This message is from: "Anneli Sundkvist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sini wrote: >>It would be nice to know why the Norwegian breeders quite suddenly started to >>favour brown duns, then, or was it a co-incidence. And why were red duns >>always so rare - is that gene so rare or did people generally find other >>colors more appealing or something? And what are those 'other colors' when as many as 23 % of the stallions were of other colors 1857-79>> Warning: speculation will follow! My idea about the 'other colours' and the growing popularity of the brown dun is as follows: in the past, there were horses in the Vestland of many colours. For example, the Swedish hippologist C.G. Wrangel writes in his grand book 'Handbok för hästvänner' (Handbook for horsepeople), originally published in the 1880's about the colours of the Fjordhorse: 'Generally the Fjordhorse is light in colour: dun, different shades of dun often with black dices [I have no idea what he means - markings mabye] in the coat, black mane and tail, yellow with white mane and tail (isabella), mouse grey and pretty often light brown. There are painted horses but chestnuts and greys are rarely seen.' Concerning the painted horses, I think we all remember the 'skejevet' that Jen Tim has posted the link to; a brown dun Fjord with a white shoulder mark. Anyone who has red Arve M. Bakken's book 'Fjordhesten' (1985) may have noticed that in the old photos, there are horses with typical fjord-bodies but with very dark colour. Since the dun gene normally makes the colour lighter, I don't belive that these horses were duns. Their coats should have been lighter then...(now, this is REALLY speculation:o)...but anyway: During the late 1800's the Fjordhorse was almost destroyed by cross breeding experiments. The breed was finally saved when a meeting was held in 1907 and it was decided that all the traces of the Döle-horses that had been used for the cross breeding should be cleared out (read more about this on Ingvild's history page: http://www.multinett.no/ingvild/history.html). But there was not an easy thing to find pure breds any more after more than four decades of cross-breeding. Njål N166, who was brown dun became a very influential stallion. I belive that Njål became the symbol for the pure bred Fjordhorse and Njål was a brown dun. The 'problem' with white dun + white dun giving you a certain percentage of cremellos or perlios played a part too. The other colours were cleared out as sign of Döle-influence. The question is: was it really so? Was all Fjordhorses dun until the Döle years and after? I don't know, but what we DO know is that by the turn of the last century, 'pure bred' to many scholars ment 'similar in colour'. This drove many old farm breeds in Sweden to and over the brink of extinction (remember that Norway and Sweden was a union until 1905). The farmers hade bred their animals for generations, never caring about colour but looking at soundness, good temper etc. Suddenly, their breeds were no good and foreign breeds were introuduced to raise the production. The government were paying people to use Belgian stallions, English bulls etc on the native mares and cows and many old farm breeds were destroyed. For those who wanted to save 'their' breed, they had to prove that it was really a breed and then easiest way seem to have been to present animals with similar 'clothes'. In Sweden we have mountain cattle (Sw: Fjällko): white with black markings now, they used to be of many colours. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Fjordhorse is always dun? But I also belive that MOST of the Fjords were dun BEFORE the cross breeding and the saving of the breed. There are a very high percentage of duns in the figures Sini presented even from the first period of time, which covers the years before the crossbreeding as well as the first generations of Döle/Fjord crosses. This speaks in favour of many homozygotous dun in the breeding stock already. I belive that at least some of the Döle stallions were black. On the other hand - I don't know very much about the first years of the stud book...if the dun was a typical Fjord-thing already... AND now I have to go home, so I guess I have to continue my speculations on monday, unless everyone is bored by then. Have a nice weekend all of you! Anneli ***************************************************** Anneli Sundkvist Department of Archaeology & Ancient History Uppsala University St. Eriks Torg 5 S-753 10 Uppsala Sweden Phone: +46-18-4712082 (dept.) +46-18-553627 (home) > Isn't it fascinating that the majority of Fjords actually used to be > white duns during the second half of the 19th century! > I'm sorry I missed > parts of the color discussion some time ago - did you > already talk about this kind of issues? > > Sini in Finland. home page at http://www.saunalahti.fi/~partoy/Juhola6.html