Horse Genetics Resources
The Department of Agriculture has just updated the list of countries we can accept samples from. Quite a few have been removed from the list:We can no longer accept samples from: South and Central America Most of Asia (Japan, Macau and Singapore…
Thanks to all the input from our clients, we have updated our SW2 page. We’ve included where this gene came from (Katie Gun) and we no longer say it’s only found in Paint horses! You will now find SW2 listed under “pure-…
Does anyone know of any Shetland ponies or Miniatures that definitely have the mushroom dilution in Australia? It’s a pheomelanin (red) pigment dilution, and it’s recessive. It turns chestnut into a colour a bit like a cool shade of silver dapple and…
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…
Not all foals get a name as soon as they pop out. To keep their paperwork clear and unambiguous we recommend referring to un-named foals in the following way: Mare’s name-year-sex For example if your mare Caramel Kisses has a colt this…
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 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…