How might a horse breeder use selective breeding to produce horses who have golden coats?

Answer 1

There are two genes that produce gold colored coats in horses. One is the cream gene and the other is the champagne gene. In both cases the underlying coat color must be red....ie....chestnut or sorrel. The cream gene makes palomino out of a red horse when only one cream is present...when two are present the horse is a cremello. The cream also makes buckskins (with one cream on a bay horse) or perlino (two creams on a bay horse) and smokey black (one cream on a black horse...often not noticed) and smokey cream (two creams on a black horse). The champagne gene also produces what appears to be palomino when present in a single gene on a red horse. It is often a more shiney color and the skin tone and eye color are changed with champagne but not with single cream.

Answer 2

If breeding to produce a certain coat color the breeder must have a very good understanding of equine 'color genes'. It's not as simple as breeding two palominos to produce a palomino foal. Some colors are recessive, others dominent. And although some coat colors are beautiful, breeding for color alone is a bad idea. Correct conformation and a good temperment are much more important.

Answer 3

For some breeds such as Arabians, its to keep their pure bloodlines. Other times it will be because the person breeding may be looking for certain characteristics in conformation or a certain color.

Answer 4

Selective breeding in horses is used for many reasons, including, but not limited to;
1. Establishing a breed 'type': By breeding horses of a similar type in a certain location you can create a specific look to those horses over time.
2. Performance: by breeding horses that do well in their specific sport they can pass along their genetics and hopefully produce offspring who are good or better than their parents at the sport they were bred for.
3. Preservation: Some rare breeds can only be preserved by selective breeding, this can allow genetic variation yet keep the population pure.
There are many other reasons, but these three are very good examples.

Answer 5

Selective breeding would be and is used in horses to develop specific traits or to create certain breeds with the desired traits.This could be for a specific color, height, speed, or body shape (conformation), or ability.Take the Thoroughbred as an example, it was bred from multiple breeds and cross breeds solely for speed, this gave the breed a certain conformation and temperament along with various colors, but they all generally posses a greater than average speed compared to other breeds of horse.

Answer 6

There are two primary alleles that produce gold color in horses. Both are dilution genes that produce golden coloration on red based horses.

Basic coat color is controlled at 2 gene loci. The Agouti site and the Extension site.

Horses that are homozygous recessive (ee) at the Extension site are chestnut or sorrel no matter what the genetic information is present at the Agouti site.

A breeder attempting to selectively breed golden horses needs to pick horses that are ee (homozygous recessive} at the Extension site. This will eliminate the possibility of any other coat color because the red color will now breed true.

Both the Creme and Champagne dilution alleles are dominant.

The Creme allele which, in combination with chestnut coat color, produces

palomino or cremello. The issue with the Creme gene is that homozygous individuals (CrCree) are ivory with blue eyes. This means that a true breeding gold colored horse cannot be produced.

The Champagne allele which, in combination with a chestnut base color, produces Gold Champagne. Both the heterozygous (Chchee) and homozygous

(ChChee) gold champagne horses are golden. This means that a line of horses can be produced that breed true for the golden color.

Since horses can be color tested for zygousity a breeder could select a homozygous champagne stallion who, when bred to select gold champagne mares will produce at least 50% homozygous gold champagne foals. Testing of these first foals would allow the breeder to cull/sell the heterozygous foals and retain the homozygous foals producing horses that would breed true for golden color in the next generation.

Now that all that has been said, breeding strictly for color can lead to the production of inferior bloodstock. Careful selection of breeding animals for the structure, ability and disposition to do the work for which they were intended should take presidence over coat color.

Answer 7

Because they want the best charactersistics for the horses.

Answer 8

health reasons