Needed: your Percheron’s DNA test

[Joseph C. Keller]

I’m not a horse owner. I’m a retired medical doctor with training in genetics and statistics. I’m studying the genetics of the American Percheron horse.

The purpose is, to identify Percherons which have Boulonnais draft ancestry. This is possible, because recently, many French Percherons and Boulonnais had DNA tests, so it is known which markers are French Percheron and which are Boulonnais.

By breeding “high Boulonnais” Percherons to each other, owners might choose to reconstruct the Boulonnais breed. This reconstruction will be faster, if the USDA loosens its restrictions enough, that importing Boulonnais AI semen becomes practical. Even if equine AI from Europe becomes practical, my research is worthwhile, because I will be discovering lost genetic diversity of the Boulonnais breed.

If Boulonnais become popular and “everybody wants one”, this could be lucrative for the owners of “high Boulonnais” Percherons. There is another motive: to get the Boulonnais breed going in N. America, to enrich our base of draft breeds. In the early 20th century, the Percheron and Boulonnais were the only French draft breeds legally recognized as breeds by the French government. Costly USDA import restrictions have prevented getting even one Boulonnais horse to the U.S. during the last nine years that the American Boulonnais Horse Association has been trying.

I hear that many registered Percherons already have had DNA tests as a requirement of registration. The Gluck Center at the U. of Kentucky offers only one thing they call a DNA test. It is the microsatellite test, and can be done on blood, or on 20-30 mane or tail hair root bulbs; it costs $40 either way. Clear instructions are on the Gluck Center website. No special equipment is needed.

There are other kinds of DNA tests that are done, but if your horse has had a DNA test, almost for sure it was pretty much this same microsatellite test that the Gluck Center offers. Whatever kind of DNA test your horse has had, I can use it in this research. The more test data I get and the more horses I get data on, the more accurate the estimate of Boulonnais blood that I can give for each individual horse.

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Keller, M. D.
16201 620th Ave.
Roland, Iowa 50236 USA

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