This message is from: "Olivia Farm, Inc." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Greetings from Olivia Farm, Having followed the few posts on color in the last issue of the digest, I wanted to mention that we have a page on our website devoted to making the issue of color in fjord horses more simple to understand. It can be viewed at http://oliviafarm.com/page5.html . By no means is everything known about color within the breed. Items such as striping, variation within a color, and uncharacteristic white markings are all areas that merit more research. In fact my wife Solveig has recently started a research project (as a hobby) that looks to find out more about uncharacteristic white markings and how they are passed through offspring in the Fjord breed. Traditionally, small white stars have been considered acceptable within the breed while anything more was considered unacceptable. As such, if any of you have or know of horses with uncharacteristic white markings in purebred, registered fjords including but not limited to stars, blazes, socks, feet, etc. we would love to have you email us privately at [EMAIL PROTECTED] with that information. Some horses have been registered with the mention of such markings while others have not. Naturally, the ones registered with that mention are much easier to find. We do not yet know where this project will take us, but it may eventually help us to identify pairings that could have a higher likelihood of producing white markings. It also might help us to learn if there is any pattern that suggests the amplification of white when two horses with white markings are bred to one another... even if the white on both is the "accepted" small white star. Anyway, your help with this project, in the form of information, would be greatly appreciated. In other news, we recently received a copy of The Western Viking (the prominent newspaper of the Scandinavian community based in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood and touted as "the Norwegian Voice of America") from Solver's aunt. It features a front page article, complete with pictures of Fjords, about the Fr's upcoming 25Th Anniversary Celebration and quite a bit of information about the registry itself. Anyway, I wanted to give kudos to all who have been getting the word out about this greatly anticipated event. Articles and publicity like this are a great way to highlight our wonderful organization and our great breed. Thanks to all of you who are making this event possible. We will look forward to seeing you all there! Mange Takk! Dan Watanabe Olivia Farm, Inc. www.oliviafarm.com P.S. Though we have not yet updated it on our website, we wanted to mention that our yearling colt OFI Jørgen has recently been gelded. Since he will not be used as a breeding animal (though he certainly had the conformation for it) his price will be reduced. He will make an outstanding horse and partner in any discipline and should mature to around 14.2hh. Please contact us if you are interested.
