I had a great Behind the Breeding podcast chat with Tabitha Farrar, for StallionApp, on the topic of breeding and genetic diversity.
“This episode features Norwegian Fjord breeder Cherrie Nolden about The Fjord Horse, pasture breeding, other non-interventionist breeding management practices, and emerging technologies such as genomic heterogeneity as applied to horse breeding.
This is a completely packed podcast episode! We hope you enjoy listening.”
SPARKS is currently being used as a pedigree approach, but would be SO much more powerful if a genomic heterogeneity from the 70K+ SNP chip data approach was used. I found background materials about managing inbreeding depression issues to write an article about breed genetic diversity preservation for the Norwegian Fjord Horse, but this same approach can apply to any breed/species of animal, and can be useful to someone like me who does a lot of goat and sheep crossbreeding, but would like to do more line breeding and would like to watch the actual genomic heterogeneity of the crosses I make. I would like to use it to make more prepotent animals without inbreeding depression, and I’d like to be able to know at what % heterogeneity we start to see inbreeding depression express itself. For the Fjords and other rare breeds, I’d love to use this approach to manage genetic diversity and animal health with a far more in-depth approach than pedigree analysis can provide.
The Fjord Herald article is here.
This link is to a presentation on equine breeding for diversity.
Here is a manual for the SPARKS population management software.
This document helps breeders understand how to use the breeding guidance created by the SPARKS approach.
This is an example stallion list for a particular mare, for optimizing population-wide diversity.
This document is a background on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and SPARKS work.
In addition to genetic topics, we discussed a bit about management and health related to management. I mentioned a study showing that colostrum quality is increased in ewes that are exercised daily before birth. We haven’t had colostrum quality issues with our mares, and I think that managing them outside, in a herd, on diverse green pasture gives them all the factors needed to produce outstanding IgG content of their colostrum, which sets their foals up for greater success in life. If that link doesn’t work, a pdf of the article is here. The MS thesis detailing the sheep research is available here.