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
