I am asking this for a friend who is fairly new breeding mini's but doesn't have a computer. Here is the situation.
Last year was the first year she bred her stallion, she bred to 5 mares. 2 of the mares were sold during pregnancy so she does not know how the foals turned out yet, but out of the 3 she knows so far 2 have off bites and one is correct.
stallion and all mares bred have a good bite (not off)
1 foal has good bite at birth
1 was off at birth and seems to be correcting itself
1 was good at birth but by 2 months old is going off
So where does the problem lie ? She is hesitant to breed or sell her stallion if he is somehow responsible for these bad bites even though his is correct. All horses in his pedigree were shown so we are assuming they had good bites as well.
Is an off bite a genetic problem or just one of those things that can happen ?
Would you keep breeding this stallion with a track record like that ?
When a bite is born correct and THEN goes off - Will it or can it recover and be good in the long run ?
I really really appreciate any advice or information you can give her and I will make sure she gets your responses. She is very concerned about this issue and never expected to have so many foals with off bites when she was very careful in picking horses with correct bites to breed.
Thank you
Last year was the first year she bred her stallion, she bred to 5 mares. 2 of the mares were sold during pregnancy so she does not know how the foals turned out yet, but out of the 3 she knows so far 2 have off bites and one is correct.
stallion and all mares bred have a good bite (not off)
1 foal has good bite at birth
1 was off at birth and seems to be correcting itself
1 was good at birth but by 2 months old is going off
So where does the problem lie ? She is hesitant to breed or sell her stallion if he is somehow responsible for these bad bites even though his is correct. All horses in his pedigree were shown so we are assuming they had good bites as well.
Is an off bite a genetic problem or just one of those things that can happen ?
Would you keep breeding this stallion with a track record like that ?
When a bite is born correct and THEN goes off - Will it or can it recover and be good in the long run ?
I really really appreciate any advice or information you can give her and I will make sure she gets your responses. She is very concerned about this issue and never expected to have so many foals with off bites when she was very careful in picking horses with correct bites to breed.
Thank you