Breeding

[The Goat Mage]

Hello all! I want to get a White Mustang male horse and a couple of White Irish Draught female horses. I want to sell the offspring, but I'm not totally sure that they will come out white...does anyone have experience with this? Will the horses produce white foals? Thank you to all who help me!

 

[mikiz]

Is there any particular reason you want to breed these horses besides the fact that they're white?

 

[Bunnylady]

Horses that are white in color are usually genetically gray (genetic grays are born colored, but lose the ability to produce pigment as they age. Some may be completely white as early as 4 - 5 years of age). There are a few other possible ways for a horse to be white (maximum expression of one of the sabino genes, for example) or nearly white (doubling up on the dilution genes). There is even one gene that can result in a white foal, but the foal dies (Lethal White Overo).

Chances are, your theoretical foals would not be white, at least, not to start with.

 

[The Goat Mage]

Is there any particular reason you want to breed these horses besides the fact that they're white?

Well, I have always wanted a mustang. But I am going to need the Irish Draught for farm work. I could just stay with the same gender, but I wanted to make money off of them by breeding and selling the foal.

 

[The Goat Mage]

Is there any particular reason you want to breed these horses besides the fact that they're white?

I suppose I could just have mustang horses...but are they good for, say, cattle herding and other farm activities?

 

[samssimonsays]

I have heard of a lot of mustangs doing the job of quarter horses around me. It all depends on the drive of the individual.

 

[Bunnylady]

At one point, someone had the idea of "improving" the mustang, and released draft horses onto range land to interbreed with the feral stock. Most of today's wild horses have some of that blood in them; the pure Spanish Mustang is actually rather rare. You can often see the draft influence in the form of bigger bone and a stockier build; some "mustangs" even have a bit of "feather" on the legs. So yes, absolutely, a mustang can do pretty much any work a horse can reasonably be expected to do.

But as to raising and selling foals - the horse market really took a beating when the economy tanked a few years ago, and really hasn't recovered. Most foals (especially mixed breed foals) wind up costing at least as much to produce as they sell for. If breeding is your passion, well, more power to you, but if it's supposed to be a money-making venture, it might be worth rethinking.

 

[mikiz]

Horses are not the best money making machines, you'd be better off just purchasing a foal of the type and nature that you want to use for work, and if you feel the need to reproduce, just go and buy another one.
Honestly it's not worth the time and effort of breeding just to create a "maybe" crossbreed that "might" turn out the way you want when there are so many horses who would be suitable for the work you want it to do who need homes already.
Good breeders work hard and put everything into their stock in order to have health and work-ability, and even then some things can go terribly wrong.
You'd probably be better off buying a couple of draft-y type geldings and not worrying about them paying their way with breeding foals who may or may not ever find homes. Horses going through sales now are only worth about $150 here, up to maybe $300 if they have enough meat on them, and there are hundreds of thousands going to waste every day.

Of course if you have a bottomless pit of money, lots of well fenced land and all the time in the world, you could breed some specialty horses but be prepared as with any new "breed" to keep back pretty much everything you breed until the day they're breeding true.
But there's more than likely already a suitable light draft type breed out there, if you research and look up breeders, maybe become friendly with them and they could advise you.

 

[GLENMAR]

I had Arabian show horses. Some really good bloodlines. I bred and showed them. Never made a dime.
Horses take a lot of time and money to raise and train to be worth much, and by then you have put all the money into them. It has to be something you really WANT to do, not because you think your going to make money at it.

 

[AClark]

I know this thread is a couple of months old, however, if anyone comes across it...
The horse in my profile pic was my (grulla, bleached from summer sun in the desert) Spanish Mustang gelding - purebred and registered. My parents raised them. He was an excellent horse, great for riding, working cattle (he was used on a cattle ranch for around 10 years before the owner had a heart attack) and I used him as a teenager for barrel racing. They are pretty universal horses and good for about anything short of large draft horse work.
The BLM mustangs you see up for adoption are not the same, most of them have a lot of other stuff mixed in as Bunny said, draft, quarter horse, thoroughbred - basically whatever was turned out with them, and that happens quite a bit with the market in horses crashing. You see tobiano patterned horses in there, which is not registerable with the Spanish Mustang Registry. Even my parents who raised them for well over 30 years have scaled way back ( I think they have 10 or 12 now, as opposed to well over 30 horses and several of those are in their mid to late 20's), and they have lots of land. The problem really is with the market being down, they are hard to sell, and horses eat a lot! So unless you have expendable income, it's not a worthwhile venture. I'm pretty sure that even my parents spent more in feed than they ever made, but it was a hobby for them.
Personally, I would not be breeding horses in this economy unless it was purely for something I wanted to keep. I see horses, broken to ride and gentle for less than $1000 in my area. These are purebred horses with papers, so a mixbreed isn't going to fetch that and by the time they are old enough to be weaned, they've probably cost you at least half that much in the extra feed for the mare and vetting. If you are going to raise it up to an age to be ridden and trained, you'll have far more invested just in feed than you will get for price. A lot of mix bred horses go through the auction for slaughter every year - yes even with horse slaughter being done away with in the US, there are still killer buyers that ship horses to Mexico and Canada with the same end result for the horse.

Foals won't be born true "white" - lethal white overo causes the foal to die fairly soon after birth. Most of the time their intestines are not correctly developed, neurological problems. It is akin to "peanut" rabbits, born with 2 copies of the dwarf gene - LWO foals are born with 2 copies of a mutated gene (frame overo) - same principle, they don't survive. Generally it would be born any other color and then gradually turn gray, and eventually look white. They'll still have dark pigmented skin underneath.
The Irish Draught horses I just looked at from their website are grays, not actually white. They weren't born the way they look now. Considering that purebred Irish Draught horses do not come in Sabino, you'd have to cross on a Sabino colored stud of another breed, and then it would be hit or miss on how much white is expressed. Gray, however, you have a 50/50 chance of getting if one of the parents is gray.