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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
 Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 5:39:08 PM
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Preservation in the true sense isn't about focusing on a small group of obscure horses that are by dint of their "rarity" somehow "better" than everything else! Its about looking at the big picture, seeing the trends and then trying to provide future generations of breeders the same wide range of bloodlines that their forebears had. Without quality and diversity, in the medium to long term, the breed in this country is going nowwhere
If you want an example of just how influential hype can be, then Skowronek is the perfect example, you will find his blood in around 95% othe worlds arabs , and there isn't an English arab that doesn't carry his blood. Whether this is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing is completely immaterial. The point is that past breeding choices essentially since Lady Wentworth's death have taken away the option of having an English horse with no Skowronek blood. Back in the 1960's we had all the "ingredients" necessary to breed, maintain and hype a British equivalent of the SE, all that was lacking was the will to do so. Given that one had stallions such as Bend Or (the sire of exactly 3 foals! in his twenties ), Oran, Mikeno, Blue Domino and with a flying start Dargee(last foal born in 1963) then I think that such a project would have been worthwhile for its own sake and would have paid dividends in the '70's when asil imports such as Melchior, The Shah, Saab, Nadil etc were available We might even have learned how to breed asil lines successfully in the process.
Is it not a rather sad reflection on our interest in our breeds heritage that the Crabbet Org's official definition was drawn up overseas?
Mike
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Nick
Gold Member
United Kingdom
887 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 6:19:30 PM
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As always Mike wise words,All Pure breds are special regardless of bloodlines,Maybe Crabbet was lost in translation,Courthouse,Hanstead,
"old English" maybe confused the issue, Imad to me is the epitome of a Crabbet Horse but one ancestor of british breeding not born at Crabbet park removes him from that tag,It is hard enough to breed a good Horse,But to breed one whose ancestors all at on time lived at one stud needs devine intervention
D ragon |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 8:20:38 PM
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Therein lies the "problem" with official definitions! They are invariable crafted arbiterally to fit the horses of those who drew them up, so you end up with quite mystifying inclusions and ommisions The "Crabbet" definition is no different from that of the Pyramid Society in this respect, both are equally flawed. Since Imad traces entirely to horses owned by the Blunts except for Skowronek who was added to the Crabbet stud by Lady Wentworth, the fact that he isn't "100% Crabbet" has always struck me as rather silly, just as the inclusion of horses whose bloodlines were never used by breeders in Egypt by the Pyramid Society was "very convenient" for its founders! Maybe had there been an interest in such things, we Brits could have come up with some definitions that actually hold water! We have certainly had more than our fair share of extremely knowledgeable and skilled breeders
Mike |
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Nick
Gold Member
United Kingdom
887 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 9:10:44 PM
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Mike the thin line applies to Preservation,When does one reach that status,Do we preserve to one bloodline ,one Horse,Maybe one Stud,
And then how many do you need to breed before they lose the Preservation status,
My point is we have enough man made tags without creating more,
Some of the Tags make me laughGolden Cross,Blue List Old English
Hopefully i can live long enough for ours to be called "Old Welsh"
Dragon |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 9:59:24 PM
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Nick,
You missed off, Doyle, Davenport, Al Khamsa, Babson, Sheikh Obeyd and Heirloom, to name but six I think that in order to be worthwhile, preservation needs a viable breeding group, two or three horses aren't going to be a solid enough base in the longer term, unless one is willing to use "outside" blood. Definitions should be based only on stud books, so that no "specialist" knowledge is needed to decide if a horse is "eligable" or not. The horses should form a homogeneous group, and should actually posess qualities worth maintaining for posterity. Finally would be preservationists should be reminded that the addition of a label does not make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Though perhaps that applies to all breeders, labels and titles
Mike |
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Roseanne
Moderator
United Kingdom
6708 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 11:02:05 PM
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Nick, I hope I'm not bringing the tone of this erudite thread down - I'm completely impressed and fascinated by the education being provided by Mike and others... but there are certainly still cow hocks around. I watched a gelding or stallion (can't remember) in the ridden section at UKIAHS and I simply couldn't understand how the horse had ever qualified for the show. His hocks were practically knocking together! I'm no expert but there are loads of pretty serious conformation faults to be seen in Arabs as well as other horses, not just in the local shows but the top championships.
Sorry to depart from the true spirit of this thread...
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Roseanne |
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Nick
Gold Member
United Kingdom
887 Posts |
Posted - 02 Dec 2005 : 11:58:16 PM
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No Roseanne you are right there are still cow hocks and there will always be leg faults, Arabs are no different than any other breed
indeed they might be worse, After all there are four legs one head one neck etc,The difficulty is rating each fault i.e how to you rate cow hocks compared to offset cannons,Everyone is different,I have some leg faults i rate worse than others bit that is only my opinion,
But i think and it is only my opinion we have moved in the right direction with cow hocks,But on the other hand moved backwards with eyes again only my opinion,
Getting the balance right is the tough thing breeding is a trade off
The only thing i hope with all our thoughts and i enjoy them all,
is that we do not put people off breeding there is no such thing as a breeding failure only a steep learning curve,Go for it,
Dragon |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 04:15:31 AM
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Breeding isn't easy, and no-one starts out with decades of experience and an encyclopedic knowledge of horses and bloodlines Would that we did!I know that I could cite a catalogue of missed opportunities and things that I would have done differently with the benefit of hindsight.
One reason why I think "preservation" has never really taken off in the Uk as it has in other countries, is that as a group British breeders are a pragmatic lot, not given to romantic flights of fancy. We tend to stick with what works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! The other factor in the equation is that the UK is probably the only place on earth, where thankfully, purity was never an issue, this being the thing that tended to kick-start preservation elsewhere particularly in the USA.
If there was but one thing that I could do though, it would be to scrap the breed standard which in the long term will I feel do far more harm than good. Neither breeders nor judges should be constrained in their choices by an artificial, over-simplified and standardised version of what an arab horse should look like! No-one should feel pressured to conform to someone else's (or some committee's) ideal.
Nick, if you want an "Old Welsh" group, why not draw up a list of foundation horses?
Mike |
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Vygoda
Platinum Member
United Arab Emirates
1627 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 06:08:35 AM
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What got me started on thoughts about preservation was an article in the July 2005 issue of Arabian Horse World called ‘Thoughts on Preservation’ by M. Kent Mayfield. The article is divided into the following sections: Get A Grip On History; Documentation and Listing of Stock; Closely Managed, Sustained and Intentional Breeding; Breed Standards; Public Critique and Competition; and Collaborative Effort and Shared Projects.
Whilst I did not agree with all that was written, it did lead me on to think what is the point of preserving a bloodline as selected by one group especially when a particular horse itself is a poor example of the type trying to be preserved just by using a piece of paper as the only criteria?
Excluding horses in a pedigree - like Imad for example – and him not being defined as 100% Crabbet (by Australia mind you!) leading to many ‘purist’ breeders not using him regardless of his excellence as a horse or his abilities as a sire boggles the mind. Too, this percentage in Crabbet certificates seems to me to be just crazy – “oh, my horse is 95.9% Crabbet”!! IMO, Crabbet was not a horse, it was a stud with bloodlines used from different breeders to create Crabbet Park. And I wonder if Lady Wentworth were alive today, what stallions she would be using – that could then be called Crabbet? LOL.
However, in the article, Mayfield quite rightly pointed out that the historical perspective is being lost with very few people in the world in the last 15 years actually writing in any depth about the past which we all need to have as a continuing reference, never mind new breeders. And how often do we breed a horse that turns out nothing like what we expect it to look like and then the hunt is on to then try to find out where in the pedigree it has popped up from so without these historical references and old photographs, it would be impossible to find out.
Knowledge and information are just tools to help us to try to breed the best horses we can within our own self-defined bloodline selections but surely it has to be the horse itself that counts and the ability/knowledge to be able to recognise what is a good horse?
Just my thoughts for the day.
Jane
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Vygoda
Platinum Member
United Arab Emirates
1627 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 07:41:04 AM
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P.S. Mike,
Lost opportunities - tell me! I have a list of horses I have missed out on whether to use at stud or to buy. But when they were available, maybe we were too green at the time and locked in mentally! Plus we didn't have the knowledge ourselves that we have now???? But we still might have been wrong?!!
Jane
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LYNDILOU
Platinum Member
United Kingdom
13976 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 08:36:09 AM
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I very much agree with what you are saying Jane, and as for the point made, what stallions would lady Wentworth be using today, yes of course she would have used other than crabbet, she liked the beauty of skowronek and used him a lot! as for horses that look nothing like their sire and dam yet have popped up from earlier generations, Carmargue was such a horse! and Gari dill Marlow will credit his looks and type way back to the son of Skowronek, Nasiri, yet from here on the line seems to stay within that type. I think it would need a millenium of scientists to work out why these things happen, but the DNA carried from the mares has been a true factor, and they are just now studying the mitrocondrial DNA in humans as to carrying family traits and genetic illnesses. I dont profess to know anything about it so leave it to the proffesionals but every so often things crop up which make sense, like your statement , every so often a horse is born who looks nothing like its sire and dam |
   
www.dreamfield-arabians.com |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 1:35:18 PM
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With regard to Carmargue's pedigree, I thoughtthat you might like a look at what else the Ghazala dam-line has produced
Mike
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Vygoda
Platinum Member
United Arab Emirates
1627 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 4:02:18 PM
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Mike,
Who is this gorgeous creature? How is he bred? |
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Sadika
Platinum Member
United Kingdom
3520 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 5:06:56 PM
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I think he's
*Shahir IASB
straight Egyptian Stallion
Salaa El Dine x *Imperial Imphayana
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Marilyn
     
www.sweetphotography.com ** Now available online Our 2016 Galleries ** |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 6:03:57 PM
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Close Marilyn, you are only one letter out with the name!
The horse is in fact Shahil (Maysoun X Shahila) and his full pedigree can be seen here http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/shahil2 I just hope that Jane doesn't do herself an injury when she sees just how inbred he is! There are off the top of my head around a dozen crosses to Ghazala apart from the tail female line.
I posted the pictures to illustrate that when we stick labels on horses, we begin to think of them as belonging to seperate and totally un-related groups, whereas the reality is that many of the foundation horses are common to more than one group and these groups are much more related and interdependant than the labels we stick on them would have us believe.
Whatever, I think that the result of using a horse like Shahil on the Carmargue lines would be interesting to say the least!
To digress even further, Shahil was originally registered as being black, and "purely by coincidence" I have this colt foal, whose dam's granddam was a full sister of Shahil's granddam Salima and also has around a dozen lines to Ghazala.
Mike |
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Sadika
Platinum Member
United Kingdom
3520 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 6:13:38 PM
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| Whoops! Sorry to poke my nose in AND get it wrong!!!! Senior moment!!!! Like the foal photo (creep, creep...) |
Marilyn
www.sweetphotography.com ** Now available online Our 2016 Galleries ** |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 03 Dec 2005 : 7:00:19 PM
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Hi Marilyn, no problemand just for you .... Shahir
Mike |
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Basilisk
Gold Member
United Kingdom
521 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 12:29:57 AM
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Ooh, dinky baby, Mike!
I'm not sure 'pragmatism' really answers the question why preservation breeding never caught on over here. I think it has more to do with the facts that no-one really saw our own 'Old English' lines as being anything unique until fairly recently, plus the lack of availability of a viable group of any other bloodlines to concentrate on in early years - hence for example early Egyptian lines couldn't be preserved in an unmixed form. The Shah had I think *one* straight Egyptian offspring which was exported, I don't think Marawan EAO had any (though I have a high percentage Egyptian son of his), and though Kais EAO, Rouse Nefous and Saab had more opportunity at Claverdon, I don't think off the top of my head they had more than a handfull between them, all out of one mare or her descendants.
Heather Wibaut was one of the first to concentrate on 'preservation' type breeding of imported lines: she used a group founded mainly on Shah descendants, as she was very impressed with the qualities of the Babson Arab, Likewise, Dr Alexander was one of the first to try and concentrate on Egyptian lines (though she also had access to one of the last remaining Oran sons). I suppose you could almost classify the Theobald family and Michael Harris as 'preservationists' since they have stuck strongly to the early Polish lines (though of course MH has brought in stallions of related ancestry as well).
Keren |
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Basilisk
Gold Member
United Kingdom
521 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 12:39:42 AM
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Jane - re your point about one remaining individual of a line that isn't a good example. I would say that if the *ancestors* of that horse had qualities that were worth preserving, then it would be worth at least seeing what the horse could produce. Genes are funny things: we all know horses that look nothing like their parents but have thrown further back in their pedigree and then reproduced their own type consistently, like Carmargue! OTOH, if it was a clunker descended from several generations of clunkers, or if there *are* enough and better examples of the line, then the attempt amost certainly isn't worth it.
Back in the 1970s, there were a group of Babsons imported. Some of them ended up not too far from me, so as a Shah fan, I naturally went to check them out. Apart from the fact that they were being kept in the most appalling conditions, I was shocked by what I saw. Somebody had obviously seen the original importer coming a long way off, and sold him a bunch of what can only be described as culls. These horses deservedly didn't breed on, to the best of my knowledge, but at least someone in the States had had the forethought to see they were kept out of the Babson gene pool there!
Jane, I'd be fascinated to read that article: I haven't subscribed to AHW in years, so I will have to see if I can scrounge a copy!
Keren |
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Vygoda
Platinum Member
United Arab Emirates
1627 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 07:40:40 AM
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Today's thought  :
By narrowing the gene pool dramatically by selection for preservation or whatever, especially as Keren said no new horses can be added, as far as you know do you think that horses bred within the selected pool become smaller and smaller heightwise  ? Just thinking really about the 'Davenport horses' but it might apply to other groups.
And thinking about one of Nick's posts earlier in this thread, no horse is perfect so some points have to be forgiven when using mares and stallions for breeding and looking at the complete horse physical package. Your thoughts about what you love or hate physically, and would forgive?
And what about breeding for colour only  ?
Jane
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Libby Frost
Platinum Member
United Kingdom
4711 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 10:06:33 AM
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| Breeding for colour ? Sounds very worrying to me,Imagine all the confirmation faults you could accumulate in just one horse!!!There is more to a horse than a fab head! ( i like decent legs for example with nice short cannons and long forearms on to well shaped feet.) After all as the saying goes no foot no horse..... |
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LYNDILOU
Platinum Member
United Kingdom
13976 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 10:58:23 AM
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| I am often worried by the fact that black arabs seem so popular with the new arab owners! they go and buy a black because it seems romanticly linked to the film the black stallion ! ( a certain famous model" )of the breasts fame ( who lives near me) was one such person who sent it back I believe when told by someone it was a badly conformed horse! she, to my knowledge has not bothered with arabs since. its a bad advertisment for Arabians! |
www.dreamfield-arabians.com |
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Mike
Platinum Member
Eire
1872 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 2:10:30 PM
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To digress again, if it has ever crossed your mind that arab breeders seem to have difficulty making sensible informed breeding decisions.Or are unduly influenced by fashion or hype. Read this and weep
http://www.thoroughbredinfo.com/nicks.htm
Mike |
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Vygoda
Platinum Member
United Arab Emirates
1627 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 3:00:03 PM
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Amazing Mike!! I've forwarded the link to friends of course.
I ploughed my way through a book on nicks, got to the end, did some work on one of my horse's pedigrees and then realised it was a waste of time! But ... I wouldn't be surprised if someone rich in Arabian horsedom hasn't used one of these gurus .
Jane
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LYNDILOU
Platinum Member
United Kingdom
13976 Posts |
Posted - 04 Dec 2005 : 3:18:17 PM
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well I did try to read it all Mike , but I got lost in the fug of statistics basicly it comes down to pot luck really is that what they were saying?? |
www.dreamfield-arabians.com |
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