Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Blood or DNA testing for parentage

From: Sukie

Dear Jessica, I was sick last week and stayed home from work which let me watch daytime TV which is something I never have the chance to do! I was watching a TV show where this girl was waiting to find out which one of her boyfriends was the father of her baby. I think it's amazing that scientists can tell so definitely. Does this work with horses too? I live in Kentucky, and you know we have a lot of Thoroughbred horse racing here, and I'm sure I've heard of cases where a horse was supposedly the foal of one stallion and then it turned out that its father was another stallion, not the one listed on his pedigree, and the evidence was in the blood tests. Can you tell me how this works? If I wanted to find out for sure that my horse (11 year-old TB) is really the son of the sire and dam listed on his papers, is that something I could find out by having his blood tested? I don't want to do this, but I'm very interested! Also, what about DNA testing? Could I get the same information with DNA? Is there a reason they do DNA testing on humans to find out who the father of a baby is, could they use blood instead? What about with horses? I wish they would do a TV show on finding out the real father of a horse.

Sukie

Hi Sukie! Bloodtyping can indeed answer those questions. It's used for paternity testing and to verify parentage. It's very useful in cases such as the ones you mentioned, when a foal's owners need to be certain which of several stallions is the sire. Bloodtyping is also used to confirm (or not) the identification of horses when there's doubt about the identity of a particular horse. And, of course, bloodtyping is still used to confirm (or not) the identification of horses in drug testing cases.

With humans, blood-typing can eliminate possible fathers from consideration, but won't necessarily prove that one specific individual IS a baby's father. DNA is much more precise, and gives much more definite information. With horses, it's different - there are a lot more factors and possible combinations of factors, so it's possible to get very precise information about parentage (among other things) from bloodtyping.

With the advent of DNA testing, there began to be a shift from blood to DNA testing, for many reasons - DNA typing is faster and in many ways more useful. The big labs are focusing more and more on the use of DNA - most of it from blood and hair roots, but even a dead horse can be DNA-tested as long as there's a useful bit of tissue or bone or tooth available. DNA testing is used by most breed registries - Morgans, Quarter Horses, Paints, most of the Iberian horse registries, for example - and the list includes the Jockey Club, so it's entirely possible that you could arrange to have your Thoroughbred tested. However, you'd need to be sure that your horse's immediate family was still around, or had already been tested, since the parentage verification tests require samples from the putative offspring and from all of the possible parents!

There are some very good bloodtyping laboratories around the world, and the first one that would come to my mind if I were needing that kind of bloodwork done is the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory in Davis - part of the Davis branch of the University of California.

Veterinary Genetics Laboratory
Horse Testing
University of California
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616-8744

Since you live in Kentucky, you'll be glad to know that you're near another excellent lab. It's in Lexington, at the University of Kentucky. You could probably get much more detailed and up-to-date information by contacting someone at the lab. Here's the mailing address:

Equine Parentage Verification and Research Laboratory 205 W. W. Dimock Animal Pathology Building University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40546, USA

I'm not so sure about your idea for a TV show, though. ;-) It would make a good special on NOVA or on one of the other science programs, and of course I would want to watch it - but I just don't think a show about the parentage of a foal would be considered exciting enough for daytime TV. Those shows aren't really about providing information, they're about the spectacle - the emotional and physical drama before and after the actual information is provided. Horses don't get agitated about these matters. If the question of the day were "Which stallion is the sire?" the audience wouldn't get to see several horses and their family members jumping around, cursing, screaming, crying, and hitting each other, first over the possible results of the test, then over the actual results of the test. ;-)

Jessica

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