SOLID BRED PAINTS AND OLWS

Overo Lethal White Syndrome (OLWS)

At Mountain View Paint Horse Ranch, we learned the hard way about the dangers of OLWS when we bought two beautiful mares in foal. Both mares delivered solid white foals which were required to be "put down" the night they were born.

Please test your mares for OLWS. Both Wiconi and The Gift of Midas are "positive" as are a majority of the overo horses in APHA. Breeding two positive horses gives you a 25% chance of receiving a lethal white foal. Breed our stallion to a negative mare and you will not have a lethal white foal. The test kit is available from University of California at Davis and others.

We understand the importance of "color" to our breed, but this gene is where it comes from. With APHA's move to reinforce paint horse pedigrees, there will be more focus on the traditional paint horse bloodlines like our stallions. The alternative for many breeders is the foaling of solid bred paints which are not allowed to show "side by side" with Regular Registry Paint Horses. However, even with the breeding of an OLWS positive sire and an OLWS positive dam, you have a 25% chance of producing a solid colored foal. That number jumps to 50% when you breed two negative horses.

Because of this, we plan to continue working to create a market for solid bred paints. Mountain View Paint Horse Ranch sponsors an "Ultimate Yearling Award" for solid bred horses competing at Arizona shows. Call us for more information. The picture in the margin includes 3 solid colored yearlings that competed for this honor during their yearling year.

Our stallion Norfleets Super Sun is OLWS negative and comes from the bloodline of the #1 all time stallion Mr Norfleet. He can be safely bred to any mare. See his loud colored foal on the cover of the August, 2007 paint horse journal!

We are also proud to announce that we will soon be able to offer to Paint Horse Breeders an OLWS negative "full brother" to The Gift of Midas. This 2011 stallion named The Gift of Midas ^Two will be training with Roger Deromedi during his two year old year and then retire to the breeding shed to work side by side with his famous brother!