This message is from: Kathy Spiegel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I would like to respectfully reply to Arthur. Going to the end of the post a rhetorical question was asked ( i erased the message so pardon my quote) about where someone would go to buy a Fjord. I would also like to address the prior sentence.
First, I have just bought a Fjord filly and spent more money on it, training and transportation than I have on any other horse. Why did I buy it where I did? I researched the pedigree and asked dumb questions about what the pr and numbers were and listened to the people on the list and when one came up with BDF Malcolm Locke on one side and a bunch of other names on the other with those funny numbers and I talked to the owner, I jumped at the opportunity because as a novice, it was exactly what I was looking for and I trusted the quality that the BDF stands for and the ratings that had been awarded ancestors ( I also fell in love with the picture). I bought her even though I was not quite ready. My point is, people who are willing to pay that much for a horse will do the research and seek out quality. In my humble and not terribly well informed opinion, I think there is room for two ideas, one is a registry, which clearly establishes the pedigree and history and the other is an evaluation which establishes the quality of breeding stock against a somewhat changeable and arbitrary standard. The two need not be mutually exclusive. In the hyperbole of the argument a statement was made that there was not a chance in a million of a stud who had been evaluated to pass on a genetic defect. Here, as a pathologist teaching molecular genetics and diseases at a University I will have to respectfully disagree with the author. It is very well documented that humans and animals all carry potentialy deletorius and fatal genes and can pass them on to their offspring without having the trait appear in either the dam or the sire or in several generations back. They may be recessive or may require another gene for them to be expressed. It is also possible to have a point or spontaneous mutation that arises without prior appearance in the line. While it is true that ruthless culling can reduce the incidence dramatically of dominant traits in a line ( usually quite visible and frequently more cosmetic than life threatening), there are far more recessive and /or linked traits which are not touched by what is called phenotypic culling. Therefore, there is NO guarantee that even with the most ruthless of standards, a stallion will not pass on a recessive trait. It depends on the genes inherited from the other side whether the trait will be expressed in a foal. Likewise, excessive culling for cosmetic faults without knowing linkages can lead to loss of favorable genes. We would be in a mess if the genes for resistance to a particular disease were linked to a slight overbite. Most traits and diseases are multifacotal - one gene does not make one defect. A case in point is the persistance of thalassemias and sickle cell anemias - both potentially fatal diseases in the populations around the mediterranean and Africa. It has been proposed that the reason they are still there in such high frequency and have not been deleted is that those humans who carry the gene, but do not display the disease, are resistant to malaria, allowing them to survive in an environment where "normal" individuals would perish. When we cull without knowing linkages on an already small genetic pool, there is a very real chance that we diminish the diversity of the gene pool. As a person who should have had braces as a kid and the daughter of a man who had one undescended testicle I am glad such standards were not applied to humans. My children had beautiful teeth and my sons testicles were fine. He died as a result of the effects of schizophrenia, a genetically linked disease which neither his parents, grandparents or great grandparents had any evidence of. Sorry for the lecture but I think there is room for both views.. kathy in Southern Idaho where for the first time in three months it is beautiful.
