America’s first cloned horse turned six weeks old today, according to Texas A&M University (TAMU) researchers who partnered on the successful cloning venture with French scientist Dr. Eric Palmer of Cryozootech. The colt, named “Paris Texas,” was produced from skin cells of a European performance stallion, and the active colt is healthy and steadily growing at TAMU.

Katrin Hinrichs, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACT, professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at TAMU, led the cloning team on the project. She described Paris Texas as follows: “He’s bay with a big white blaze, beautiful eyes, and four white stockings. He’s real forward, a real nice foal. Everything is completely normal about him.

“Dr. Palmer took a small piece of skin from the donor animal and grew the cells up in culture and froze them, and he shipped them to us,” said Hinrichs. “We did the cloning procedure here, cultured the embryo, and transferred it to one of our recipient mares, who foaled here in the hospital.”

The owner of the donor horse from which skin cells were used to produce the clone wishes to remain anonymous. Cryozootech has cells from a variety of high-performance horses in Europe. Since researchers at TAMU were already doing the cloning research, a natural partnership formed between the French company and TAMU to complete this project. Paris Texas is the fourth equine clone to be born in North America, but he is the first horse foal (the other three were mules) and the first to be cloned from adult cells in North America. The mule clones were produced from cells from a fetus