Swan Farm Akhal-Tekes

10/16/2026

10/16/2026

Akhal-Teke stallion Dosthan, born 2023 in Turkmenistan.

To support thoughtful discussion among Akhal-Teke horse supporters and others involved with rare equine breeds, we’re sharing some of the references we’ve been considering recently at the Akhal-Teke Foundation. For accessibility, we’re posting these in topical groups, with direct links as available. Third in the series:

Akhal-Teke, horse diversity, and breed-specific genetics

Bayramdurdyyev, P. H., N. G. Gurdov, M. A. Garyagdyyev, and S. M. Charyyev. 2025. “The Importance of Lines and Families in Improving Breeding with AkhalTeke Horses.” Курманова Лилия Рашидовна, доктор экономических наук, Уфимский университет науки и технологий, p53.
https://os-russia.com/SBORNIKI/KM-99.pdf%23page=53

Cozzi, Maria C., Maria G. Strillacci, Paolo Valiati, Elisa Rogliano, Alessandro Bagnato, and Maria Longeri. 2018. “Genetic Variability of Akhal-Teke Horses Bred in Italy.” PeerJ 6:e4889. doi:10.7717/peerj.4889.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6129384/

Librado, Pablo, Naveed Khan, Antoine Fages, Mariya A. Kusliy, Tomasz Suchan, Laure Tonasso-Calvière, Stéphanie Schiavinato, et al. 2021. “The Origins and Spread of Domestic Horses from the Western Eurasian Steppes.” Nature 598:634–640. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04018-9.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04018-9

Matthews, K, and P. Johnston. 2026. “The Akhal-Teke Breed: Foundation of modern sport horses.”
https://www.akhaltekefoundation.org/akhal-teke.html

Petersen, Jessica L., James R. Mickelson, E. Gus Cothran, Lisa S. Andersson, Jeanette Axelsson, Ernie Bailey, Danika Bannasch, Matthew M. Binns, Alexandre S. Borges, Pieter Brama, et al. 2013. “Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data.” PLOS ONE 8 (1): e54997. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054997.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054997

Ustyantseva, A. V., L. A. Khrabrova, N. V. Abramova, and T. N. Ryabova. 2019. “Genetic Characterization of Akhal-Teke Horse Subpopulations Using 17 Microsatellite Loci.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science341:012070. doi:10.1088/1755-1315/341/1/012070.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337288104_Genetic_characterization_of_Akhal-Teke_horse_subpopulations_using_17_microsatellite_loci


📷 Akhal-Teke stallion Dosthan at the opening of the new national equestrian center in Turkmenistan on 9/29/2026, where he was gifted to Liu Shuqin, a member of the International Akhal-Teke Horse Breeding Association and head of the Chinese equestrian company Daqing Huiyou Breeding Co., Ltd., by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov (National Leader of the Turkmen people) on behalf of Serdar Berdimuhamedov (President of Turkmenistan).

10/07/2026

“Golden Horses, Red Square”

“On 30 May 1935, 28 riders left Ashgabat, the capital of Soviet Turkmenistan, on what may be the most improbable petition in the history of animal husbandry. They would ride to Moscow, some 4,300 kilometres (2670 miles) across desert, plateau, steppe, and forest, in the summer heat.

“Their horses were Akhal-Tekes: lean, metallic-coated desert animals bred on the oases below the Kopet Dag mountains for 3,000 years. The riders were not cavalrymen but kolkhozniki, collective farm workers, and the state whose favour they had set out to win was the same that had ordered their breed destroyed.

“Turkmenistan had come under Soviet control in the
1920s. On 27 October 1924 the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formally established and Moscow set about remaking a largely rural, tribal society. The collectivisation of agriculture began in 1926 and hardened into a coercive campaign by the end of the decade, redistributing the lands of wealthy landowners and folding peasants, livestock, and holdings into state-run kolkhozes.

“By 1929 nearly 15 per cent of Turkmen peasant farmers had been collectivised; by 1940 the figure exceeded 99 per cent, and thousands of daykhans (prosperous farmers) branded as kulaks (opponents of Soviet agricultural policy) had perished.

“By the early 1930s the Akhal-Teke, caught in this
upheaval, was close to extinction. Collectivisation dismantled the household system in which a single prized stallion was tethered beside the family yurt and treated as kin. The authorities banned private ownership, registered the horses with the state, and ordered breeding stock to be slaughtered for meat, a demand that was taboo among Turkmen. Owners hid their animals or turned them loose in the desert rather than comply.

“The purebred population was already struggling after the Russian conquest: the first official census of 1916 counted just 627 heads, and when the first studbook – an official pedigree register – was published in 1941 it recorded only 755 purebreds. Worse, in pursuit of a faster racehorse, Soviet studs were crossing the breed with English Thoroughbreds to produce the ‘Anglo-Teke’. Three millennia of selective breeding looked likely to dissolve within a generation.”

— From an important new article on this historic Akhal-Teke trek, by Central Asian specialist Christopher Wizda in the September issue of History Today magazine.

Golden Horses, Red Square
History Today, Volume 76 Issue 9, September 2026
https://www.historytoday.com/history-today-issues/volume-76-issue-9-september-2026

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/golden-horses-red-square

10/07/2026

Akhal-Teke stallion Sevan Shael (Saivan/Sayvan x Djennet-Shael, 2010), bred at the Shael Stud in Russia.

To support thoughtful discussion among Akhal-Teke horse supporters and others involved with rare equine breeds, we’re sharing some of the references we’ve been considering recently at the Akhal-Teke Foundation. For accessibility, we’re posting these in topical groups, with direct links as available. Second in the series:

References on genomic conservation, haplotypes, ROH, and realized inbreeding

Allendorf, Fred W., Paul A. Hohenlohe, and Gordon Luikart. 2010. “Genomics and the Future of Conservation Genetics.” Nature Reviews Genetics 11:697–709. doi:10.1038/nrg2844.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg2844

Beeson, Samantha K., James R. Mickelson, and Molly E. McCue. 2019. “Exploration of Fine-Scale Recombination Rate Variation in the Domestic Horse.” Genome Research 29. doi:10: 1744–1752. doi:10.1101/gr.243311.118.
https://genome.cshlp.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/gr.243311.118

Chen, Chujie, Bo Zhu, Xiangwei Tang, Bin Chen, Mei Liu, Ning Gao, Sheng Li, and Jingjing Gu. 2023. “Genome-Wide Assessment of Runs of Homozygosity by Whole-Genome Sequencing in Diverse Horse Breeds Worldwide.” Genes 14 6: 1211. doi:10.3390/genes14061211.
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/14/6/1211

Colpitts, Julie, Philip D. McLoughlin, and Jocelyn Poissant. 2022. “Runs of Homozygosity in Sable Island Feral Horses Reveal the Genomic Consequences of Inbreeding and Divergence from Domestic Breeds.” BMC Genomics 23:501. doi:10.1186s12864-022-08729-9.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12864-022-08729-9

Kardos, Marty, Gordon Luikart, and Fred W. Allendorf. 2015. “Measuring Individual Inbreeding in the Age of Genomics: Marker-Based Measures Are Better Than Pedigrees.” Heredity 115:63–72. doi:10.1038/hdy.2015.17.
https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy201517

Leitwein, Maeva, Maud Duranton, Quentin Rougemont, Pierre-Alexandre Gagnaire, and Louis Bernatchez. 2020. “Using Haplotype Information for Conservation Genomics.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 35 3: 245–258. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.012.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534719303040

Metzger, Julia, Matthias Karwath, Raúl Tonda, Sergi Beltran, Lídia Águeda, Marta Gut, Ivo Glynne Gut, and Ottmar Distl. 2015. “Runs of Homozygosity Reveal Signatures of Positive Selection for Reproduction Traits in Breed and Non-Breed Horses.” BMC Genomics 16:764. doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1977-3.
https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-015-1977-3

Moghbeli Damane, Moslem, Ahmad Ayatollahi Mehrgardi, Ali Esmailizadeh, and Mehdi Momen. 2025. “Fine-Scale Assessment of ROH Patterns and Genomic Inbreeding in Diverse Horse Breeds Using Two SNP Array Densities.” BMC Veterinary Research 21:688. doi:10.1186/s12917-025-05143-7.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12917-025-05143-7

Schaefer, Robert J., Mikkel Schubert, Ernest Bailey, Danika L. Bannasch, Eric Barrey, Gila Kahila Bar-Gal, Gottfried Brem, Samantha A. Brooks, et al. 2017. “Developing a 670k Genotyping Array to Tag ~2M SNPs across 24 Horse Breeds.” BMC Genomics 18:565. doi:10.1186/s12864-017-3943-8.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12864-017-3943-8


📷 Artur Baboev Horse photography, used with gratitude and permission

10/07/2026

09/30/2026

Can a horse be trained without taking them away from the herd??

09/30/2026

“Inbreeding versus Conservation Breeding”

Can a horse breed be improved by inbreeding?*

A new research paper adds to the specific, detailed science that has quantified “inbreeding depression” in horses — the accumulation of broad negative effects across many genes that happens when closely related horses are bred together.

Experts recommend that animal breeders in general should keep the coefficient of inbreeding below 5% in each pairing, to avoid accumulating inbreeding depression. In rare breeds, additional tactics are necessary, like not overbreeding popular stallions, and ensuring that rare lines do get bred.

Inbreeding can look positive to breeders in the short term, because it concentrates the preferred alleles for a few obvious traits the breeder is selecting for. However, at the same time, inbreeding magnifies the subtle effects of recessive alleles for many other traits, that are masked by positive dominant versions.

Meanwhile, inbreeding (along with not breeding) collapses overall genetic diversity in a breed, reducing the opportunities for recovery. By the time this is obvious, it can be too late.

“Conservation breeding” is not just breeding a rare breed. Conservation breeding is a collection of science-based strategies to intentionally maintain the long term quality of a rare breed.

“Our estimate that an increase of 10 percentage units in inbreeding coefficient would give 8% lower probability of starting in a race as three- to six-year-old agrees very well with the findings for Thoroughbred horses by Hill et al. (2022). They found that 10% higher genomic inbreeding coefficient was associated with 7% lower probability of ever starting in a race.”

Eriksson, S., Berglund, P..,Berg, P. (2026) “Inbreeding depression in racing performance of Coldblooded Trotters, Proceedings 13" World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production 23787:
https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.23787
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/413556253_Inbreeding_depression_in_racing_performance_of_Coldblooded_Trotters

📷 1882 painting “Sardar, an Akhal-Teke Stallion” by artist Alexander Bogdanovich Villevalde. Representing the continuation of the Turkoman Argamak horse into today’s Akhal-Teke, Sardar (or Serdar, meaning "leader" or "commander" in Turkmen) was born in 1874 in the Transcaspian region, and received a diploma of merit at the All-Russian Horse Exhibition in Moscow in 1882.

*Referring here to an established closed studbook breed, like the Thoroughbred, Akhal-Teke, and many others.

vs

09/23/2026

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