Extra white markings in Arabs of Davenport lines
From Jeanne Craver comes this photo of the Davenport mare Adorned (Prince Hal x Moth by Tripoli), with the reference to the earlier discussion on pronounced white markings.
A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
On our first visit to Craver Farms, my late wife told Charles that if he didn’t like this mare’s markings, he could just give her to us.
I did not know then that I was going to end up with a Davenport program, but I am very grateful to have had Adorned’s brother Trilogy at the end of his life, and still have a cherished mare from the Adorned female line. (No, no markings like this, to date.)
Oh, she is beautiful! I am very weak for flaxen chestnuts, and to have so much white as well is simply the icing on top.
I remember seeing a number of Davenport/Blunt horses with high white. I’ll have to see if I can dig them up. Kheyra and Rosa Rugosa had a lot of white as well, but with the cross to some non-Davenport or Blunt horses.
I’m currently blanking on another horse that had intense white markings on his face. I’ll see if I can dig the gelding up.
My mistake, it was a stallion. Daghar (Houran x Nanda.) And he was only half Davenport, though he WAS bred by Homer. By a Davenport stallion, and with lines to Garaveen, Nedjme, Kars, Kismet, and Naomi.
https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/daghar
https://m.facebook.com/groups/848043201925430?view=permalink&id=2053769688019436
Check out the horse Borkaan (Ribal x Babe Azab). 1/2 Blunt, 1/2 Davenport, with high white and a very white face.
Of Borkaan’s offspring:
1) Efendi (out of a Davenport/Blunt/EAA blend mare) had high white and a white face.
2) Abu Borkaan (out of a mare with more or less the same breeding, and the same other EEA element) was described as roan.
3) Sarif Serik (out of a mare that was 1/2 Davenport 1/2 Blunt)
El Dur-In (https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/el+dur-in) Blunt/Davenport blend with high white, big white face, and a reported belly spot.
And of course Rabiyas, who was exported to South Africa and was the sire of Abu Farwa, also has high white and a very white face. The usual admixture of Blunt, Davenport, and other EAA.
Of note would be one of his other offspring, Damascus, who is other Davenport/Blunt/EAA.
This mare Adorned is very interesting. To my eye, I don’t think her level of white is suspicious except perhaps for the left rear leg. But she is still not remotely close to Fenwick Orion.
However, let me try out a hypothesis here for the Davenport breeders:
Let’s say we took this mare and created her own special breeding group similar to the other Davenport breeding groups. For the sake of making this scenario easy to understand, lets also say in this breeding group we only breed chestnut horses together, so all the descendants are chestnut. We breed horses together that are Adorned tail female through multiple generations. Just like the core Haifi’s are done withe Reshan, etc.
Over time a distinct type develops. Slowly but surely the white on those legs creeps higher and higher. The white on the face moves down to cover half the head or more. We start having belly spots and they get bigger and bigger.
Are you guys saying that in multiple generations a linebred Adorned horse can produce a horse with similar markings to Fenwick Orion?
This seems to be the basic logic that I’m seeing on other threads but applied to this case.
Theoretically, yes, a linebred Adorned horse could produce a horse like Fenwick Orion. However, white spotting patterns are pretty complex, and it is entirely possible for a horse with very loud white to be produced from two parents who have nearly no white themselves; to borrow a term from the APHA/AQHA world, these flashy white horses from solid parents are known as ‘cropouts’.
To take Marbon Mastarpiece himself, as the start of this debate, if you go to his FB page and look through the album showing his ancestors, you will see that his dam, Marbon Mead, has a big blaze and white on all four legs, but nothing like as high as her son’s. Mastarpiece’s paternal three-quarter brother has a blaze, white on his lower legs, and a small belly spot (you have to find his foal pictures, before he greyed out, to see the belly spot). Foal pictures of Marbon Mastarifah, the sire, show that he has three white legs (all below the knee) and a blaze; Mastarifah’s sire, Grecian Idyll, has four white legs (all below the knee) and a stripe, rather than a blaze. So, to my mind, the evidence points to Marbon Mastarpiece being a cropout: he hit the jackpot for white spotting, and for some reason his white is expressed far more dramatically than that of either of his parents.
Basically, a linebred Adorned horse could indeed produce a horse with extreme white – but it wouldn’t necessarily be a cumulative process, with each generation showing more white than the one before. And horses like Marbon Mastarpiece and Fenwick Orion don’t necessarily pass their dramatic white down to their offspring either. The inheritance and expression of white markings are complicated!
The same is true for Orion.
His dam (Ennerdale Galaxy, out a program known for white) had a fairly typical blaze in the vein of horses I’ve been posting, white below the knee with irregular lineation, and high white above the knee. Her high white was tamer than that of Adorned. Ennerdale Galazy’s sire, Fable, was a mildly-marked stallion with a stripe or narrow blaze, two hind socks that only extended halfway up the cannon, and a lone coronet marking on the left front leg. Nothing on the other front. Galaxy’s dam, El Magic Stardance, was reported with the following markings. “Nar blaze to n.s. nost lo lip. n.f. can hi be h. n.h. spot cor behpatch fr gask. o.h. 3/4 can. patchbelly.” If you want an overview of her ancestors photos on allbreed, here are the ones with photos uploaded, including Skowronek and his get/descendants: https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/index.php?h=el+magic+stardance&g=9&query_type=photos&search_bar=photos&inbred=Standard&x2=n&username=&password=&x=0&y=0
On the flip side, while Orion’s sire (Renasar) is greyed out, I was able to find photos of him as a slow-greying 4 year old, and his photos show: a blaze, and four white stockings that fail to rise above the knee or the hock. It is hard to say if he had small belly spots with the greying,but there were no obviously large ones, and his white markings are par for the course.
Désolée je vais le faire en français
Ce marquage est typique d’un gène Dominant White. Lequel? Difficile de savoir lequel est-ce puisqu’il y a déjà plus d’une vingtaine de variations différentes et identifiées (et donc testables dans divers laboratoires) mais il y en a certainement beaucoup d’autres.
Le DW 20 reste le plus fréquent, mais le DW15 et le DW19 sont aussi identifiés dans la race arabe.
Ces gènes sont localisés sur un “hotspot” génétique, le locus KIT où sont aussi situés les mutations du Tobiano et du Roan, tout simplement car ce locus (emplacement “géographique” d’un gène sur un chromosome) est connu pour muter régulièrement.
Ces variations peuvent se cumuler, et leur effet avec, le tout avec une expression extrêmement variable, donc on peut avoir un DW20+DW20 ou un DW15+DW20 par exemple, et on a également identifié que le gène Extension (bases noires et baies) avaient un effet limitatif par rapport aux bases alezanes.
Oh, I was going through some of my groups, and there was a Davenport born this year with some flash — CJ Hana’s Thunder, with white extending a bit beyond the knee and hocks and with irregular lines. Not as extensive as Adorned, but not that far out from being there.
Oui, Séverine, vous avez raison sur l’effect limitatif du gène Extension. La jument Wilga est une fille baie d’Ofir et Jaskolka II (Koheilan I x Gazella II), et elle a seulement une liste et deux balzanes, mais sa mère Jaskolka II est une alezane, avec une large liste et quatre balzanes chausées. Les grandes marques blanches de Jaskolka sont limitées dans sa fille baie. Je suppose que c’est la même raison pour laquelle les chevaux avec beaucoup des marques blanches dans les images sur le blog sont alezans!
I am not sure about that Kate…
There is a difference between Adorned and Orion phenotypically speaking with white extending to the jaws and the very large belly spot. Note also that Orion’s white splashes are more mixed with colored hair (borders being more “blurry” let’s say).
So it is also very much possible that Adorned for example is let’s say W20/W20 + unknown yet gene on MITF + lacking unknow yet gene on PAX
While Orion would be let’s say W20/W20 + unknown yet gene on MITF + unknown yet gene on PAX
Or any other gene that we don’t know yet about on another loci causing extended white on coat coloration.
Lyman : It is not possible to get a firm yes or no until we know and understand all the genes related to coat colors on horses and unless the mentioned horses can be tested on all of them. Anything else is just fun speculation.
My guess is that Asil horses very likely have W20 carriers (white catalyst gene). It is also my guess that at least 1/6 horse (not limited to Arabians) are W20 carriers. So there is really nothing special about this gene.
It is also my guess that some of them carry (an)other gene(s) being catalyzed by W20 causing them to show more white (liked Adorned – very high stockings plus very large blaze).
Unless we have an Asil horse showing large white splashes up to the neck and belly, it is not possible to say that (the) gene(s) causing such extreme case of white splashes on the body is to be found among the Asil genepool. I dismiss the Syrian horse linked by Edouard since we have already discussed this and concluded he was a chimera (so this is not an heritable feature).
The genes behind “Roaning” pattern(s) can cause confusion regarding phenotype and are not yet mastered. Nor their possible interactions with the already known genes causing piebald like patterns. And we have may examples of “Roan” type Asil horses.
The genes behind “Inhibited Grey” pattern(s) can cause confusion regarding phenotype and are not yet mastered. Nor their possible interactions with the already known genes causing piebald patterns.
In this case, I have experienced it myself within the Asil lines since we have a nice amount of Asil horses here in Europe tracing back to El Dahma Halima (at least she was the first I know off showing extreme phenotype of Inhibited grey). I was not able to track it much further. But it is among the Asil Egyptian genepool for sure, at least for over a century, since it is also quoted by LAB in her journals. And as far as I was told it was known by the Bedouins themselves.
The genes behind “Shaded” pattern(s) including here things like sooty, flaxen etc. may also cause possible interactions with the ones causing piebald like patterns.
Kate-
I do not believe the hypothetical breeding pattern I described above with respect to Adorned repeated over many generations would result in a Fenwick Orion. If this were possible I would expect to have seen Davenport horses with white markings much closer to Fenwick Orion in the more than 1000 Davenports bred to date. Were such a hypothetical breeding pattern to be followed I would expect descendants with the whitest markings to be similar to Adorned, perhaps a bit more, but not even remotely similar to Fenwick Orion et al.
My family essentially has followed a similar breeding pattern over the last 70 years within the asil 100% Crabbets. All our horses are linebred to the mare Gulida (4 white). We are producing horses now in the 6 generation following this breeding pattern. You have to go back 7 generations in our recent foals for the first grey ancestor. With all the ancestors/relatives of our horses with white markings (as Moira has so correctly pointed out), a Fenwick Orion should have popped out at some point in the last 100 years ago among the 100% pureblood Crabbets without Skowronek if this gene originates among asil Crabbet horses. Despite efforts at finding proof of an asil Crabbet paint, (Crabbet’s I might add are probably the most photographed Arabian horses in history), the simple conclusion is that asil Crabbet horses do not have the gene responsible for the white markings like Fenwick Orion.
I think that Amelie is right. The genes responsible for the highest level of white among the 100% Davenports (presumably Adorned) and 100% pureblood Crabbet horses (Crabbet, Rose of Sharon et al) are fundamentally different genes than the one/ones responsible for the Fenwick Orion’s of the world.
In comparing the various pedigrees of horses mentioned in the previous thread, Fenwick Orion, FV Aul Rabba, Abu Farwa’s full sister Rossletta and Marbon Masterpiece, I’m starting to notice perhaps a possible more detailed source of this “Paint gene.”
We know from the photos that asil Crabbet horses that exhibit relatively higher levels of white seem come from primarily these sire and dam lines:
Mesaoud (4 white)
Mahruss (4 white)
Rodaina (Ribal)
Dajania (Crabbet)
Ghazieh (Bint Gulida)
Lets say these sire and dam lines have white genes that express a certain level of white with perhaps Dajania and Rodania being the most expressive.
When we combine the Skowronek sire line with Dajania/Rodania it seems to me we get this extra white “Paint” gene added to the mix that is recessive, but pops out here and there with some frequency (so much so that we have so called Arabian paints on 4 continents). When this supercharged white gene is bred back to Dajania or Rodania, you have a higher probability of getting Fenwick Orion type horses.
The stallion Naseem (Skowronek x Dajania) I think is particularly interesting. In the case of Rossletta, this supercharged white pops out in 2 generations after Naseem. Naseem was bred to a tf Rodania mare and then the resulting filly was bred back to a stallion that was tf Rodania and tm Mesaoud.
The other horses all have similar patterns.
With regard to Edouard’s original point that Arabic literature describes horses with lots of white markings around the year 800, I don’t doubt that Arabian horses of 1000 years ago had prominent white markings. Look at asil horses like the gelding Crabbet.
The question is if the genes responsible for Fenwick Orion’s level of white come from Arabian horses or not? I don’t think they do.
I think the Fenwick Orion white does come from Skowronek. Does it come from the genes of non Arabian tail female ancestress Iliniecka or the other known non Arabian horses in his pedigree? Or does it come from one of the poorly authenticated grey stallions imported to Russia from greater Syria in the 100 years from 1800-1900. If it were the latter I would expect to find historical examples of this Fenwick Orion type pattern in horses from greater Syria. Perhaps Edouard can share more information on this sometime later.
A picture of Naseem (Skowronek x Dajania), quite fittingly, is on the front cover of Rosemary Archer’s “The Crabbet Arabian Stud: its history and influence.”
One can note his grey color and 4 white stockings. Potential white markings on the face are not clear in the photo.
I found a 4 generation, pure in the strain Rodania 100% Crabbet asil mare with perhaps a higher level of white markings than the gelding Crabbet.
Rikitea. You can see her pedigree on allbreed.
Even with her markings, I still think an outside white boosting gene is necessary to turn her markings into Fenwick Orion.
Is Rikitea 100% Crabbet? She has a line to Maidan.
You are correct, RJ.
Technically Fenwick Orion isn’t 100% Crabbet if we limit it to Blunt/Skowronek breeding, either, as he traces back to Dwarka and Shahzada (Mootrub x Ruth Kesia), Ruth Kesia of whom was half Crabbet but then came from Dillon breeding with El Emir, Ishtar, and Kesia II. You’ll get these elements from Dargee — who also had four white legs and a white face and now a whit of Skowronek.
And honestly, if you’re looking at sheer degree of breeding– Fenwick Orion’s sire traces back (that I was able to count, might have missed a few) to Mesaoud a whopping 134 times, Rodania 83 times, and Skowronek a paltry 21. His dam traces back to Mesaoud 136 times, Rodania 82, Skowronek 16, Dwarka 4, and Shahzada 2.
We could just as easily be pointing fingers at Dwarka or Shahzada — you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Crabbet that doesn’t trace back to them, as well.
But ultimately this is all just conjecture until we are able to identify the white spotting gene variant(s) responsible, with a better understanding of how it all functions.
It does depend how you define Crabbet breeding. Blunt+Skowronek is one way to define it. But Lady Wentworth owned and/or bred from several horses outside that narrow definition, including Dargee, Jeruan, Dafina, Zirree el Wada, Algola, and *Mirage. If a person allows Lady Wentworth to add Skowronek to the Crabbet gene pool and still call it Crabbet, in spite of Skowronek’s entirely non-Blunt pedigree, then I don’t see how they can argue against Dargee and his progeny being Crabbet horses, given Dargee’s mostly Blunt pedigree.
Sorry, I guess I failed to adequately convey what I was getting at there: that there ARE other horses in the Crabbet gene pool aside from Skowronek and the original Blunt stock.
It’s well and easy to pinpoint Skowronek as the only “outside blood” that could potentially “boost” whatever white factors thr Blunt stock already had, but it’s simply not true and it’s also not the whole picture – we are missing too many puzzle pieces to see it all at this moment 🙂
Yes, I agree, there are other horses in the Crabbet Stud gene pool aside from the Blunt horses and Skowronek. I just thought of a few more horses Lady Wentworth used for breeding at Crabbet that have ancestors in that broader category: Chocolate Cream, *Iorana, and Whirlstorm.
I don’t think we will ever have complete information on this issue when it comes to the specific DNA of white markings.
However, I do think we can propose hypotheses and check the pedigrees and photos and see what information supports a particular hypothesis and what information does not support it. We can slowly eliminate potential horses as sources of what we could call the Fenwick Orion white gene by proposing different hypotheses and looking at photos/pedigrees of horses.
Here is one hypothesis mentioned many times by many people that I think we can eliminate based on the evidence:
The white markings of Fenwick Orion come from Mesaoud.
If this were true, I should have a field full of paints.
Why? We have had foals in the last 2 years that are the product of 11 generations of breeding tail male Mesaoud horses to each other. A colt born last year had 966 crosses to Mesaoud.
This is probably the most intensive Mesaoud breeding anywhere in the world.
If Mesaoud was the source of the Fenwick Orion et al white, we would have it at our farm. We don’t have markings that even remotely resemble Fenwick Orion.
Therefore, Mesaoud can not be the source of the “paint” gene.
Lyman: Your horses went through a very narrow genetic bottleneck. What if there are genes from Mesaoud present in some Crabbet lines but not present in Ghadaf, Gulida, or Nusi?
Can you rule out that possibility?
RJ-
Do you have the background on Dargee? Crabbet people always speak in hushed tones about him and I have never gotten a straight answer. What’s his deal?
RJ-
It reasonable to think that if Mesaoud was the source of the Fenwick Orion white we would have seen it in the 5 generations prior to Bint Gulida before the bottleneck starting narrowing.
Another potential hypothesis:
Rodania is the source of the Fenwick Orion white.
Evidence Against:
The mare with the most white with the Rodania tf is Rikitea. I accept she is not 100% due to the line to Maidan (thanks RJ for pointing that out), but I think we could reasonably consider her to be a representative of what would happen if we bred ft Rodania together for 4 generations in relatively asil lines. If that continued could we expect more white, possibly.
Rikitea does not have the level of white in Fenwick Orion or Marbon Masterpiece or FV Aul Rabba. The white on the bottom of her head is similar to FV Aul Rabba, however, the size of the belly spot, the white going up the stifle on his right rear and especially the random small white spots on his jowl and right rear suggest genes producing these markings that are more than just Rodania.
Marbon Masterpiece’s white on his legs and belly looks to me a bit more “splotchy” or a bit more “painty” if you will than the white from Rodania.
Fenwick Orion has this interesting roaning in connection with the white on his torso sized belly spot.
For at least these 3 horses, FV Aul Rabba, Marbon Masterpiece and Fenwick Orion, I think other white genes are necessary in addition to Rodania in order to tip them over the edge from Rikitea type white.
Incidentally, a colt born last year had 776 crosses to Rodania. No paint.
Another potential hypothesis:
Dajania is the source of the Fenwick Orion white.
Evidence against:
The horse with the most white among the 100% asil Crabbet’s that is tail female Dajania is the gelding Crabbet. Crabbet’s tf granddam Narghileh was bred to a tf Rodania stallion (Rejeb) and this filly (Narda II) was bred back to a Rodania tf stallion (Rijm) to produce Crabbet.
While Crabbet does have a lot of white, does it come from Dajania? Or Rodania? Its not so clear. However, even if it does come from Dajania his level of white is much less and it is different than Fenwick Orion, Marbon Masterpiece or FV Aul Rabba.
I think from this information we can reasonably eliminate Dajania as the source of the type of white found in Fenwick Orion, Marbon Masterpiece or FV Aul Rabba.
Another potential hypothesis:
Mesaoud + Rodania + Dajania react together in such a way to create Fenwick Orion, Marbon Masterpiece and FV Aul Rabba white.
Evidence Against:
These horses are commonly seen with multiple lines in the 100% Crabbet pre Skowronek horses. No 100% Crabbet pre Skowronek horse even comes close to Fenwick Orion, Marbon Masterpiece and FV Aul Rabba in both the nature and the level of white.
RJ-
Another piece of information with respect to Mesaoud, the Julep horses have ridiculous number crosses to him as well. If Mesaoud was the source of the Fenwick Orion, Marbon Masterpiece and FV Aul Rabba white we would of seen in pop up here.
Lots of these horses are grey, black and bay. I don’t have any idea if anyone had any paints pop out over the years but somehow I doubt it.
Or let’s just agree that we dont know ?? really i think it is way too early to draw any conclusion based on our current knowledge of genetics related to coat colors.
I am not sure de will never know though Lyman. Genetics knowledge is evolving vert fast right now.
Agree, Amelie, on both points. And RJ’s point about a genetic bottleneck coming through Ghada-Gulida-Nusi cannot be brushed off easily. You would have lost a tremendous number of alleles by that process.
I am emphatically seconding Jeanne’s comment above.
I’d like to add that, while TF and TM are interesting and important, this is one of those instances where horses anywhere in the pedigree – not just the sireline or the damline – can be just as influential.
The other thing is, there are very likely other modifiers at play beyond the white spotting. A lot of researchers whose work I’ve been following believe that there are many complex genes at play that influence the expression of the KIT (and other!) mutations, but we just don’t know what they are or how they interact.
I’d also like to circle back to Royal Court Jester from the previous post — a horse with Tobiano — and share this study: Crypto-tobiano horses in Hucul breed from 2015. The whole paper is worth reading, but a choice quote: “The appearance of tobiano and crypto-tobiano foals indicated that activity of the To gene in the crypto-tobiano parents was partially inhibited and in the foals it was fully or partially expressed. The results suggest the penetrance of another gene which may interact with the To gene in producing the tobiano or crypto-tobiano pattern. The unknown gene, let us term it Cp, might suppress the To activity, resulting in the cryptotobiano pattern.”
My point in sharing this is not that our Arabians have Tobiano — it is that there are muted expressions of genes, which geneticists are theorizing are the result of additional genes which interact with the penetration of the mutations. If you look at the photos of the crypto-Tobiano horses in the study, their markings honestly wouldn’t look out of place in a good many of our Arabian populations. It is entirely possible that Arabians have genes that mask these white markings.
Lyman, I don’t understand what your question to me is about Dargee. He was bred by George Ruxton and purchased by Lady Wentworth as a yearling for the Crabbet Stud. She showed him successfully and used him for breeding. She also used his son Royal Crystal. Dargee and many of his progeny were still in the stud when Lady Wentworth died in 1957. What more is there to know?
Maybe some Crabbet breeders prefer strictly Blunt+Skowronek pedigrees over Dargee’s lines to a few Old English non-Crabbet ancestors, but that’s their choice. I don’t think there’s more to it than that.
RJ- Thanks for the info on Dargee. I think I remember rumors he was sired by at TB stallion somewhere.
I invite readers to take a look at this website.
http://www.khartoonkhlassic.com/Sabino%20Get.htm
http://khartoonkhlassic.com/
http://khartoonkhlassic.com/sabino-get.shtml
My feeling is that Skowronek, and his non Arabian blood, is the main source of the Fewnwick Orion type markings. But its important to go back to the source of these non Arabian horses.
Home bred mares from Russia are at the core of what is now considered “Polish” Arabian breeding. This follows a long history of importing stallions from “Arabia” and successively breeding them to local mares over the generations. Also added to the mix are English horses, presumed to be Thoroughbreds, which were thought of very highly by Russian breeders.
Skowronek’s pedigree typifies this approach to breeding. I believe him to be the main source of the Pinto/Paint type markings in the largely Crabbet lines we have been looking at.
Spain imported a large number of horses from Russia in the early 1900s. These horses shared the same general genetic roots as Skowronek, (home bred Russian mares along with TB blood). The stallion Bask spread this blood far and wide in America.
The “Khartoon Khlassic” breeding program appears to be based on a tail male Skowronek stallion, with many crosses to Skowronek, along with Bask.
Blunt+Davenport base plus Skowronek + Bask = Part Bred Arabian Pinto. Some are even registered as Pintos.
The markings on these horses are impressive. I think we need to look at how our tolerance for these markings changed over time. In the past, horses like that were culled, gelded, etc. Now there seems to be a resurgence in interest in such markings. Horses with extra markings are now being used as stallions, and have more chances of producing more horses with such markings.
I am not sure that their presence in the non-Asil general list horses and their relative absence in the asil group is necessarily an indication that they come from the non-Arabian ancestors of the non-Asil general list horses. I think there are other factors at play, like humans’ evolving preferences and tolerance for such markings. Like you said, I don’t think we know enough about the genetics of these markings at this stage.
Gah, revisiting this again. I wanted to stress that Khartoon Khlassic has something different from the Crabbets — there is a very very specific KIT mutation, W15, that comes with this family and that he is the progenitor of.
The TB sire rumor concerns *Nureddin II but not Dargee as far as I know..
On a similar topic but not horse related. The USSR conducted an experiment in the 1950 reeding wild red foxes in an attempt to domestic them. As they only bred the tamer offspring to each other the colors changed into silver, gray, and even some patch colored foxes. Just looking at that I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that you don’t need outside blood lines to introduce odd colors.
Couple of things: If I recall wasn’t Crabbet on the Arab team that wiped the floor with the Morgans and Thoroughbreds in the late 20’s and 30’s U.S. Cavalry 300 mile endurance rides? Further iirc, the arabian horse team was so dominant that they eventually won the races 3 years in a row and retired the trophy. Their record so surprised the Cavalry Bureau powers that be, that they quickly added Arabian stallions to the U.S. Cavalry remount program and kept them there until the dissolution of the remount in 1948. The more knowledgeable endurance breeders cherish the early CMK blood of horses like Abu Farwa to such a degree that they constantly search out horses with high percentages of his bloodlines. If you examine the pedigrees of the successful 100 milers you mostly find the early Cmk horses with tons of Daveneport, Crabbet, and Chicago World fair lines.Sometimes in the last 20 years or so you’ll find top crossing with some of the midnight bred racing arabs i.e. French,” arabians”. A worth while experiment would be to outcross a concentrated cmk endurance pedigree with a French stallion just so you could get the genetic material which the new researchers could then analyze and see if they have arabian Y chromosomes or Thoroughbred Y chromosomes. That would tell us what kind of shenanigans the French racing breeders are up to. I suppose we can only dream of getting the registry to require Y chromosome tests of all breeding stallions at public stud along with a requirement that the genetic material be gathered by certified veterinarians at a public venue like a class A show.
A publicly gathered A or T-. Y chromosome would be a good selling point for a breeder standing a horse at public stud. And it would be a credit to the intestinal fortitude of the Asil breeding community as well.
best
Bruce Peek
It depends Juan…genetics do not work this way.
It has to be “into the pudding” somehow, like a hidden/shadow characteristic inside the founder group, to pop up in the latest generations. If it is not inside the founder group you cannot bred it unless there is a genetic mutation OR you introduce outside blood. Lots of breeds from many species have open studbooks/registrations so that you can see new colors popping out along the way as they are introduced into the gene-pool via out-crosses. Other colors are “bred out” has the breed is evolving along the way of human selection.
In your example the silver gray fox was just a recessive color that popped out via human selection (and probably inbreeding). Just like two black horses producing a chestnut horse.
Let’s take another example with the Ragdoll cat a fairly new breed of cats that I enjoy a lot. From the same foundation animals two breeds have evolved separately. One being the Ragdoll cat which only shows pointed coat while its cousin the Ragamuffin also can exhibit solid colors. The foundation group was exhibiting solid colors for the record but in the Ragdoll it was bred out while it is still allowed into the Ragamuffin. On the other hand the cream colors were missing from the original founder group. To get diluted coats breeders have introduced out-crosses to get cream, chocolate, lilac etc. coats.
Bruce, not all the French Arabian stallions are midnight bred shenanigans. Of course, I do agree that Y chromosome testing research would be extremely beneficial to the breed knowledge. But to be fair, so far, it has proved that many bloodlines have incorrect pedigree records (sire swapping on the papers) and that thoroughbred infusion was certainly not limited to the French Arabians. And that funny enough those out-crossed bloodlines were not always the best performers as well XD !!
I do certainly hope lost of research focused on Arabian bloodlines are on the way. It would help first to set the records true, like it was not for the Ghazieh tail female. And on the other hand it is of course most interesting for the Asil breeders.
if i may i would like to add a note here about white markings-i think in the horses used in army or war- the chestnut high white may have been a problem. The pink skin under the white leg markings can be a trouble spot for injury as i believe and maybe wrong-that it is prone and weaker than black skin. because of this thinking (true or not) -it is not that high white did not exist just that it had been bred against so to speak. i can remember that long time horsebreeders i knew would use a very dark bay to freshin up the color intensity- as they would say and cut down on the white.
Jmhall: Yes they most certainly ( the military) tried for solid dark colored horses.. As said above it made the rider less of a noticeable target. Doing historical background reading for the u.s. civil war i found very few grays, or lighter colored horses until after about 1863, when the remount system of buying new mounts and cavalry bureau really swung into high gear( and the north got serious about militarily crushing the confederacy)After that the North bought horses by the trainfull and anything that was over 14.2 hands and kind of sound was purchased at an average price of 110 dollars a head. Kind of a lot of money when the average wage was one dollar a day. And of course there were tons of stupendous frauds, bribes, payoffs and kickbacks, only a very few of which were ever prosecuted and brought to justice. But I digress.
best
Bruce Peek