Americas Horse Magazine

Has anyone else read it yet? If so, did you read the article on registering a "clone"? The arguement is being brought up again for consideration. I personally dont agree with allowing a clone to be registered. Theres to many things to consider like, knowing if you are buying a horse out of Royal Blue Boon the 1st or the clone. I think its a recipe for disaster. There are already clones out there that are being bred, contributing to the grade horse population.

Another thing is how will a show record follow the horse? Lets use Royal Blue Boon as an example. Will her clone carry the same show record and continue on the same record with future earnings and points?

What happened to AQHA's statement about "protecting the integrity of the breed"?

Do you agree with registering clones?

I haven't read it yet.. But, AQHA is running things in to the ground. I am not even going to breed any of my QH's this year. Just a few paints.

They said in there that there is a more advanced DNA test that actually differentiate the clone from the original and if they choose to register clones, this will have to be done. I don't know how I feel about that. There's alot of room for errors and corruption of the breed I think. They were even talking about how they take cells from other horses, not just QHs. They said there was a very small % of the DNA that could come from the cell itself instead of from the cloned horse.

Big article in the journal. They say that some of the clones are NOT as healthy as a horse that is not cloned. SOOO why in the heck do they want to reg. theses???? WRITE your rep from your state. the conference is march 6th I think. Tell them How you feel on the matter! Me, IM TICKED!

It actually wouldn't bother me if they were to register clones. Because genetically, they are still a QH. Very few people can afford to create clones, so I can't see it becoming a big thing.
Yes, there may very well be health problems with clones, most of the time they are done from older horses, so the cells they were started from are not as young and healthy as they once were. But if you look at it as a QH has to have a QH dam and sire to be a QH, then genetically, they are QH's.

Except according to the America's horse, there is a small amount of DNA called the mitochondrial DNA that may be derived from the host cell and may be different from the animal being cloned. It's a very small percentage,b ut it can be there.

So as long as it is from an AQHA registered horse, they could get past that. I myself wouldn't clone a horse, as I think that it makes for a smaller gene pool, and usually those stallions and mares have produced get that are better than themselves, so why the need to keep using the original horse as breeding stock.
What I would be interested in is seeing someone with clones such as of SLL send those horses to a few different trainers and see how they do in competition. Especially with some up and coming trainers.

I am totally against this as well as letting a dead stallions semen be frozen and used for years and multiple embroys from the same mare being transplanted each year..

It's like this. Love them when they are here, miss them when they'er gone, enjoy what they left behind and let life go on.

All this is doing is creating a world with nothing new. Same old thing over and over again. It's not how Mother Nature would want it.

Science is a wonderful thing. But, at what point do we draw the line and stop messing with life it's self?

Even then , it could cause problems because your bloodline is "contaminated" if you will so that the DNA may be different. It would also be different to know if genetic defects can be passed on through that mitochondrial DNA. For example, if they are cloning a horse, but they put that DNA into a cell of a N/H horse, can that defect be passed along through that? I don't know. There's just too many unanswered questions for me to support it.

http://www.aqha.com/passthrough/cloningwebcast/index.html

2:00 Today on the matter.

I missed it. This beautiful weather makes it hard to stay home longer than 15 minutes. Did anyone watch this? How did it go?