I was wondering if anyone had ever heard of negatives from breeding a red roan stallion to a paint mare. I was told by an older cowboy that it is highly discouraged due to some complications from that type of breeding. He said he thought the risk of the foal being stillborn was much higher or something to that effect.
I was also just kind of curious that of this wasn't true, what kind of color you could expect.
Roan and "paint" colorations have different genetic controlling genes and there shouldn't be a problem "mixing" the two. Roan to roan breedings are discouraged since having 2 roan genes is a lethal; those pregnancies will typically not go to term.
Potential results will depend on the genetics of each parent. 50% chance of getting the roan passed on, 50-100% chance of tobiano/overo being passed on, rest of the colors depends on the parents.
Roan to roan breedings are discouraged since having 2 roan genes is a lethal; those pregnancies will typically not go to term.
I have a colt from a red roan mare bred to a grulla tobiano stallion. He just turned 3 and is a really great horse. By the way he is the most beautiful color of blue roan, and my baby. Good luck!
I thought the "lethal roan" theory was disproven by UC-Davis?
Roan itself is not lethal. Several stallions have been identified that are homozygous for roan and have tested as such. It is not a test that is commercially available to the public, but it is possible to test for it based on a nearby gene (we don't know the gene for roan). Roan was only thought to be lethal because a paper was published in 1979 by?Harold Hintz at Cornell that showed, statistically, that roan should be an embryonic lethal because of the ratios of roan-to-non-roan foals born to two roan parents. This turned out not to have a genetic basis, according to the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory of the University of California, Davis.
There are multiple Hancock bred roan horses that have been tested as homozygous roan.
Here is a list of homozygous roan stallions. My horses sire is Hancocks Blue Boy, 3rd stallion down.
I know this post is kind of old-ish, but I figured I'd chime in anyway.
There are no higher risks or stillborn foals associated with crossing a Paint with a red roan. Anytime you breed a Paint, however, you should be aware of the frame overo gene. Not every Paint has it, but it's not always easy to tell if they do or not, because they can be very colorful or completely solid.
If you breed two horses that carry the frame overo gene, you have a 25% chance of getting a Lethal White (LW) foal, which will die soon after birth. Remember, a horse can be solid and still carry the frame overo gene, and Paints are not the only breed that has frame overo, so the only sure way to know if the horse is a carrier of frame overo is to test for it. Luckily, the test is only $25, so it's cheap and easy to avoid a LW foal.
If you are interested to know specifically what colors you can get from the cross of the Paint mare and red roan stallion, you would have to answer a few questions. What color is the mare and what pinto pattern(s) does she express? Pictures of both potential sire and dam would be best, because a lot of colors/patterns are commonly misidentified, especially roans and pinto patterns. Links to the horse's pedigrees can also be helpful if the pedigrees have the proper colors of the ancestors on them. Looking at the stallion's foal crop on a website can also help to predict what could happen. If you can provide some of this information I can help you narrow down your possibilites a bit.
We have a red roan overo stallion (OWLS carrier, so we won't breed to ANY other overo), and we have 6 healthy babies out of him, 2 are red roan overos.
edited to add: solids can also carry the gene, but it's not as common as overos/toveros. All of our mares that have paints in their pedigrees have been tested, and the only OWLS mare we have is Moon, she's not even located on the same property as Beau.
My mare is overo and negative for the OWLS gene. My vet and the stud's owner that I bred her to were both surprised. Don't turn away overo mares just because of their pattern, if the mare's owner is willing to test their mare and they're negative then you're good to go.