Norwegian horse breeding in crisis

Janne Karin Brodin

A major turnaround, using development of the breeding efforts and targeted marketing, is necessary to prevent the extinction of the national horse breeds of Norway.

The threat is most serious to the breeds Nordland/Lyngen, Døle and Fjord. The situation is somewhat better for the last of the four traditional Norwegian horse breeds, Norwegian cold-blooded trotter, since this breed is used in harness racing, and the population – the number of individuals – is relatively large in comparison to the other breeds.

The number of foals is now so little, in already small breeds, that some of the breeds may vanish within the foreseeable future, says PhD Hanne Fjerdingby Olsen of Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB).

Hanne Fjerdingby Olsen and the horse Emil (Døl) Photo: Janne Brodin

The management of the Norwegian horse breeds and the consequences of the breeding practices are the main themes of her PhD thesis, which Olsen defended in June 2011.

The number of horses and people involved with horses increases in Norway as the interest in equestrianism increases, but this does not automatically work to the Norwegian horse breeds’s benefit.

Readjustment problems within the breeds
Within the span of a few decades, the purpose of owning horses has changed from the need for hardworking farm and work horses to sports and leisure animals. The traditional Norwegian horse breeds are falling behind in the adjustment to this new reality, and in the competition with imported foreign breeds, because the Norwegian breeds are uniquely national.

What this means is that breeding is done only within the breed, whereas hot-blooded riding horses are bred by crossing in other suitable breeds, in order to achieve rapid adjustment to a horse that has the required traits.

Since breeding cannot include desirable genes from outside the breed, changing the national breeds from work horses to sports and leisure animals takes a long time. Furthermore, the interval between generations can be as much as 10 years or even more. The breeding efforts have changed the horses from work horses to lighter all-purpose horses, but this does not quite hit the market.

The market is inundated by imported specialized horse breeds. None of the national breeds can compete with a top level saddle horse if this is what the customer wants, says Olsen.

The Fjord horse can also be used as a saddle horse. Photo: Ingvild N. Sveen

Myths about uses
This is not only a breeding issue – it involves marketing as well. The national horse breeds are perhaps not well enough known. People do not know them or how they can be used. Besides, there are myths and attitudes attached to the breeds.

If you think about a Fjord, you automatically envisage national costumes or driving a horse and cart in the mountains. This has quite the wrong appeal in today’s market. The breeds must be changed in the direction of the sought-for use, but we must also show that the breeds can in fact be used for many purposes, Olsen says.

Deficient breeding
Exterior has been emphasized in the Norwegian horse breeds. The horses are required to have breed and type characteristics. The question of utilization potential has not been registered and emphasized to the same degree.

There is some clean-up to be done within horse breeding. For example, there are no health registrations that can be used to chart the health situation of the breeds. There are registrations on e.g. bone quality, but they are not detailed enough to be used in the breeding plans, says Olsen.

Danger of inbreeding
When there are so few animals in each breed, is it quite a challenge to keep inbreeding to a minimum, so that the family relationships between individuals remains as small as possible.

Norsk Hestesenter at Starum has the national responsibility for managing the breeds. In addition to that, each breed has its own organization.

The problem is that the national management system does not supervise the development of average kinship in the populations. Horse breeding in Norway is known for so called line breeding – i.e. that stallions from certain lines are preferred. The horse owners themselves are in charge of mating through free choice among approved stallions, which leads to some stallions being used far too much. This lack of national management of the breeds has consequences.

The wish to avoid increased inbreeding can actually also backfire. If several mare owners are looking for a stallion which has a low degree of family relationship with their mare, the same owners may end up using one and the same stallion without knowing about each other. In this way, a small and already vulnerable breed may end up with a substantial group of half-siblings.

Through the lack of a national supervision service where mating and family relationships are registered on a regular basis and which might advise owners on the choice of mating combinations, the result may be that family relationships and thus inbreeding increase within a breed.

Matador studs in cold-blooded trotters
Large progeny groups have been a problem for the cold-blooded trotter. There is a yearly quota of 110 mares per stallion, but there has been no limit on the number of years that a stallion may be used for breeding. The result is that some matador stallions have been used for 15-20 years, each one ending up with a very large progeny group. Even though the breed is large, their contribution helps narrow the breed genetically speaking.

Elding is a stallion that was used in breeding for several years. He has more than 1100 offspring, whereof several sons have also been approved for use in breeding and have their own large progeny groups. With a total of 10,000 individuals in a breed, Elding’s offspring constitutes a major group, says Olsen.

Døl is the most beautiful of the four national Norwegian breeds Photo: Runa Bjone

Good genetic improvement
Since we have a tradition of keeping stud books, we have good relationship data for the various breeds dating back all the way to the 1800s. This information can be used to keep inbreeding in check.

Part of Olsen’s PhD work was concerned with testing the selection programme GenCont on the cold-blooded trotter. By limiting the speed with which inbreeding may increase, the software finds the best selection candidates for the best genetic improvement.

The results show that it is fully possible to use GenCont as a selection tool for the cold-blooded trotter breed.

The software efficiently selected animals that give the best possible genetic improvement while restricting increase in inbreeding. Old stallions which already have contributed far too much to the breed, in the form of large groups of offspring, were weeded out and replaced by young stallions.

GenCont makes a valuable contribution, but the process is not pain-free since there are important economic aspects to breeding cold-blooded trotters. Furthermore, the idealism that is seen in the three other breeds is not as strong where the cold-blooded trotter is concerned.

I have noticed a change and can see that there is a budding interest: people understand what this is about. When they see figures and graphs, they realize that this does not look good, says Olsen.

Variety is lost
When breeding to change a trait in one direction or another, you get inbreeding thrown in. Inbreeding means that the variety of a breed is lessened. The individuals become more like one another, and the possibility of changing a breed decreases.

With intensive breeding for special traits within a breed, other traits may automatically disappear or change in an unwanted direction, depending on their correlation with the traits one breeds for.

If the horse breed then must adjust from being a heavy working horse to becoming a lighter sports and leisure horse, the breed must have enough genetic variation to be able to handle such a turnaround.

Danger of defects

With close family relationships and rapid increase in inbreeding, the chances increase of sudden appearances of defects spreading rapidly within the breed. In contrast to what has happened in some dog breeds, there have been no remarkable cases of such defects within the national horse breeds.

Too few foals
2010 was a disastrous year for Norland/Lyngen with less than 100 foals born. There should be at least 200 new foals per year in order to balance the increase in inbreeding, according to Olsen. None of the national breeds, with the exception of the cold-blooded trotter, looks likely to exceed that limit in 2011.

There is quite a large market for trained horses. The customer has the economic wherewithal but not the knowledge about horses to buy a foal.

The challenge is to figure out how the breeds are going to increase their market shares and how to assert themselves in competition with the specialized breeds.

Owners of the national breeds have generally not been able to offer the customer a trained horse – partly because this is an expensive service and partly because there is not enough capacity to keep horses in training.

Horse owners can breed foals, but if there are no buyers, they must also discontinue their breeding activities, says Olsen.

Nordlands/Lynghest is the breed with most area of utilization Photo: Ridehesten

Knowledge must lead to action
Olsen’s doctoral work has been primarily a mapping effort. Olsen is now working on a three year project that aims to increase the national horse breeds’ ability to compete through sports and breeding. She is also, with Norsk Hestesenter and the individual breed organizations, developing a plan of action to capture market shares through breeding and marketing, in order to ensure that the horses are used.

She is furthermore continuing the work on the selection programme GenGont, for use on the Norland/Lyngen, Døle and Fjord breeds.

The knowledge is there, but we have some ways to go in order to translate knowledge into action, Olsen concudes.

Source
Hanne Fjerdingby Olsen defended her doctoral thesis in June 2011 at Norwegian University of Life Sciences. The title of her thesis is “Genetic variation and management of the Norwegian horse breeds”.

Updated: 03.10.11
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