Morphological description of the Lipizzan horse population
Introduction
The Lipizzan is one of the oldest European horse breeds. Its foundation was laid by the Austrian Archduke Charles II who established a stud at ‘Doerffel Lipizza’, now Lipica in Slovenia, in 1580. The purpose of this stud was to breed horses for show and parade at the Imperial Court in Vienna. This breeding goal did not change for several centuries and even today, almost a century after the fall of the Austro–Hungarian Empire, Lipizzan horses attract many visitors with their performances at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. In the 1800s several centres of Lipizzan horse breeding were established, mostly in different parts of the Austro–Hungarian Empire, following evacuation of the original stud during the Napoleonic as well as during the First and Second World Wars (Oulehla et al., 1986; Nürnberg, 1998). Currently, Lipizzan horses are kept in state-owned studs in Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia–Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, as well as by private owners all over the world. Still, the total number of horses is only between 2000 and 3000. Considering this low number and the long history of breeding in a more or less closed population the population can be considered genetically small.
In an international effort, a large portion of the population is being examined for genetic variability and population structure using molecular and pedigree information. Part of this characterisation of the breed involves the morphometric study of horses from eight different state-owned studs in seven countries. The aim of this paper is to present the means and differences for these studs of 37 body measurements following a standard procedure developed by Oulehla (1996). Repeatabilities and heritabilities were estimated to evaluate the genetic foundation of these body characteristics. The different breeding goals followed by the various studs should be reflected by differences in the general appearance of horses. Multivariate statistical methods were applied to classify such differences. Using these methods was possible to evaluate the most important characteristics separating the subpopulations defined by studs. Multivariate methods were also applied to sire lines.
Section snippets
Data and methods
Data were recorded at studfarms in Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Romania (Fig. 1) during 1997 and 1998. The numbers of stallions and mares measured at each stud are given in Table 1.
A total of 513 individuals (145 stallions and 368 mares) were recorded. As the Lipizzan horse is late maturing, only individuals 4 years or older were measured. In general, all individuals fitting this age restriction were measured. In Fagaras (Romania) only, the 79 mares examined are a
Stud means
The mean values of the various body measurements at the different studs are given in Table 2 for mares and in Table 3 for stallions. The pairwise comparison of means reveals significant differences for many traits. The largest values for height at withers were found at Szilvásvárad. Only mares from Djakovo were not significantly smaller. Stallions from Piber were significantly smaller than stallions from Szilvásvárad; stallions from all other studs showed no significant difference to any of the
Conclusions
Differences between studs were found for many of the morphological traits (34 of 37 for mares, 29 of 37 for stallions). This reflects the different breeding goals and management strategies of the studfarms. The Lipizzan population is, therefore, considered to be structured, although differences are, in many cases, small for most of the studfarms.
Estimated repeatabilities and heritabilities were more or less in the range of values found in the literature. The sample size for estimating
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