do lots of different things. The first is just being able to see which genes give which colours and patterns, so everyone can have…
Homozygous, along with her friend heterozygous, are (as far as I can tell) jargon developed purely with the aim of making genetics seem hard. Let explain what homozygous means for mammals – that includes us and all our hairy companions. Homozygous: both…
We made an interesting accidental discovery a little while ago: d1 (nd1) is extremely common in Arabian horses! A batch of Arabian horses were accidentally tested for dun/d1 (nd1) instead of CA, and when I looked at the results every single horse…
This one is a common question: buckskin or not? This filly’s coat varies from season to season. We’ve tested her for agouti, red/black, cream and dun/d1 (nd1) to find out. Responses on this one were roughly equal for buckskin vs. not buckskin….
We have an answer! Zeus is actually chestnut, not taffy (silver) at all. He also has two copies of d1 (nd1). Overall, we tested Zeus for agouti, red/black, silver, cream, dun/d1 and W20. The agouti and red/black tests were to find out…
We have one last example of a SB1 + W20 horse to share. This is Zips Stormy Showdown, a Paint horse colt. Zips Stormy Showdown is a chestnut with both sabino 1 and W20, but no other known pattern genes. Just like…
We’ve already shown you one example of how much white you can get when a foal inherits a copy of sabino 1 from one parent, and a copy of W20 from the other. Here is our next example: Tahmathor Park Colonial Jasper….
As many horse breeders would know, foals sometimes turn up looking completely different to what was expected. This Miniature horse foal is Yarreh Lane Flash Gentleman Jack. His dam (Yarreh Lane Morning Star) is black with a small star, and his sire…
Did you know that nearly thirty different types of dominant white have been found in horses so far? They are all different mutations in one gene, called the KIT gene. Horses are unique among domesticated animals in having so many different variants…
One of the tests we are working on at the moment is Splashed White 3 (SW3). When that’s up and running we will have the full SW1/SW2/SW3 set! Our SW3 test is nearly ready to go, but we’d love a sample from…