A Milly-Scottie Foal = Adorable and Possible?

Geldings can’t have babies… can they?

I don’t really remember how it all came about, but for a while now Me and Eva have been talking about how cute a Milly – Scottie foal would be. Connie x TBs are already very popular for both horses and ponies for riders of all abilities. So our foal would already be a popular choice for many potential owners. (If I was able to ever part with it!)

Both Milly and Scottie have such fantastic temperaments and are just lovely characters to have around the yard. So it is fair to assume that their foal would have a fantastic temperament too! We also think it would be fairly well put together and a nice height. Scottie doesn’t have the best conformation, but his ‘issues’ are largely that things are too long. The actual angles to his conformation are actually pretty good. Milly is very well put together with fantastic show jumping pedigree. With Milly being around 14.1h and Scottie now pushing 17h, it would probably reach a nice 15.2-16h size – a perfect small riding horse size.

Both Milly and Scottie have over 3 generations of recorded pedigree, this means that any offspring they had would easily have the required pedigree to qualify for the top tier in any stud book. (As long as their conformation and ability was at the correct level!)

Okay, so you’re probably thinking I’ve forgotten something fairly vital, Scottie is a Gelding. Don’t worry, I am totally aware of this. However, with technology advancing as it is, I do not see why this should be an issue forever.

Already we can take DNA from one horse and put it into an empty egg of another horse to clone a horse. I also recently came across an article on how soon gay couples could be able to have their own children. I’m assuming this will involve taking sex cells (egg and sperm) from each partner and putting both sets inside an egg.

If we can already do this, is there any reason why a gelding cannot have non-clone offspring?

Well, some geldings do now have offspring. Some sports geldings are cloned. These clones are then kept entire and can sire offspring. However, we do not know enough about to know exactly what the result would be. So I have thought of a more… complicated method!

Okay, so it is probably quite hard to extract half the chromosomes from a cell, while making sure you only get one copy of each chromosome. (This is important for avoiding some potential serious conditions.) But I imagine that this process is possible. So if we could extract Scottie’s share of chromosomes by this method, then it must be fairly straightforward, in comparison, to put this DNA one of Milly’s eggs…

I know that this idea of a Milly-Scottie foal is still very much fantasy, however, I do not see why this couldn’t be possible with the research and financial backing. But it is still very interesting to think about and if anyone needs any DNA volunteers, Milly and Scottie and up as long as they are put together!

Last Updated on 07/08/2018