Who remembers the cloning?

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magic104

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Taken from their website:

Equine clones have reached a new threshold in 2007: they are getting progeny

PIERAZ-CRYOZOOTECH-STALLION was made to become a stallion instead of his gelded model PIERAZ. It was important to rapidly test his fertility. First breeding trials were performed in 2007 as soon as he turned 2. This took place in the Haras du MAS DE REBOUL in the Gard department, where many endurance horses are bred. CRYOZOOTECH is proud to announce the first pregnancy from a cloned stallion. The pregnant mare is DZIUPLA, from the Vialaret farm, belonging to M. Genieys. She is one of the best endurance mares in France. Now PIERAZ-CRYOZOOTECH-STALLION is being transferred to EQUITECHNIC's laboratory in Normandie where semen freezing trials are to be performed, so that his semen can rapidly become available internationally.

Prof. Cesare Galli, from Italy, has helped with the production of PIERAZ. In 2007, his Haflinger mare PROMETEA, the first cloned horse, has been bred for the first time in his research facilities and she is in foal, due in 2008.
 
Ah but thats precisely where nature kicks back in, the prodgeny might just turn out to be useless just like some conventionally bred offspring of top performers!

What I would be really interested to see is the Stallion competing. Would he be as good as his gelded "parent", that really would be interesting to see.

I know that when they did the cloning of the mare in Italy the markings of the clone were different to that of the parent, so how many other charateristics of the horse have an enviromental input?

So for instance muscular and skeletal development and personality might also differ according to environment and outside factors. So a clone could be different from its parent on a small but maybe significant level that could potentially affect its offspring?

Nature allows for freak accidents to affect genes, we know that from the TB Stallion Catch a Bird in New Zealand. He was born a bay with white "Brindle" like markings, he never reproduced himself but some of his offspring were true roans not seen in the TB breed!

So this will be really fascinating in years to come!
 
I still find it a bit weird, & a lot of money invested in something that may never produce anything worthy. But we will see, I may be wrong but I thought Dolly had issues related to being cloned.
 
I don't think the cloned stallions will compete; they'll be considered 'proven' and it'll be financially too risky either to risk them physically in competition or to tarnish 'their' reputation by letting them possibly perform badly; a bit like those ravcehorses that do brilliantly at 3 then aren't raced at 4 in case they don't train on and so undermine their stud value.

The difference in white markings in a clone and his donor would be really interesting to see in a skewbald. I think the same thing can happen with genetically identical twins, and I would guess the size and shape of the white patches are influenced by the stage of growth that the foetus? embryo? has reached when the patches are initiated. Like the stripes on a zebra; apparently there is one gene or set of genes for the stripes but the different sorts of zebras look different, because the unborn foal has reached a different stage of development when the stripes kick in; the bigger the foetus the more room there is for stripes but the less they have to grow so there will be more of them but they will be narrower.

I know Dolly didn't live long, but I don't think it was as a result of being a clone. I remember reading that there were problems with resetting the cloned animals' body clocks; they were effectively born middle-aged? but I think they solved this one. Then there was this thing about some genetic commands having to come from the dam, some from the sire for the clones to develop properly; but I think they solved that too.

Should think AP will know plenty about this, and could comment.

Even though it seems weird, I don't think it is actually weird or worthless. After all, we don't get freaked by identical twins or by the even stranger notion that we are actually a mixture of our parents or that our kids have some of us in them; so why should cloning be so odd?

I just wish the technology had been around earlier and I was a whole lot richer; I would gladly have cloned some of my past horses. Just imagine having the same broodmare for two or three horse lifetimes; you would know her so well you could hardly fail to produce good offspring from her.
 
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how many other charateristics of the horse have an enviromental input?

So for instance muscular and skeletal development and personality might also differ according to environment and outside factors. So a clone could be different from its parent on a small but maybe significant level that could potentially affect its offspring?


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Just to add I think you're right here and quite unguessable, non-genetic things happen already to affect the foal you eventually get; its just they'd be more obvious in two horses that are meant to be the same.

I had a TB mare whose foals were always slightly undersized at birth and grew up short and chunky, though nicely made; something hormonal? nutritional? I don't know. I still have one daughter; her sire was 16.3, her dam 16hh+ whilst she herself is barely 15.3 but as solid as a cob; I don't think this is down to genes as such. However, this daughter's daughter has reverted to TB type.
 
Dolly died as she was prematurely aged-genes have things called Telomeres on the end of them. They change length with age, as Dolly was cloned from a 6 year old sheep she had the genetic age of 6 years (even when new born). So when she died I think she was effectively 12 (only having lived 6 years) which I think is quite old for a sheep?
 
Re your TB mare whose foals were always slightly undersized.

I did a course at the National Stud a few years back and we were lucky enough to get some personal input from Prof Twink Allen of the Equne Fertility Unit, Newmarket. He took us round his paddocks and had a bit of fun with us, asking us to guess what everthing was! One was the Icelandic he was using for the genome project and another about 13hh show pony type.

The "show pony" was a pure TB from a barren mare donated to the unit. They got her in foal but because the lining of her womb was damaged in a prior difficult foaling, the foal lacked nutirition and turned out tiny. They kept him as a stallion as he was easy to handle and collect from but threw normal sized foals from TB mares.

He also showed us the results of identical twins born out of different sized mares and they were very different heights at maturity. So I guess room in the womb is very important to height at maturity.

I asked him about fertile mules, he said that there were a handful worldwide that have been bred from. Breed them to a horse and you get a horse, back onto a donkey and you get another mule from the extra chromosome.

Some very fascinating stuff from a very clever, enthusiastic and approachable man, that I won't forget in a hurry.
 


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Some very fascinating stuff from a very clever, enthusiastic and approachable man, that I won't forget in a hurry.

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Lucky you, Pocomoto.

So fertile mules really DO exist?

My old TB mare was very lean and lathy and very difficult to keep weight on; the only thing that she really did well on was fresh grass or very leafy second-cut hay. You could stuff her with concentrates all winter without much result. She wasn't wormy, her dung was normal etc. etc. but it was as if there was something missing in ordinary feed that only grass could provide. (There wasn't so much choice of supplements in those days; I tried what there were. If I had her again I'd try to grow hydroponic grass for her.)

She was my first TB so it took me a while to realise this wasn't normal. Latterly I've felt that her small (but chunky) foals were linked to this. It was as if her body put a stop on their height but not on their eventual bulk.

So twins carried by smaller mares never did make up fully in height?

What were the opinions on breeding a large stallion to a small mare (a minefield I know)?.
 
Well in H&H pg 105 is an ad for an FEI dressage pony ex of a Sec B mare by Demonstrator who as everyone knows stands 16.2!! Now if this a Welsh sec B then the mare cant be more then 13.2hh.
 
Yes it was a great experience, I'd thouroughly recommend a visit if you ever get the chance.
It was a brilliant course with loads of very high flying stud vets and managers giving talks and tours! Never seen it advertised since sadly.

I know what you mean re some TB's they seem to have alot of nervous energy that burns calories even if they don't show it outwardly. My current mare is a nightmare if in but she now lives out with good rugs and keeps the weight on and is very relaxed eating grass and haylage mostly.

Yes the Prof had several sets of identical twins from different sized mares and found that restriction in the womb affected height at maturity, whilst being tall enough they never reached the height of their twins. So even if you breed a shire to a shetland mare in theory she will only grow something she is capable of birthing and whilst it will be bigger than a shetland it won't be as big as its genes intended, but will itself throw horses of height!

Mind you I have known people breed 2 ponies and overfeed the mare and have a huge foal with foaling problems! So I try to feed as naturally as possible!

The freaky one was a picture the Prof showed me of a variety of equid mothers, There were 4 or so but I remember a pony mare, a donkey, a zebra and an ass, they all had foals but each others! He was conducting some research into foetal rejection, and had implanted a completely foreign species into each mother who had brought it up as her own, it was really weird!

We were there for ages and he showed us some VT of a foal in the womb and we had a tour, a go at collecting from the midget TB, a look under the microscope, and insemination demo and played with the sperm count machine! All this was just 2 days before his daughter got married to Frankie Dettori at the centre.
 
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