Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Wine Country/Gastroguard

... I still maintain that it behooves us to be selective in the same manner
that nature is selective, if for no other reason than we are asking the
horse to be a survivor.
>
> Heidi


Interesting line of thought here.  I can remember a discussion in Horse
Science when I was an undergraduate that revolved around the theme of humans
being a horse's worst enemy at times.  Things that normally wouldn't occur
very often in nature, we manipulate so that we perpetuate the problem.
Prime example (not to be picking on Arabs, here, just a trait that sticks
out in my mind):  Erythroblastosis fetalis.  Now, in nature, animals born
with this trait wouldn't survive--the antibodies in the mare's colostrum
would end up killing the foal.  I have to admit, though, that I was guilty
of helping to keep this gene alive in our research herd by holding foals
while we gave them IV serum, and then bottle-fed them for 24 hours or so
until closure in the small intestine occurred.

In hindsight, I wish we had taken the approach that any animal which was
saved be designated as a non-breeder, or that something be done with a brand
or tattoo to indicate that they had this problem.  I'm sure that by taking
the extraordinary measures to save those foals without going any further to
be sure that the gene stopped with them that we didn't do the breed's gene
pool any favors.  Keeping the dams in the herd and breeding them back to the
same stallion wasn't very intelligent, either, come to think of it.



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