A BREEDING experiment gone wrong is the reason behind Lara vet Julie Tilbrook’s ongoing horse saga.
Speaking to the Geelong Advertiser yesterday, Dr Tilbrook said the emaciated animals were part of a genetic program aimed at breeding a unique colour mutation, but that the ongoing drought had cruelled her plans.
It is believed Dr Tilbrook has been trying to breed the unique “brindling” pattern from her thoroughbred stallion and registered Australian stock horse, Catch A Bird.
A source last night described the stallion’s colouring as “like dots joined together to form vertical stripes”.
“That pattern has never been seen before or since, it’s a genetic mutation,” the source said.
Dr Tilbrook said yesterday two of her horses pictured in news reports were Catch A Bird’s progency, and were part of her plan to reproduce the one-of-a-kind patterning.
“These two are carrying the genes. The roan horse here has got the mutation, and a couple of the other buckskins up there have, so I’ve got five or six of these horses that that stallion, if he had died without me doing this project, wouldn’t have left any progeny behind at all, it would have died with him,” she said.
“Now it’s coming out in the foals it’s looking quite unique, it’s not something we’ve had before. The curls on the feet and the wave in the coat, it’s not just a straight roan mutation, it is different.
“I’ve done two generations of it, I’d only need one third generation where I breed the carriers together to see what recessive things come out, and I’m home and hosed.”
Dr Tilbrook became emotional as she said it broke her heart to see her horses in such a “hopeless” condition, and acknowledged her dream was now in tatters.
“I’ve given up. The project’s finished, I just have to let it go,” she said.
“But that was the reason I’ve held on this long. That’s the reason why I’ve persisted as long as I can.
“Plus, apart from that I’ve got a couple of sentimental horses of my own I’ve carreid as a hobby for years.”
Dr Tilbrook also seemed resigned to being deregistered as a vet as a result of the onoing RSPCA investigation.
“I’m going to be deregistered, I’m going to be jailed,” she said.
“I don’t really give a stuff, but all of this out in the open has let me do what I’ve been trying to do in dribs and drabs for a couple of years and finally everything’s going to be placed properly.
“My main worry is that the research program is just going to (be wasted) because these horses _ the colts that are carrying it, they’ll go to new homes, they’ll just be gelded, and some of these people offering homes are just offering what you’d call retirement paddocks where the horses are just going to sit in a paddock and be a pet.”
~~~
FHOTD back in: OMG. You are sick, sick, SICK, lady. Your horses are starving and your biggest worry is that they are going to be PETS now? Do you really think the horses care if their rare coloring is preserved? They’d just like some fucking food. THEY’RE LIVING CREATURES, NOT SOME GODDAMN SCIENCE EXPERIMENT FOR YOU TO PLAY WITH!
And then the dumb see-you-next-Tuesday, as Charlotte on Sex and the City euphemized what I’d like to call this woman, actually
turned down $10,000 to buy one of the mares. Folks, it does not
get more crazy than this woman. She belongs in a mental hospital!
She has been
charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty regarding the horses and they are hoping to bar her permanently from owning any animals – I hope they succeed! She has also been charged with
21 counts of animal cruelty regarding reptiles in her possession that are also neglected and there’s a problem with a dog, too. Hey, why confine your hoarding to one animal when you can have a whole bunch?
The really sad part is people probably sold/gave her animals trusting that she was a veterinarian and would take proper care of them. Just goes to show – trust no one. Check things out for yourself!
Speaking to the Geelong Advertiser yesterday, Dr Tilbrook said the emaciated animals were part of a genetic program aimed at breeding a unique colour mutation, but that the ongoing drought had cruelled her plans.
“My main worry is that the research program is just going to (be wasted) because these horses _ the colts that are carrying it, they’ll go to new homes, they’ll just be gelded, and some of these people offering homes are just offering what you’d call retirement paddocks where the horses are just going to sit in a paddock and be a pet.”
Dear Geld-the-fugly, can I set up an appointment between you and my son-in-law who is a 3L student going nowhere and in no hurry to get there. Schedules his classes around his fantasy football club and his soccer games, thinks sweats are formal attire, and is looking at new cars while his bride, my darling youngest daughter, is starting her career in medicine. He is a “good” man who doesn’t smoke or drink or beat her and she may have chosen him in a backlash against her rather rigid, stern, type-A-for-generations background of overachievers. We tried to explain to her that as she comes from a family where we have no debt, not even a mortgage, having built our house with our own hands, that she has little concept of what she is getting herself into, but she was in love….. Now that they are married we are trying our best to welcome this fellow with open arms. He probably thinks we’re all hyperactive nut cases (could be right), what with no big screen tv or chrome rims to our name, but our clunkers and rabbit ears are bought ‘n paid for.
Question for those practising attorneys out there: If a girl marries a guy who has a gillion dollars in student loans, does she become co-responsible for those debts? Thanks.
Ohh, I was gone yesterday and now have spent *way* too much time reading everyone’s bio! What fun!
Here’s mine, if anyone is still reading:
Age: 30
Married
BS in biology, working on Master’s
Job: curator at a small zoo
Animals: besides the zoo (they’re ‘mine’ right?) only 2 cats, both rescues.
Farmer’s wife, great question! I wonder.
And Geld the Fugly, I definitely don’t want to take out money that I don’t need to. I talked to a career counselor here (we have a huge sector for that). They told me that getting my master’s might make more sense just because in the long run, I don’t want to practice and it will cost WAY more. My Dad is a banker. I have been raised on having as little debt as possible (with the exception of car loans and mortgages of course). There are some things you can avoid and things you can’t. However, I have lived thus far this semster on about $210.00 of spending money – and that was with a new pair of winter barn boots and a outfit to go to the frats for one weekend. I am not a big spender.
I am glad I have a lot of options, but the possibilities make me crazy. My Dad keeps asking me what I want to do with my life and I keep saying, “I know what job I want, it’s just getting there.”
I secretly want to work for the IRS. I would like to get some tax code put in there just for my Dad. LOL… I know it’s impossible, but the best gift I could give him is to write his ideas in. He secretly loves doing taxes. It’s like Christmas for him.
Some people are just sick. I am horse crazy, my mom loves art, and he enjoys doing people’s taxes. How horses come out of those two I don’t know. My sister doesn’t even like them – which is fine because the only two people my mare likes are me and my father. She doesn’t like either of the other ladies in the house. The gelding – he’s a goof. He loves EVERYONE. I am praying for a filly – one that likes most people. I don’t like boys all that much – they are just goofy.
Wow… That was a very long read.
Today’s blog subject:
There is not a single day that I am not reminded about the general stupidity of people.
Today’s comments subject:
It’s great to know a little more about all who ‘played’, though.
If anyone else reads down this far, here is mine:
Age–36.
Education–AA Equine Science, CMA, Cert. Phlebotomist, …probably enough credits to go back for a semester and get my Bachelors in Fine Arts:Photography but no drive
Job–weanling and yearling trainer, and assistant in the breeding shed/lab come spring time
Family–married… twice *snerk*, now living with my forever partner for the past 6 years, 2 kids both boys, ages 13 and 11
Critters—2 APHA Paints, 1 dalmation and 1 100 lb Border collie/Wire Hair terrier/Rott mix (LOL) He’s the smartest dufus ever. We got both of these neutered boys from the pound.
Human genetics: I was a rescue at 6 weeks old (read: adopted)
I am going to have to agree with anniemare here. That Brenda mare has passes on her brindle pattern, and yes I do call that brindle. So at least some brindle is inhertiable in my opinion.
Fluffy,
There, there, calm down. Give me lots of money and I’ll “advise” you on proper horse care. Until you’ve past my tests, I’m sorry, but I’m just going to have to take the horses & farm.
Not all vets graduate at the top of their class (or doctors, or lawyers, …)
This has been the best day yet. It’s incredible the diversity here.
Farmer, you getting this all down? It would be interesting to see the charts. I actually worked a whole week (and almost made it on time one day). Wore me out, taking off for a while to recupe, will you have it done later next week?
Techno-idjut me can’t find email, what day was it?
Shovels, I gave up somewhere around the iguana, was going onto the fifth page. Lots of interesting bios keep coming in. Bottom line is that we’re diverse, intelligent, educated by profs and by hard knocks, rabidly love our horses and our Noah’s Ark of critters. Maybe one of the statisticians can collate all the info. What say, FHOTD?
the-farmer’s-wife said:
Barrelchick2007, you are young in years and old in wisdom. The BYBs our FHOTD finds for us are either ignorant or stupid or both. The worst are those who are too stupid to know they are stupid, and that is not necessarily equated to IQ points. Perhpas the hoarding thing is the major problem, because NO ONE is dumb enough to believe they can make money raising horses. Have had almost fifty horses pass through our stable doors over the years, and made money on only one who we sold to a movie star with more $ than brains, but at least he put the animal with a capable trainer.
Keep on plugging along, Barrelchick, you are the next generation who can make a difference in the equine world.
———————————-
Thank you so much, and I hope to be in horses for a long time, and anyone I teach about horses, I will for sure try to pass on enough so that they end up not like some of the people on here.
You know another thing I don’t get:
People who know enough to have a stud that is stallion quality, or broodmare, but then none of them are broke? I believe you shouldn’t breed a horse unless they are proven, even at local shows. I see 2 to 19 year old broodmares that have never been broke. Anyone have opinions on this? FHOTD? How about you?
Athena,
Hello fellow adoptee! I was a rescue but mine took almost two yrs.
ew:
I’m a Cal Poly alumna too! I know exactly where Creston is… have you been to the San Juan Ranch?
I don’t know if you graduated 20 years ago or more recently, but for what it’s worth:
-Gene Armstrong retired a few years back but is still showing at Snaffle Bit among other shows,
-Mike Lund also left/retired around the same time, possibly because of a nasty lawsuit involved a girl that came off her 2 yr old project horse,
-Dr. Rudy Wooten is still going strong, as are
-Mike and Wendy Hall
-Roger Hunt left a few years ago as well, rather suddenly, and he was also involved in the suit
-Pete Agalos, who did the horse judging and ag program at Arroyo Grande High School for years is the new horse guy there,
-Dr. Dale Smith is still there at the vet clinic
-Dr. Jaymie Noland is there and nice as ever
Ummm that’s all I can think of. Good to see another Mustang out there! (I’m sure we aren’t the only ones…)
colorisnteverything, something to consider is the study that was published… um, five years ago maybe?
It looked at graduates from various law schools, ranked top tier, second tier, third tier schools.
As I recall, which law school a person graduates from influences the first job they get. After 18 months. there’s a significant difference in salary between top tier and third tier graduates.
After ten years? The gap closes to statistically insignificant. In other words, if you go to a second or third tier school, it takes you longer to get out of the gate but after ten years, you’re probably going to be in the same place.
Most discouraging were the factors that were found to have a significant and longlasting effect: gender and colour. Male lawyers make more than female lawyers, both in the short term and over ten years; white lawyers make more than non-white lawyers (even Asians, which is a surprise because in most fields Asians rank very high).
The top tier schools have a list of reasons for why this study doesn’t count that amount to “well, we don’t like it but we will never do the research ourselves because we’re afraid it’s true!”
While it’s undoubtedly pleasant to be able to say “oh yes, Yale law 2013″, in economic terms you’re a lot wiser to go to a less prestigious and much cheaper law school.
A lot of what the top tier schools is selling is sizzle rather than steak. And they give that sizzle premium prices, to boot.
My turn:
Age 44. Divorced after 17 years of marriage (you don’t get that long for murder!) now happily with new partner for the past 7 years.
No kids, thank goodness.
Animals: 6 cats (including one feral turned pet), 14 assorted chickens, 13 goats (5 rescues), 14 Icelandic sheep (yum, and nice fleeces too) and a grand total of 36 Icelandic horses on the farm at the moment…
17 are liveries (boarders)including some brood mares and their foals, plus youngsters from all over the UK sent here to grow up in the herd on lots of good Welsh grass.
19 belong to us, and range from several very elderly fugly rescues (three in their mid 30s) down to homebred youngsters.
Please don’t blast me for breeding!!!
Purebred Icelandics are rare (less than 1000) and very popular here in the UK and if we wanted we could breed ad-lib and pretty much guarantee to sell all foals as soon as they hit the ground – of course, we don’t do that! We very carefully vet any homes our babies go to and have an open buy back policy on anything bred here. It’s worked out well so far – I’ve been breeding Icelandics for around 20 years now.
You can see our horses on http://www.solva-icelandics.co.uk
Love the fugly horse site!
>>People who know enough to have a stud that is stallion quality, or broodmare, but then none of them are broke? I believe you shouldn’t breed a horse unless they are proven, even at local shows. I see 2 to 19 year old broodmares that have never been broke. Anyone have opinions on this? FHOTD? How about you?< <
I agree with you. I want to see breeding stock broke, if only to trail ride, just to prove they aren’t freakin’ idiots. In fact I really prefer they have some sort of performance record…some kind of showing, eventing, endurance races, regular races, whatever. Some proof that they can do something and do it well.
At the very least, I want to see broodmares get green broke so that they will have a chance of a good home when they are too old to breed. Bash on the racing industry what you will, but at least those old race mares are ridden before they start popping out babies, and they really aren’t that hard to refresh and get back into work 10 or 15 years down the line.
In keeping with that, I really need to get going on the 17 y.o. broodmare I meant to break this winter!
First I didn’t have time and then she had a hoof abcess. I think she is ok now and the sun is actually shining, so I ought to finish my coffee, go out and get the barn work done and head over there today!
Thank you so much, and I hope to be in horses for a long time, and anyone I teach about horses, I will for sure try to pass on enough so that they end up not like some of the people on here.
You know another thing I don’t get:
People who know enough to have a stud that is stallion quality, or broodmare, but then none of them are broke? I believe you shouldn’t breed a horse unless they are proven, even at local shows. I see 2 to 19 year old broodmares that have never been broke. Anyone have opinions on this?
Our breeding stock are all broke to ride, but not all have points to their names. Those would be the Solid Bred mares, some of which were not born in this state. APHA has only recently started putting in more Solid Bred classes into their shows, so until now, the only venue solids had were futurities. The bigger futurities around here, such as Triple Crown, require that the mare and stallion be nominated in each year, and in the case of several of our mares that was not possible. We also could not show them in Oregon Bred classes due to them not being born here.
They’re still good quality girls though, and they do produce their good minds, bodies, and add in some spots, too.
Grainne Dhu, that is very, very interesting. I appreciate that. Of course, the reality is that I have a tier one law school right here who will most likely accept me. I am only in year two and they have already been hounding me. They look at the pre-law listings. Those with the highest GPA’s are much-sought-after. I also have gotten recruiting letters from several other notable schools because we have law fairs here (some of the biggest in the nation) and schools look at those lists to find good candidates. I am not completely sure what I want to do. I know I never want to take a standardized test again, but no matter what I do, I will have to
I hate testing.
**Stormslegacy said…
Unfortunately, animal hoarding is most likely to occur in people in animal rescue and veterinary fields. It’s a true mental disease, I have no doubt that she is honest to god in capable of seeing what was done. I have diagnosed OCD myself, which can have hoarding as a symptom. The result is I’m very careful about how many animals I allow myself to keep and the conditions they’re kept in.**
Bingo! I’ve got OCD also (mild case, fortunately) and definite collector tendencies: Books, well over a thousand and find it terribly difficult to weed out the never-read-agains; plants in every window that will support them; way more clothes than I need, and have a hard time recycling them into a charity’s bin.
And then there’s the eight cats.
Thing is, I KNOW I’m a potential hoarder, and have set rules to prevent it from getting out of hand. Cats, for example; I’ll never go into double digits because then I’m well and truly over the cliff. The ones I do have get regular vet care, healthy regular feeding, daily individual attention, and meticulously cleaned multiple litter boxes in a clean house where the clutter is ruthlessly kept to a minimum.
But I’m at the shallow end of the OCD pool, merely wading ankle-deep in the tendency. This ex-vet is drowning in the deep end, with no life jacket of awareness that she even has a problem.
I once worked for an animal hoarder. I don’t mean to upset anyone, but I think empty nesters hoard to give them something to do, but it’s not good. The woman had 3 acres and 54+ horses. They were all taken care of- feet, teeth, food, etc, but it was just scary. I worked before she got to that number – back when she had 15-16. She is back down to about 20 because I think calls to the SPCA were a wake up call.
Whisper-the-wind said:
“1 tarantula, numerous other spiders.”
Yay…another spider person! I thought I’d be the only tarantula owner on the blog…nice to see I’m not alone
We bought our place from a real estate agent who purchased it from a hoarder to fix it up and flip it. Our neighbors told us she had 45+ animals on 3.5 acres including 3 horses, goats, cats, dogs, chickens, and the house was stuffed full of birds. The front living room was floor to ceiling bird cages. Our neighbor had to put a fence along the property line to his place to keep her animals off his property as she was only fenced on 3 sides. The house had to be completely gutted because it was in such appalling condition and a new septic system and well was put in. We could still see signs of all the animals in the barn, shed and garage with chewed up wood, chicken feathers and various other evidence. She used to let the goats roam around in the house. Egads. The calls to the health department and humane society I guess finally ran her off. I have no idea what became of all those animals and birds.
oh dear,I am probably the last one to jump on the bandwagon here.I just don’t seem to have enough time to spend here as I would like.
I will be 45 (eeek) in a couple of weeks…
widow with no kids
BA in geography,yeah ,a useless degree,but it made the parents happy,AND I can fold a road map.
2 horses,predominantly Tb, sporthorses(not draft x).
mare, Zoe(Tudor Melody granddaughter)whom I raised and will keep til the end..
Burney,(Zoes’baby)who is a 16++
hand 2.5 year old gelding.I will sell him to the right person….
1 Bernese Mtn.dog, Theo
1 boxer,Heidi
1 cat recently adopted after caving in to pressure…I feel that I should have been the one to train Ellen Degeneres dog, as my new cat gets along famously with the dogs,she even hangs out with them when they are all outside..
I have had many different jobs over the years,including mucking stalls(to pay for riding lessons),riding instructor,trainer,working on Tb farm,conditioning hunters in Ireland.However these days I am living slightly north of the Vermont border,working in the high tech industry,(semiconductors).It’s a drag but it pays well….
Btw I love the snark and the sarcasm here,that, and the sharing of opinions and ideas is what keeps me addicted,but in a good way…
clearly this woman does not know the wonders of Google. The implication in the article is taht the brindle pattern doesn’t exist in any other horses other than Catch a Bird – and it’s funny because TWO DAYS ago, in some reading I was doing on unusual (at least for me) coat genetics based on trying to find the name of the white spots on my chestnut gelding’s coat (which are called birdcatcher spots) and found the brindle description – and around ten different individual horses with the pattern. yay, diversifying the gene pool, but come ON, feed them! have a BRAIN!