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Riata · Oct 27, 2017 11:29 AM

My first snowflake foal was a complete fluke. His sire's parent pair was bred at random to toss the foal in the auction, and I made the mistake of looking at him. He was unevenly bred, mediocre quality, and way too cute for me to cull, so I kept HIM to make auction foals.

Once again, I looked at the offspring (I don't learn quickly), and when I saw this handsome chap, I was like "oooh, I made snowflake! Lol sure, I did. Just like the last ten foals I thought had snowflake. Okay, brain, if you insist, I will check the Snowflake Breeding Club. Go waste another 100 hbs color testing a foal you're going to auction."

And boy howdy, would you just look at that! I bred a snowflake! Wowzers!

So... how did I do this? My experience with hidden genes has been, up to this point, minimal. I would love to recreate this delightful surprise, but with intentional pairings that are selected for quality. I'm sure I'll keep this guy for novelty, but if he was solid, he'd be long gone. His quality is somewhat lacking in pretty much every aspect (blah PT, mediocre paper level, inconsistent, and more uneven than my kitchen table legs). The only thing going for him is his pretty coat.

What I *think* happened:
Both his sire and dam carry a single snowflake gene, correct? He has to be homozygous AND Appaloosa to express the gene, right? Where on earth did his Momma's snowflake gene come from? Should I be testing the Appy grandsire (Squirreled Away) against snowflake mares, or did it likely just come from his sire ( Perlino Squirrelino)?

Thank you in advance for correcting any assumptions I got wrong. My brain was not ready for this level of genetic excitement today!

Edit: an actual link to the horse might help ; )

First Flake of the Year

RoseFlute · Oct 27, 2017 12:16 PM

He's not horribly uneven, only one grandparent out of the four was a 2nd gen rather than foundation.

But really the snowflakes could have come from any of the foundations in his pedigree, including the mares. You'd have to test all of them multiple times if you wanted to know. :)

DevilsParadise · Oct 27, 2017 4:04 PM

From what I can see, he's not uneven. A couple of his ancestors weren't papered, so it'd be a little hard to tell there, but otherwise he looks good. He's a cutie. I think I saw a post somewhere that had a solid foundation mare who was a carrier for snowflake. They only knew because they bred her to a appy foundation stud and got a snowflake baby. That post was from a while ago, though.

Cheers · Oct 27, 2017 4:04 PM

Unfortunately Rose is right. Any of the foundations in his pedigree could be hidden snowflakes and the only way to tell is to get multiple foals from them crossed with a known Hom snowflake horse to try to get another snowflake baby to appear.

If possible, I would strongly suggest that you seek Hom Snowflake Hom Appaloosa eggs and straws to cross against any of the foundations you own. That way every foal will be appy and you’ll have a 1/2 chance of the foal of your Snowflake carrier foundations to throw their snowflake allele to give you a registerable foal.

You do at least know that you have two carriers, one on each side of the pedigree. Good luck searching!

Alohomora · Oct 27, 2017 5:23 PM

Thank you for your help, everyone! It is so very appreciated.

Since I know Gillywater (the dam) has at least one snowflake gene, I am going to focus my hunt on the sire line. His great-grandsire Casper has sired a LOT of foals, and his owner has not seen any snowflake in his foals, so I'm turning my attention to the mares first.

Does anyone know how much hom snowflake straws/eggs usually run for, other than "a whole lot"?

I'm really excited about this project, but I don't want to be dumb and drop 500,000+ hb that may or may not give me the answers I seek. At the end of the day, I own a grand total of three known snowflake-carrying/expressing horses, so even if I figure out who is causing it, I won't exactly have a giant herd of snowflake ponies.

Alohomora · Oct 27, 2017 6:16 PM

One more question: did this stallion create a lethal foal because of his extensive WF? I only got 40 foals from him, although he bred 41 times, and only had 99 foals in that pasture. I'm just not seeing anything potentially lethal in his genes aside from White Factor.

Chomper 3G

Salvistar · Oct 27, 2017 8:45 PM

White factor alone isn’t Lethal. And roan can only be Lethal with white 1. Did you have any white 1 mares in the pasture?

RoseFlute · Oct 27, 2017 9:18 PM

wait, roan is an issue? that's news to me!

Riata · Oct 27, 2017 10:10 PM

Yes, I had a few white 1 mares in that pasture. I didn't realize that was a lethal combo. Thank you, Salvistar!

Ammit · Oct 28, 2017 4:49 AM

Roan isn't the issue. White 1 combined with other KIT mutations can cause an unhealthy foal.

RoseFlute · Oct 28, 2017 7:16 AM

All this guy has is roan, Appy, and extensive wf, though.

Ammit · Oct 28, 2017 8:14 AM

That dosn't mean white 1 isn't the issue if you breed him to them.

RoseFlute · Oct 28, 2017 8:31 AM

White 1 on its own can be lethal with a high WF?

Ammit · Oct 28, 2017 8:40 AM

No. Best refer back to the lethality chart. It has the full breakdown. :)

ElementalStables · Oct 28, 2017 9:54 AM

This stallion has roan, which is a kit mutation. White 1 can potentially be lethal with even 'safe' kit mutations like roan given a high enough white factor.

Wolfgang Pride · Oct 28, 2017 10:38 AM

Side note I have a colt very similar to him

3G Texas Nights B 9.7 Consistent *even*

JordanK · Oct 28, 2017 11:50 AM

I can tell you 100% the grand damn which is my mare grey velvet is not the source :) Hope you figure it out!

Riata · Oct 28, 2017 4:41 PM

Thank you, Jordan! Gillywater was pretty easy to figure out, since I only own her. I certainly didn't expect snowflake to be hiding in her genes, though! That was a really fun surprise : )

On the sire's side, if Squirreled Away could be the snowflake source rather than Wombat, I was going to focus my "make more snowflake foals" efforts on him instead of Perlino Squirrelino. As far as his owner/breeder knows, Casper hasn't passed snowflake to anyone, and he produces several foals each season.

My hypothesis is the heterozygous gene passed down from Aria-->Squirreled Away-->Perlino Squirrelino-->First Flake, but I cannot entirely rule out Wombat. (Ammit probably knows, but I'm sure she won't tell!) Time for me to experiment.

Wolfgang Pride, our colts could be brothers : ) Texas Nights is very handsome. He has a very nice pedigree, too! Did you create his parents from egg/straw purchases? I can see that lot of work went into his parents and grandparents!

Thank you, Ammit, (and everyone else) for clarifying the mutation issues. I didn't figure out which mare crossed with Chomper to make the lethal foal, but now I know to be aware that roan crossing on W1 KIT mutations could potentially be lethal. My eye is drawn to the red/dark red crosses, so I overlooked the the roan and tobiano since they were such low risk. I need to spend more time studying that chart.

Y'all are awesome for answering my questions, and coming up with some of your own!

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