Ok big question, since Irish Gold is a stud now, and is a twin of whom both survived, I was wondering what if any effect this might have as far as him passing it on to have Little IGGY twins?
Is this just an old code thing or is it a possibility?
Thanks, Carole
Chance of twins is unique to each breeding, it has nothing to do with genetics. Likewise for stillborn foals, mare deaths, etc. (I’d like to add in a link, so a certain mare is more/less likely to lose foals or have twins, but right now it doesn’t exist.)
Also, if I remember correctly, a mare is more at risk of dying if she has twins. I’d rather have 1 foal and mare than two foals and dead mare.
There were a couple questions about it so we were just wondering if it was something to be passed down or just a one off.
Yep. Normal chance of mare death is something like 1/300 (or 1/500, can’t remember off-hand). With twins, chance of mare death is 1/2.
Wow interesting,considering I’ve lost a young mare last yr and this yr ,the odds are really bad for twins dams! I didn’t realize it was that bad, I thought the major danger was to the babies.
Nope. The reason the chance of twins is so rare for each breeding (something like 1/3000?) is because most twins get naturally (or artificially, with a vet’s help 
) turned into a single birth anyway, for everyone’s sake.
So each breeding has a really small chance of twins, which represents the chance that both babies will actually survive. On top of that, though, you get the risk of laboring two babies for mum, so her chance of death goes WAY up. (IRL most sets of twins results in at least 1 of the 3 horses dead, if not 2+.)
Hopefully with the rewrite I can add in spiffy things like linking the chance of twins to genetics (though that would be through the mare, not the sire…mares would have a unique chance to throw twins, or have early/late foals, or die in birth, etc.) I might add fertility in for the sire (so a less fertile stud would have a higher chance of stillborn foals, and vice-verse), but everything else would be linked to the dam.
In the case of a stallion’s fertility, would it be possible that instead of having a stillborn foal the mare just doesn’t “take”? That is, say I bred my mare to a stallion that just wasn’t fertile. So, a month or two later I pay a vet to check to see if my mare is in foal. If she’s not and it’s still the breeding season, I can breed her again.
To me, having a stillborn foal as a reflection of a stallion’s potency doesn’t make sense. Once a gamete becomes a zygote, the stallion’s job is done.
Yeah, I know, but I really want(ed) to avoid having to do multiple breedings/inseminations.
We’ll see how motivated I am with the rewrite, though, when I get around to breeding.
That’s really interesting thanks for that. So then we shouldn’t worry a out him passing the twin thing down right now. I lost enough babies in 13 , it sucks, hopefully the code will be nicer. Lol. I agree extra breedings would be hard,especially if to the same stud and he was booked up and you couldn’t re-breed or get a refund until the following season.
Yeah, sometimes the random numbers don’t end up all that “random”, unfortunately. I think it evens out overall, though (except overall would be the entire FF crop of foals, which doesn’t really help if 90% of your foals are stillborn, or colts, or whatever, to know that overall FF’s crop is 50% colts and 1% stillborn).