kalcifer wrote:June Bug wrote:So I had a breed test done for my horse and It came back as Morgan and Akhal-Teke/Turkoman. My friends are all like "Wow, Teke! That's so cool!" and meanwhile I'm just super happy about the Morgan, lmao. Tekes aren't my style, so while it certainly explains a lot about him, they weren't really on my radar. Morgans are one of my favorite breeds though, especially the old style working type. <3
Anyone else done a breed test? Where you surprised? Disappointed? Happy?
reviving this thread because this question is interesting !!
I've never done a breed test on my boy but after not knowing his breed for 5 years I managed to finally get in touch with the owners who bought him from the breeder.
I always assumed he was mixed breed. he is 14.2hh, mostly white bay skewbald, very skinny fine legs and nice slightly dished face with large but fluffy ears. despite his slim legs his belly is a barrel. he gets very fluffy in winter with long fetlock hairs year round.
I've jumped him up to 1.20m and he is incredibly balanced around tight corners so jump offs with him were a breeze.
This lead to me believe that he was probably a mix between perhaps quarter horse (which would explain the balance and low center of gravity), arab (to explain his finer features) and perhaps some kind of more "native" pony breeds to generate that thick coat.
Turns out I was very wrong as apparently he is a purebred english riding pony...
I am not sure if I trust this "purebred" label as it doesn't really add up. for one I'm pretttyyyyy sure english riding ponies can not be coloured. secondly where did his overall body shape and fluff come from? and on top of that (although I recognise training is a huge factor in this) he doesn't exactly have that show pony attitude, more of a jerk that just wants to have fun attitude.
The only things this breeding explains is the arab-esque features he has, as arabs had a huge role in the breeding of the english riding pony and also the fact that he has more go than woah and thoroughbred bloodlines also influenced the english riding pony.
Anyways hopefully my rant made sense, does this breed determination seem dodgy to anyone else or am I overthinking it?
I don't deny that he could be part or even mostly english riding pony but the purebreed part just doesn't fit right with his description.
Give me your thoughts !!
From purely scientific view point breed tests can only be as accurate as the reference data they have to compare the samples to (and how accurate the markers they've chosen to use actually are). Currently I think in general they aren't very accurate from what I've heard (mostly about dogs, but very doubtful horse tests are anymore accurate than those) and results should always be considered with grain of salt. Like they might get something right but likely will get something wrong, and if something makes absolutely no sense it probably is not right (like if I would test a breedles horse that is from my country and the results showed quarter horse I would very much doubt the results). And also people who have tested their known pure bred animals get results with multiple breeds just shows that the data and methods used haven't quite up to par just yet. There's also the fact that some breeds are mix of other breeds (some more recent, others way back) so I would assume it's more difficult to find accurate unique markers for some breeds and there might be some overlap in genetic markers.
As for the pony case. The finer features cold be also be from welsh pony, which I think would highly likely be found in English riding pony lines. Generally though from what I've seen of *insert country here* riding horses/ponies is that they can be mixes of almost anything, so saying a horse/pony is *insert country here* riding horse/pony doesn't always tell a whole lot. Like most are mixes of various warmbloods and lighter pony breeds, but there can be quite lot of mixing in the ancestry (or even recent years dependign on the studbook) so what these horses/ponies actually end up looking like varies (like we have this tiny barely bigger than a large shetland German riding pony at the stable and then there are German riding ponies that are almost small horses in terms of height, yet on paper they are same breed). There are pinto colored warmbloods so getting a pinto colored riding pony would not be that far fetched actually or maybe there was a irish cob far in the line that gave the color and not much else of it's influence remains. Unfortunately if the horse has no papers or way of verifying it's identity through some registry, the breed or mix is really a big guessing game. If you were a breed DNA test a pony that is said to be English riding pony, which is I consider essentially a mixed breed. The test results might show mixed breed, generic warmblood/riding pony, English (or some other country's) riding pony or what ever breeds have gone into making that English riding pony depending on what methods and reference data that lab running the test has. And truly the pony could be very well be 100% English riding pony. ^^;
they tried to guilt me into selling my girl because she wouldn't make it past modified in florida and they were like oh she could go for 30k as a BN packer and you can get a nice OTTB. called my trainer/best friend bawling bc she's the one who gave me imp and i didn't know what to do and she's like "you know you can say no right? that horse has changed you." they lorded everything over my head but that was the one thing i set my foot down on. we rescued that horse entirely feral and i brought her from the ground up, she's my pride and joy.