Speaking of proper proportions

[Marty]

Hi John,

Thanks for being here for us.

You are helping us more than you know so I appreciate your time.

John, I've gotten more than a little paranoid lately with all this talk of dwarfism again. I found myself last month going stall to stall doing a "nostril" check of all things to see if my horses nostrils look like they are in the right place. Geesh.....

I seem to be scrutinizing my stock now more than ever before and picking at every little millimeter of a thing. I've always been a professional worrier.

Like many others here and out there in mini-land, some of my mares are the "old style" stocky, thicker necks, and larger boned. It does seem that some of the dwarf characteristics you are talking about are more connected with the old style horses VS the more modern show stock out there. Am I off base with this thinking?

 

[Arion Mgmt]

You are being a worry wart, sorry to tell you.

Yes, there are carriers of the dwarf genes that I see are stocky or heavy boned, but I see just as many that are extremely refined.

Personal example, I foaled out a mare about 8 yrs ago that was a retired mutiple world champion, extreme in all the characteristics and an awesome mover for her height, she is 30". Her sire was a known carrier, she was bred to another world champion, but he was 28", relatively refined and young and his pedigree had known carriers in it. His first or second foal crop was her foaling yr, cant remember which but anyways, it was a dwarf, and it was her first foal. Though the dwarf was refined comparatively to others I have seen, it was still a dwarf type 1.

So again you have refined bone structure having a slight influence on the disease just as the disease when carrier recessively has a potential to peek out in some characteristic, again goes back to penetrance and expressivity of the gene in a variable population, especially one like the minis with extreme variation of bone structure and size.

John