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

On June 25th Maralle gave birth to this beautiful filly sired by Aliger.
Her name Merwerit means pearl in Turkmen. Not only does she look like a pearl, I feel lucky to have a filly by the wonderful stallion Aliger who does not have a lot of offspring and is an older sire born in 1995.

May 21st, 2018 Kamil was born. His name means "perfect socks"! Only too often do horses have 3 stockings or just one and make their legs look uneven...I feel extremely lucky to have 4 matching socks! I think this colt has potential to stand at stud! Excited to see him grow up!

I am very excited that the mare Ayal Pikira is in foal to Kambarbay. The foal will be due in May.
Ayapl Pikira is suoer typee and shiney, and so is Kambarbay! Can't wait ti meet the new foal!

From the stallion Aliger I am expecting 2 foals. Aliger was born in 1995 and stands at stud in Colorado. He does not have that many foals on the ground, a real shame in my opinion!
Aktepel and Maralle are both pregnant by him.

Sweet Water Farm imported the first 10 dozes of Kambarbay's frozen semen to the US in 2014, and used it on 5 mares, four got pregnant the first try.
The foals born in 2015 were Ak Farfor out of Leucosia, Arslan Jorap out of Ahlie Rhatan, Aykyssa out of Aktepel and Komissar Hyrdar out of Sheherezad.

In 2015 Ahlie Rhatan was bred back to Kambarbay's frozen semen and Ak Hadysa has born in 2016.

Also born in 2016 were the filly Nezhnaya out of Gagatli and Swan Bir Sah out of Pipi.

I'm very excited to see the next generation from these foals!