Prepare for a thrilling ride into equine genetics! We're tracking a mystery, piecing together secrets hidden in the DNA of a horse named Cairo. With Liz Hill, Cairo's owner, by our side, we navigate the labyrinth of horse genomes using the advanced tools at Etalon's DNA database. Christa Lafayette, the CEO of Etalon, and Head of Quality Control & Data Management Katie Martin, join us in this quest, unraveling the complex genetic conundrum that lies at the core of Cairo's past.
From one mystery to another, we transition into the captivating world of Connemara horses. Breeder, Janet Johnson, joins us to tell her about her stallion Skyview's Triton. What do Connemara's and Triton have to do with Cairo? You'll also get an insider's view into Liz and Janet's relentless pursuit in tracing Cairo's lineage, an adventure that uncovers intriguing facts and fuels engrossing conversations.
And if you thought that's all, hold your horses! Our trail takes us to a profound discussion about the significance of DNA testing and horse registries. We learn how a horse's physical attributes and temperament can be a telltale sign of its breed. Listen in as Janet highlights the importance of a strong community in solving breed mysteries, and the powerful bonds we can form with fellow horse enthusiasts.
What you're about to hear is more than a podcast episode - it's an unforgettable journey that celebrates the unique bond between a horse and its owner, the marvels of genetics, and the joy of discovery. So, it is time for a genetic deep dive!
Prepare for a thrilling ride into equine genetics! We're tracking a mystery, piecing together secrets hidden in the DNA of a horse named Cairo. With Liz Hill, Cairo's owner, by our side, we navigate the labyrinth of horse genomes using the advanced tools at Etalon's DNA database. Christa Lafayette, the CEO of Etalon, and Head of Quality Control & Data Management Katie Martin, join us in this quest, unraveling the complex genetic conundrum that lies at the core of Cairo's past.
From one mystery to another, we transition into the captivating world of Connemara horses. Breeder, Janet Johnson, joins us to tell her about her stallion Skyview's Triton. What do Connemara's and Triton have to do with Cairo? You'll also get an insider's view into Liz and Janet's relentless pursuit in tracing Cairo's lineage, an adventure that uncovers intriguing facts and fuels engrossing conversations.
And if you thought that's all, hold your horses! Our trail takes us to a profound discussion about the significance of DNA testing and horse registries. We learn how a horse's physical attributes and temperament can be a telltale sign of its breed. Listen in as Janet highlights the importance of a strong community in solving breed mysteries, and the powerful bonds we can form with fellow horse enthusiasts.
What you're about to hear is more than a podcast episode - it's an unforgettable journey that celebrates the unique bond between a horse and its owner, the marvels of genetics, and the joy of discovery. So, it is time for a genetic deep dive!
This makes so much sense now because the whole time in the barn I'm telling everyone he's shy or thoroughbred, but somehow he's got this. He wears one of the biggest girths in the barn, but we put pony boots on him. This just never added up until now and he still wears pony boots!
Lauren McDevitt:That was our client, Liz Hill. She's been generating a lot of buzz on TikTok by engaging in our favorite game, DNA Detective. Liz rescued her horse, Cairo from a young age and his origins were unclear. However, the two connected and he found his forever home in her barn. Questions around Cairo's early life never left her mind, as there was always much speculation, including guesses, around his breed and family. This situation is one many horse owners are familiar with. Etalon's CEO and founder, Christa Lafayette, had a vision to establish a company dedicated to developing helpful tools for people. One of these tools is a way to find out who your horse is.
Christa Lafayette :What struck me early on in building this company was how many people have horses like that, or they have horses where there's something went astray with people who own the parents.
Lauren McDevitt:Which is exactly what we are going to talk about on today's podcast. It's a really special story, right from the horse's mouth, okay, so maybe actually the horse owner's mouth. Through Etalon's database, we were connected with breeder Janet Johnson, who joins us to help answer Liz's questions.
Janet Johnson:The DNA doesn't lie, so I hope we're able to figure out the rest of the story.
Lauren McDevitt:Keep listening to learn what we discovered, down to the DNA in mystery horse, Cairo, and find out how you can help us figure out the rest of his history. This is Genetics Unbridled, powered by Etalon Equine Genetics. I'm Lauren McDevitt, and whether you're a longtime equestrian, first time horse owner or a devoted member of our nerd herd, we're so glad you're joining us on this ride. Liz, thank you so much for joining us. We have really enjoyed working with you and we're so excited that you're here today. Can you please tell us more about you and Cairo, the horse that started this all?
Liz Hill:Sure, so my name is Liz, I'm based in Nashville, Tennessee, and I am a voice over artist, singer, songwriter, horse obsessed woman, and I adopted Cairo from a rescue situation when I was 18, and he's my first horse. I'd grown up riding at a lesson school and always wanted my own horse, and so my great grandmother had left me $700 for college books and I instead bought a pony, and that was Cairo. When I got him, he was from a Premarin situation at least that is the best of my knowledge. He was one of the babies from a Premarin farm and he was completely feral. I was 18 and didn't know what I was doing, and somehow, by hook or by crook, we trained each other into being the best of friends. He turned out to be an amazing horse for me and I was under the impression he was shire, thoroughbred, and our whole 17 years together, that's what I thought he was.
Liz Hill:Very long story short, he turned out to be a super talented horse, but when he was seven he broke his right hind leg and fractured his P2 into five pieces. I thought my world was ending, because he was my beloved horse, who I'd really worked so hard to train and make something out of him and it turned out to be the best horse thing that ever happened to me. The surgery was successful. He has plates and screws in that leg. At the time was in the music industry in LA. I moved him to a barn in LA to rehab that leg and met this hunky cowboy who was a rehab practitioner who's now my husband. We fell in love because of this horse, ran away to Tennessee where I now have a beautiful career. We live on a horse farm that we do horsey things all day and then I pop in my studio and make music. And it's all because of that Fat, mystery black horse.
Christa Lafayette :I feel like she is rubbing this in. That is wild.
Liz Hill:Amazing. Yeah, he changed my life and my husband's and then some, and we just never knew really the story behind it. So this last Christmas my husband got me an Etalon ancestry test and this is how this ball got rolling.
Lauren McDevitt:And everybody's been weighing in on what he is, what he thinks and over the years, even before you post the video you said everybody had a little bit of interpretation of what he might be.
Liz Hill:Yes, All of the things. We had a running joke that he was a Mongolian war horse. My trainer would tell him. My jumping trainer told everyone he was a very little Irish sport horse. That is not true. All the things Everyone lied about. All the things.
Christa Lafayette :Everybody wants to be an expert, right? Many, many, many of us get horses from interesting sources, right. We'll either contact breeder sometimes or we'll reach out to a friend, and occasionally you're at an auction and that one walks by and you just have to have it, but there's no information about it. They can't get them registered because they can't prove the horse is, or they have an idea of who the parents might be or the siblings, but they don't really know and there's almost no way, aside from hunt and peck, to do that.
Christa Lafayette :Katie Martin is on with us and Katie is our quality control and data analyst person and she's also a professional horse woman. She is a professional dressage rider and a very, very good trainer and turns out. I sometimes think she might be better at DNA than she is at anything else in the world. She's scary good at this. So we're building this technology. This is what, Katie, this is like 2016 or something, something like that 2015, 2016. We reach out to this really nice woman who has these Connemaras and we say hey we don't have any Connemaras, can you send us some familial samples? That means mother, father, baby, mother, father, baby. And she's really nice and doesn't question these crazy people calling her and she sends us these samples of these horses.
Lauren McDevitt:This was a much earlier study at the start of Etalon, where we were asking breeders for reference samples of different unique breeds to create this first of its kind database. These samples were essential in Etalon's early stages and we'll dive even deeper onto the importance of ancestry in another episode.
Christa Lafayette :So we're running them and we provide her with some free results and whatnot and we forget about it. And so Katie and I were working with Cairo's DNA and we were super excited to work with Liz and we ran the diagnostics and we're like, oh, look at this, this is really cool because he has some neat little traits in there that are kind of hints as to what he might be, but they're not definitive. And some of the hints were things like he's got a black base. Okay, so he's black, big deal. Right, that could be almost any breed, any kind of horse. But he also has a copy of lethal white overo and pattern one which could be paint horse, quarter horse, appaloosa, any of those stock horse breeds. So we thought, oh well, maybe he's, maybe he's half stock horse of some sort.
Christa Lafayette :And so Katie goes and runs the ancestry and we thought, all right, we're going to run this, this algorithm that's find horses like me, and we're going to find some horses like Cairo, and we'll have kind of a better idea. And we did. We did find horses like Cairo and funnily enough, they weren't great matches, but they were. They were middle, you know, middle quality, about 75% match, which usually means about the breed category, or they're about half half that breed category and they had some interesting results. And, Katie, do you, do you want to tell us what, what you saw when you saw those horses like me?
Lauren McDevitt:Um well, a lot of them matched up with Connemara's which definitely caught us all by surprise With Horses Like Me. Keep in mind that these horses are similar, but not necessarily related. Think of it as additional information to find suitability for Cairo's. For example, if several of his Horses Like Me were performing in a certain discipline, it would be likely that he would excel in that discipline as well. Our Find My Herd feature, on the other hand, is about finding horses that have a genetic relation to Cairo. Depending on if there are any matches in our system, you'd see horses in a family tree-like format, broken up into groups of third, second and first degree relatives. So, Katie, what were you hoping to find when reviewing Cairo's results?
Katie Martin:It would have been really cool to find a third degree, maybe some second, but we actually found a first degree.
Christa Lafayette :What is first degree mean? What's the option for a first degree relative?
Katie Martin:First degree relative is a parent or a full sibling. And this one, given the age and everything he matched up with, was it Skyview Triton?
Christa Lafayette :Skyview Triton and what the heck is Skyview Triton. What is he?
Katie Martin:He is a Connemara stallion. And his age and he is 22 years old.
Christa Lafayette :And how old is Cairo?
Katie Martin:And he's 22 years old, and how old is?
Christa Lafayette :Cairos 17. 17. So that's very interesting.
Lauren McDevitt:What this means is, we found Cairo's baby daddy.
Liz Hill:That is absolutely wild, literally never thought. Just for the sheer fact of thinking this whole time he was something completely different.
Lauren McDevitt:Now Janet Johnson is joining us. She was the breeder Christa mentioned earlier, that gave us samples back in 2016 to develop our ancestry testing. She is also the owner of Skyview's Triton. In other words, this technology did exactly what it was designed to do. Janet, can you please share your story with us and tell us more about your horse that connected us all here today?
Janet Johnson:Oh well, I'm a Connemara breeder and I have been breeding Connemaras since about 2001. And Triton was not my first stallion. I was looking for one just like him and I found a different one that I mail ordered from California. But Triton didn't come into my life personally until 2011, when he was sold to me by his previous owner. But I had bred to him a few times prior via cooled semen to some of my mares, and I knew I really liked him. I also bred to his full brother and so I knew I liked him and I wanted him, and so I had him shipped here and been breeding my mares to both my stallions ever since. So it's been great. He's a really cool dude and he's got a really level head on him and he just makes the most fantastic amateur friendly foals babies that are. You know, an amateur can take them almost to any level. They're not hot, they're not uncontrollable, they're not keen, they're just. They have a good brain and athletic body to do it.
Christa Lafayette :And Connemaras are definitely known for being fabulous horses. People love them, they're comfortable to ride, they have a good mind.
Liz Hill:Cairo is a wonderful jumper, naturally talented, and we're like where'd that come from? And also he's successfully competed up to fourth level. He's a great dressage horse, he's just. I've worked cows with him, I've gone into the ocean with him. He's the best all around horse you could possibly imagine.
Janet Johnson:That is very cool. Yeah, yeah, I've had I've had this happen before with another a different breed of horse that I bred, so I totally get the oh, we think it's this or we think it's that. But Triton tends to throw. He doesn't necessarily stamp himself like a to his breed. He tends to mix well with the mare and accentuate their attributes and so you know, depending on what mare you you put them to you, you can get a lot of different types from him, but he definitely always throws his brain. He's just got this most fantastic chill attitude that you know 99% of his foals get and they're just very easy to work with and easy to bring along and but not dull, not not like, oh, you got to push them to get going. It's more of just a calm sort of energy, that's.
Liz Hill:That's really great, and then just I'm I cannot wait. I actually haven't seen pictures of Triton. I didn't know his name until just now, so I'm like I can't wait to Google how tall is he? I'm curious.
Janet Johnson:He's 14, three, but h e tends to throw within an inch of his mother's size, within, you know. I mean, if he's bred to a pony, they tend to stay pony, but if he's bred to a thoroughbred or, you know, warm blood or quarter horse, they, they really do tend to be almost as tall as mom, if not as tall, and a lot can depend on you know their geldings, when they were gelded. Sometimes you know the nutrition they had as a baby. So I mean some can grow really big. So yeah, it's. It's that people think it's a pony, but he really doesn't throw ponies, he throws horses.
Liz Hill:Cairo is 15 one, but we call them the 40 yard fake out, because from shows people come up to me and they're like, wait, he was so much bigger back there. I was like yeah, yeah.
Janet Johnson:Yeah, well, wait, I have a quarter pony that I I breed regularly to both of my stallions and when bred to Triton she's got a. She's got a a mare out there. That's in the 15 two hand range and she's only 13, three and he's 14, three. So I don't. Maybe somebody else here can explain the genetics behind that Cause. I know what my stallion gives me, but I don't know why he you know why he has a tendency to throw large. So we do, for the record.
Christa Lafayette :We do have height markers on there, but I will tell you we don't know them all yet. Those are in the studies we're looking at. Why does some horses get really tall and others don't know? A lot of the height markers, interestingly, crossover with other mammals humans and dogs and whatnot, and so we're trying to figure that stuff out. It'll be a little while, but for now we have a handful of them, which makes it kind of very nice. Yeah, cool, I'm thinking.
Christa Lafayette :What Liz doesn't know is that Janet has not only been generous with her time and her horse's DNA with us beggars from the beginning, but she also can't stand a mystery any more than the four of us here, and so when I spoke with her yesterday, she said she'd been doing a little digging, and we understand that she didn't own Triton from the very get-go. She got him a little bit later, after he had sired your baby, and there's human circumstances behind it, mysteries, things that happen that we don't really know about yet, but Janet knows people and knows things. Janet, do you want to talk about what you've been trying to do?
Janet Johnson:Well, I've been trying to put together. Actually since I've owned him I've been trying to piece together all the foals that were sired before I owned them because there wasn't necessarily good records being kept in and I know not all of them were registered. I know some of them went without being registered but I know a lot of people who now know that I have them and through social media and whatnot I've been able to. Oh well, that's when I try to baby, so I'll grab a photo and what their name is. And I've just been keeping record of this in my computer for a long time. And I did recently contact the registry and asked them for a Prodigy study so I can see what they have in their records. And then, also, going to Aubrey Pedigree, I've been kind of searching through there and looking through it.
Janet Johnson:Ok, this one was listed twice. Who is this really? And fixing that? And then there's some in there that are listed that I'm like I don't know who that is, who might, who might. Who was breeding, who was breeding in that timeframe? And there was certainly a handful of people that were Triton fans when he first started breeding. So there's some possibilities out there. I'm hoping that maybe some of the names that I have might be good clues, but we really won't know, and I haven't said too much to anyone yet.
Christa Lafayette :Let's jump on that bandwagon, anybody who's listening. Let's see if we can help Liz and Janet solve the mystery of who's mama and I think there might be somebody who listens to this story, who may have been around during that time and knows of Triton because he's kind of a remarkable guy, Not really a horse you forget about and maybe they'll have some tidbit of information that the clues that we have. We know that the mama had at least one copy of black, so we know she was either beige or black at the very least. We also know she had a copy of lethal white ovaro, so she may have had a blue eye or white markings somewhere on the face or on the body, something like that. You suspect she was either a paint horse or perhaps an apple or a quarter horse. It's hard to say. It looks mostly like a paint horse here.
Lauren McDevitt:And now the horse hunt begins. So if you think you know someone or something that could lead us to this mystery, mare, please contact us. Janet, are there any questions that you have for Liz? That will help narrow down your search for more information.
Janet Johnson:Well, one thing that I would like to ask, Liz, and I'm sure you probably would have mentioned it if he had one but does he have a brand? He does not.
Liz Hill:No, brand he does not, okay.
Janet Johnson:Okay, because one of the breeders would use a brand and I've yet to determine exactly at what age she would normally brand, and also so how, I guess. My question to you is how do you know he is a 2006?
Liz Hill:He came into my possession in October of 2006. And at that time he was little. I mean, they told me he was Just the weanling. Yeah, he was exactly barely weaned, five or six months old, oh, okay.
Janet Johnson:Okay, just feral as they come. Okay, I'm just going to start with the point to hear and about very interesting, just trying to kind of place like where he might have come from.
Liz Hill:You and me, you and me both friend Right. Luckily food motivation is a very was a very helpful thing with that one. So yes, he was feral Right, but once he realized I was going to, feed him.
Janet Johnson:You were in LA at the time.
Liz Hill:I was in Sacramento area at the time.
Janet Johnson:Okay, well, that puts that. That makes more sense to me now, because that is definitely a West Coast stallion. The the Kanamara breed tends to be all on the East Coast and then there's a handful of people on the Northwest Coast the breed them, and that did breed them. Actually, Triton's father was On the West Coast originally, came to the East Coast but then moved to the West Coast and so it's Triton's father that was really the big to do over there, and so there's a lot of breeders on the West Coast that you know there's a lot. He's got a lot of babies on the West Coast from before I had them and a lot of West. A lot of the people who, who know them, come back to me and now they're, you know, they ship them back to the West Coast from Wisconsin here because that that's what they want. They want a replacement for their, their aging babies. So but yeah, knowing that you're from California and Sacramento, that that it makes Way more sense that he could have wound up there.
Liz Hill:He did come from. The farm he came from was in South Dakota, though, oddly enough really yes, interesting.
Katie Martin:It's a mystery.
Christa Lafayette :Right, huh, is that what they told you? Or you got him there so?
Liz Hill:they, he, he was on a trailer with a bunch of other foals that were told I, I was told all I. I got him off of a picture. Literally it was one picture like here's all these babies that were that needed to find homes from this farm. And again, if that was a bunch of hogwash, then it was what it was, because the DNA doesn't lie. But apparently all these babies were at a PMU farm in South Dakota and they needed to get gone, and so this they're no longer. They're no longer around, but they're, which I wonder why they're no longer around, but there was a right and on.
Janet Johnson:I would be. I would be interested to know if there were any PMU farms in South Dakota, because at that time In that time frame there were a lot of babies coming, a lot of draft crosses coming down from Canada Into Wisconsin. And I mean I know personally In the neighborhood there was a guy that would go up in a trailer, with a trailer every every year, and bring home like 16 of them and then sell them out for $500 piece.
Liz Hill:I mean it that very. That sounds exactly like I mean, and literally trailer up there were all the babies in there. They've separated Cairo off. We got him out and then they drove off to the next spot.
Janet Johnson:Right. So I mean it could be that some of those PMU babies came down from Canada and ended up in South Dakota, because South Dakota isn't so far from Wisconsin. But how he got mixed up with that, I I'm Amazed that anybody. Would you know that anybody in the Midwest would ship semen from Washington to the Midwest, have a baby, and then you know what happened. What happened? I mean he could have been born in the Midwest.
Christa Lafayette :We don't know where he was born, we don't know. Let's keep on the DNA story because yeah, yeah. Dna doesn't lie but I have to say there are a couple of questions that I have to you folks. One in this big search if everybody used this kind of technology, wasn't this easy and awesome? It's super fun.
Liz Hill:Lately totally unexpected.
Janet Johnson:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, it should be utilized more often, I you know, but it matters to a lot of people and a lot of people it doesn't, and that and that's that's the shortfall of the industry is, you know, a lot of these horses just get passed on and people don't want to spend the money to register, so they just move them on. But but things are getting better.
Christa Lafayette :Right right.
Janet Johnson:Microchipping. You know things, things are getting better, but back in 2006 not so much.
Liz Hill:And then the opportunity to register Cairo. I just had no I. I just figured I never would be able to. Well, can you?
Janet Johnson:now it depends, yeah, maybe, maybe it's gonna depend on how the registry Interprets their rules on it. I know of one other one that was registered that's about the same age Through DNA, because somebody knew the horse and oh yeah, that's a Triton baby and oh, it didn't get registered and so they they were able to register that one. But you know it should be, but I can't answer that problem. I'm not on. You know, I'm not on any.
Christa Lafayette :I don't sit in any high seat In the registry but you sit on a high horse or sort of high, high.
Janet Johnson:Well, there's a lot of height in his, in his background, you know he, he throws height.
Christa Lafayette :So yeah, well, I mean, maybe we'll reach out to the registry that I I personally have never worked with a connoisseur registry. I don't have a connoisseur horse yet.
Liz Hill:Don't my husband hear this please.
Christa Lafayette :Um, they're great. I have one. He's awesome. I mean, I read books about them when I was a kid right.
Janet Johnson:I actually never read about him. I just heard about him and started researching them. Oh, Connemara, they sound wonderful. I had a couple ponies with bad personalities, that temperaments, and I thought the Connemara sounds just wonderful and that's why male ordered my first baby from California at weaning. I just had him sent here and I thought, well, I'll see what I can do with it and that's when it all started and that's the connection I made a connection.
Janet Johnson:At the same time I bought a Connemara thoroughbred baby from the neighbor to the breeder, or the one the breeder who owned Triton and, and it was a Orion baby which is trying to pull brothers. So that kind of really, I kind of just dove into the Connemara world back in 2002 and Just absolutely I would never turn back. I will never turn back. Their, their personalities are to die for and that's just kind of how it all got started, I so that's a pretty cool story.
Christa Lafayette :Well, I think you know Liz will tell you all day long how talented and awesome her horse is, and so it seems like that rings true.
Christa Lafayette :You know, in this forum anyway, and I feel like maybe, if we get this story out there and we talk about these animals and how we found some unexpected bonuses for something that is a technology that in other animal worlds is 20 years ahead of us, we're trying to pull the horse industry kicking and screaming onto the trailer.
Christa Lafayette :Right, we're trying to get the horse industry into the trailer and it's rearing back and it's pulling and setting its feet, and for reasons we can't really understand, because the technology exists, so why not use it? You know, for our horses, and often people want to remain with what they know, because new things are scary. And so the traditional methodologies for horse parentage, the STR, that just doesn't. It's not gonna work like this because it's just not powerful enough and you have to know who the mother and father are to compare to the baby, and so on and so forth, and it can't do things like aunt's uncles and grand sires and cousins, like this kind of stuff can. Right, it's all about sequencing and big panels and for a song cost less than two bales of hay, so why wouldn't she do it?
Janet Johnson:If you can just get the horses in the database. Because all these breed registries the thing that bothers me about our breed registry and it doesn't bother me. I just send my own DNA where I want to send it. But when you pull hair and send it with any registry, that DNA sample becomes property of the registry. Getting permission to take a sample from that DNA isn't as simple as well. I owned the horse because the registry may own the DNA.
Christa Lafayette :Right, right, and I think that maybe once we start down this path, the perception that owning that DNA sample with an archaic testing system, versus finding someone's horse can be registered and active in your registry might change their minds. Right, because now, right now, liz has this really nice horse which reflects very well on any registry that has the privilege of having him, and so it would make sense, instead of just getting somebody's 40 bucks for an old parentage test, now they get to milk Liz for her membership and her horse registration and all the show fees and all the stuff we horse people spend too much money on. But we do it because we want to do it, and it's important that horses that have a potential career and a memento be able to do that.
Janet Johnson:Absolutely. We want credit for him. We need credit for him. It's all about promoting the breed.
Christa Lafayette :Liz, what else did you see about Cairo before we knew about his daddy? What did you see?
Liz Hill:It was really cool just to get the hints about, like we were discussing before, some of the coat patterns and variations that were indicating different breeds, but also it was really neat to see the plot of what all these other potential, where all these other breeds lie, and just seeing okay, we're getting warmer. No, it's not that. No, we're getting colder. No, it's not that. There's just a lot of information that I wouldn't have, like I would have just been guessing or just ignorant this whole time. Also, the personality traits was really really cool. Cairo has one copy of Curious and one of is it cautious? What is?
Christa Lafayette :it Vigilant.
Liz Hill:Vigilant, thank you, which is him to a tee. He's side-eyeing you the whole time, but also right in your pocket, and we had discussed in our meeting before about a tendency to certain horse owners kind of pick their type. I'm like my gilding for sure is the same. He is half vigilant and half curious. There was just a lot of insights as far as my horse is more of an endurance, not a speed type, which is absolutely true. Just so much information about a horse that I knew nothing about on paper. And I wouldn't have had that opportunity if my husband didn't give me this test, which was just the coolest gift he could have gotten me for Christmas. That was very cool.
Janet Johnson:Well, that was a very good gift. Very good gift. Oh, it absolutely was. It's all very good information I enjoy. I go back to my results for the six that were done, you know often and I'm like, okay, what does that mean? I should call somebody and get some more explanation on that. But yeah, I know it's all very good information and, and I you know, very accurate. You know from what the curiosity and the vigilant and and the difference between some of them and you know I found it to really hold true to, to what I, you know, have found just by being their mom, you know.
Christa Lafayette :Well, we really appreciate you from from multiple angles here.
Liz Hill:You said that this was a great gift that her husband gave her, but in truth you had a huge hand in that gift in the early development of the technology and then, just so happens, in having Awesome horse and I just feel a fortunate because without, without this technology and without being able to Find out this information I mean I know I have a really cool horse from my own knowledge but now knowing it's because he's got a really cool dad and that you know those family lines are are carried on through my horse I never would have had that information. It just it's just really exciting.
Katie Martin:Yeah, it's kind of mind-blowing. It's pretty great.
Liz Hill:It's pretty great. I knew, I knew he was cool. But now I know why he's cool, because he's a Triton baby. There you go.
Janet Johnson:There he's going. They're, they're pretty nice, I gotta say I.
Liz Hill:I know I own one.
Katie Martin:That's so cool.
Christa Lafayette :and Janet, the name of your farm is Dayton Ridge farm, where try answer yeah, correct, yeah yeah, and anybody else out there with Triton babies, come to add a lawn to connect and fill the pedigree. You all will be connected, you'll be able to see each other's horses and accounts and whatever privileges the other person wants to share and you'll have a whole community building and it will build out your pedigree and we can find everybody's story be so much fun.
Lauren McDevitt:Well, it's really cool to see those Find My Herds populate over time.
Katie Martin:So, yeah, well, and that's the thing, with all the science and all the DNA, we can't do it without the people, right? And you know, we can't do it without Liz and Janet. Janet, oh my god, you're so amazing. Just like Practically a cold call when Christa calls you and first thing is what are you selling?
Christa Lafayette :To be fair, I'm a horrible sales person.
Lauren McDevitt:We really appreciate both of you guys because, like, like you guys were saying, you can't do this without you, and it really is about having that forum and being able to discuss and ask questions and then back it with the science. So that's the only way that we're gonna make these discoveries and improvement in the equine industry. So it's huge, absolutely to be continued. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of genetics unbridled. If you liked this episode, make sure to leave us a review on Apple Music and Spotify. For more about Liz and Cairo's story with Etalon, make sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram. You can also read Kyra's full story on Etalondx. com or catch up with them on Liz's tiktok voiceovers and ponies. For more information about Skyview's Triton, visit Dayton Ridge's farms website and Facebook. If you have a topic you think we should discuss in our next episode, let us know. We'll see you next time.