March 16th from 2-4 we will have Mariann Carrasco from Blue Island Animal Acupressure, LLC
here for a FREE demonstration on the benefits of Acupressure on your horse.
Demo will be at Sweet Water Farm Akhal-Teke
PLEASE TAKE THE LAWSON ROAD ENTRY TO THE BARN!
Please call her to sign up.
Mariann Carrasco, CEAP, CCAP, CFAP

Nationally Certified Equine, Canine and Feline Acupressure Practitioner

Certified Animal Communicator, Animal Food Therapist,
Essential Oils for Animals, Reiki for animals
Blue Island Animal Acupressure, LLC, www.blueislandanimalenergy.com,  360-303-3608

so a breeder has 5 acres and therefore they breed. And before you know it there are 15 horses, the house, the car park, the yard for the kid to play, the barn, the junk pile, the burn pile...and the horses are locked in little pens and stand around all day waiting for the next meal.
Foals need to run. And not just a little hop in a circle, they need to get up to speed, develop lungs, and bone and muscle.
Perhaps it is lack of movement in earlier breeding days that leeds to so many leg malformations.
Because today, in farms where foals do run and play, there is far less of a development problem than places where they grow up in small pens. Then again, they may be destined for desk jobs at a large computer facility and in that case they will be well versed in sitting still.
An athlete, like mother nature intended, starts from day one.

In a very simple way, every time you inbreed (line breed) your off spring has less genetic diversity.  No matter what top notch breeder you are, what country you live in, the repudiation you have, it is the same for everyone, you may get "a shaper image" and you may have multiplied on an undesirable trait.
Personally I love to jump, so a good leg and hoof conformation is a must. More and more I see faults in even reputable breeding farms even with the knowledge we have today of better breeding practices.
For example the stallion Akbar 672, born in 1957

This stallion from ARAB line has contracted toes in all 4 feet. He stood at stud from 1961 to 1978 and has over 32 offspring.
Can you imagine if 5 generations later you would have Mister Akbar 10 times in your pedigree...
Looking at the early Akhal-Teke horses, horsemanship was poor, nutrition and a farrier at it's worst.
So today, WE must educate ourselves and do a better job at preserving this beloved breed!

As the registrar for the American Akhal-Teke Association I get to see a lot of horses...and when this foal registration came upon my desk I got upset. I have been to the so called breeders place. Let's leave it at that.
I aksed her why she directly inbred 3 times. Oh! Someone told me the wrong pedigree on the mare...I didn't realize it was 3x inbred, 2x inbreeding is ok.
Yes...exactly her words..and what does she have for back ground to make such statement? At this point..don't bother asking because she doesn't even think it is her responsibility to know her mares pedigree, and she has done the same breeding for the last 2 years...

In my previous post I went over Marale's sire lines because they are the easiest to trace, pictures of older mares are extremely hard to come by, and I do have a picture of a particular sire..Kir-Sakar.
As you can see Kir-Sakar suffers from DSLD and so does Maral 60 years later.
On her sire's side she has Kir saka 4x in her pedigree, and on her dam's side she has Kir-Sakar 6 times in her pedigree.
Is it a coincidence then that she has such a severe case of DSLD or was it a result od breeding concentration to Kir-Sakar.

And I haven't tackled the club feet yet....
Are breeders going to pay more attention what traits the line breed to? Is direct inbreeding 2x acceptable?
How do we educate people on making right choices!
I think in Marale's case it is save to say this "line breeding" back fired!

A few years back I bought the mare Etoscha. She was imported from Germany from an excellent breeder, had the beautiful stallion Karaburgut as sire, I was thrilled to have her in my breeding program!

She had one foal here, then in her hind legs she developed
 Degenerative Suspensory Ligament Desmitis (DSLD)
She was in so much pain I put her down.
Turns out her pedigree is much like Maral!

In her 5th generation she has these sire lines:
Kir Sakar, 6x
Everdi Teleke, 2x
Toporbai, 2x
Skak, 3x
Karlavach, 2x
all 16 sire lines come from Boinou

Gelihikli, 1x sire line Sultan Guli

And here he is, stallion Kir Sakar born in 1939, with DSLD in his hind legs!
Below is his distant daughter. Etoscha..how they look alike!!!

Out of utter frustration, I am writing this post. And I keep reminding myself..out of the mud, a lotus is born.
The frustration came from this: Yesterday a "breeder" told me she bred a foal ..and she had forgotten the pedigree! It was closely inbred 3X!!! She forgot!!!! A breeder....The breeders reply was this...I thought I ONLY inbred twice..I find that acceptable! I did not realize I did it 3 times.
Inbreeding 2x is acceptable/ what school did she go to I ask...
When looking at pedigrees in the Akhal-Teke horse, there is more than the obvious yellow stripe showing related animals...
Quite a few years ago, I got a desperate call...I have 7 pure bred Akhal-Teke horses. Can I please send them to you to have them for sale.
I took them in, and here is one of the horses in question, meet Marale, a very sweet 2 year old mare at the time this picture was taken, beautiful face, perfect black color...oh my..where did she get those legs!
Someone passed these on, and somewhere a "weak link" was created not much unlike NFS...

Obviously she suffered from Degenerative Suspensory Ligament Desmitis (DSLD) at the ripe age of 2.
( there is a study going on to find the gene that causes this)
I could not help myself to wonder, how in her pedigree did she possibly develop this? Yes...possibly, because we never know what genes are passed on or not.
Here is her pedigree:

So this "breeder" would have loved this pedigree...only 1 time inbreeding way back...or is it?
On a whole other case, far beyond my capabilities...NFS can affect a horse more than just being hairless, just no research has been done. Note she has Angar, the producer of NFS in her sire line and dam line.
Let's look at her sire's pedigree Pan:

Looks innocent...only one time inbreeding to Kachkir, who's sire line gets back to Boinou, so lets count all the sire lines in the 5th generation:
Kir Sakar, 4x
Skak, 4 x
Toporbay, 1x
Everdi Teleke, 1x
Saphar Khan, 2 x
Karlavach 1x
All these 6 sires came from the sire line  Boinou.

Gecheli, 1x From the sire line Gecheli

Gelishikli, 1x from the sire line Sultan Guli

Now we look at her dam's pedigree Gemella:

Same here, only a one time inbreeding..but to what extent when looking into sire lines in the 5th generation.
This time the inbreeding is to the stallion Kambar, who is Karlavach line, also descendant from Boinou!
Her sire lines in the 5th generation are these:

El, 1x
Skak, 2x
Arab, 1x
Karlavach, 2x
Kir Sakar, 6 times
Peren, 1x
Everdi Teleke, 1x
Toporbai, 1 x

All these horses sire lines came from Boinou
Ak Belek, 1x
Sire line Chopar Kel

In conclusion we have the stallion Pan with out of 16 possible 5th generation parents :
13 tracing back to Boinou
2 tracing back to Sultan Guli
1 tracing back to Gecheli

Gemella with out of 16 possible 5th generation parents :
15 tracing to Boinou
1 tracing to Gecheli

Moral of the story is this:
There is more lurking in a pedigree than the obvious inbreeding.
Breeding your horses in a rare breed takes more education!
Can defects be avoided?
Science has proven in remote areas small groups of animals have flourished.
How do I keep my horses in this small gene pool healthy?
By outbreeding! Use the different sire and dam lines and mix the pedigrees up to save GENETIC DIVERSITY!

Line breeding....personally I hate THAT that phrase because it is a fancy word for inbreeding." But I'm emphasizing on the very typy face," a breeder will tel you...or his race record.

What we DO know about inbreeding is this: for example when the rich in Europe only married out their children to the rich, to keep the wealth in the family, they ended up having to marry off children so closely related their offspring was infertile or in worst cases mentally ill.

What we know about the Akhal-Teke breed and it's small start up population is this: we are the ONLY breed that has the Naked foal Syndrome. With NFS testing and working with VNIIK we now know the common ancestor who passes this deadly gene on.
Meet 685 Angar, a stalion born in Ashgabad in 1959.

60 years later, horses with Angar in their pedigree still pas on the NFS.
Breed a sire to a mare whom are both affected and you have a high chance a foal will be born that will suffer a miserable death.
Why do people inbreed? In the USA most cases are ignorance and lack of dedicated breeders who understand the downfall of inbreeding. Lack of available stallions in the USA 20 years ago...In Russia....money perhaps? Since government run farms got privatized and  farms struggled to make income?
Would you happily marry your daughter to your cousin?...well...you know the answer....why do it to your horse!

2019 will mark 20 years of breeding Akhal-Teke horses for me. In those 20 years i have compiled an extensive photo library of sires and dams, have my own pedigree data base and visited Akhal-Teke horses all over the USA, Europe, Turkmenistan and even Iran.
I love this breed, as many people do,...but why, with the information we have today at our fingertips, is clubfeet so rampant in our beloved breed!
And mostly, not taken seriously!
It is THE reason I have picture pedigrees of all of me horses on the web, so one can see the conformation that gets passed on trough the generations.
There are certain sire lines who's offspring even today, 5 generations later, still produce clubfeet in their offspring!
I hope with more awareness, less "line breeding", there will be better breeding choices made in the future.

Hi Everyone,
We are going hosting a clinic on plastic horse shoes you can either Velcro or glue on.
Saturday October 13
Please sign up here: https://www.terrahorse.com/events

She will demo how to put them on and all participants will get a discount on their order or pre-order and she will bring them. Here is the link to dealer in the USA https://www.terrahorse.com/about-us And the website to the manufacturer https://pp-systems.at/accessories/ Here is what she will do: We would give a little bit of hoof basics and then explain why Esprit and show them how to mount them on one or two of your horses (depending on how many people we have that are watching). Clinic charge would be 45$ per Person. If they buy Esprit shoes within the next week after the clinic, they get 15% off of online orders. Or, they can preorder with their application and we can bring them with us to the clinic. (Saves them 10-15 $ with the discount, depending on which product they buy, plus another 10$ in shipping). The clinic would go 2 hours probably.

Sweet Water Farm Akhal-Teke
2097 West Valley rd Friday Harbor,
WA 98250, USA 360-378-8386 Cell 360-298-4628
www.akhalteke.cc
Treasurer, Webmaster and Registrar for the Akhal-Teke Association of America www.akhal-teke.org