Board meeting on Skype  - 20:00 - 21:15

Participants:
Board members: Nils Ivar Dolvik, Jochen Nösinger, Jan Verbeeck, Maureen van Bon.
Inger Davidsson was not able to attend.

1. Welcome by Nils Ivar
Nils wished the board members welcome to the meeting.

2. New ideas for FjHI concerning education of new members, videos etc.
This was an idea from Belgium and was not finishes to be presented to the board, but will be presented on a later board meeting according to Jan Verbeeck.

3. International conference about an international common register for Fjord horses.
The board allowed Norway to work further with this idea. See orientation to the board in the bottom of the minutes. (*)

4. Austria has now applied for full membership in FjHI!

5. The board will send out a mail to all member countries if they use the vet card in the international handbook or not. In the same mail we will ask for if any semen tests are taken from approved stallions.
6. Next meeting the 9th of Jan 20.00

Nils Ivar Dolvik

(*) In connection with that, Norway has been thinking of making an international register for Fjord horses, we need some information from member countries.
Introduction: Horse breeds, cattle breeds and several dog breeds have their international register for their animals. There are several advantages of that and we mean that the time is mature to ask member countries how they look on this idea.
1. It is difficult to couple registries from different countries. Therefore, we asked member countries if they use the UELN number when they register their horses. In a master degree by two students in 2012? The inbreeding was calculated for the Norwegian fjord horse. Several horses had their ancestry to Denmark, and it was impossible to follow the horses further in the Danish registry as they had new numbers. In 2013, we received a list from the Netherlands with 15.000 fjords and our experienced data people could only trace back 400 with computer solutions. Our idea is therefore to start the registry a certain year and the countries that want to supply easily with other data can do that.
2. A more modern attitude is to try to calculate inbreeding and kinship within and between the populations in each member country. This will demand DNA from several horses, may be between 200 and 300 in each country. The cost for analyzing this is today expensive about 100 Euro for each horse, but the prize is going down all the time.
3. Information in the register. By time, the results from exhibitions concerning conformation and performance must be added. To get a better comparison concerning performance a “new” discipline should be introduced for all countries. We call it Skeid here in Norway, but it is almost equal to what they call Track in France and is in use already in many countries on fjords already. The advantage of this performance test is that it will give us good relevant information of the temperament of the horse that is one of the most valuable traits on our horse.
Information needed from members are:
1. How many horses are registered in your country
2. The status of the organization that is responsible for register and development of the Fjord horse in each country with contact information
3. Studbook, how is it organized
4. Important challenges for the Fjord horse in your country
Our plan is to organize a meeting for all members where a responsible person for each country attends. This meeting is planned to be in January or early February 2019. The reason for this is that to be able to apply for financial support from a source in the western Norway with a deadline on February the 13th for applications.
• In this meeting, we will present in some more detail what we want to accomplish for the Fjord horse. It is therefore outmost important that representative for most member countries attend and all the largest country must come if this should be realistic. We will through some support be able to cover costs for hotel and a meeting room. I hope that the attendants can pay their travel costs. May be we can supply people from Amerika with some of their travel expenses. The meeting is planned to be close to Brussels in Belgium as West Norway have an office in Brussels that we want to involve in this work.
Nils

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