Ethics of horse breeding
August 24th 2009 00:52
In some cases, fed by movies and fictional depictions of horses in literature, some people believe that a stallion can bond to a single human individual to the exclusion of all others.
- Wiki Quote, 'Stallion' page.I believe, they are talking specifically here about the movie and book series 'The Black Stallion' where the magnificent stallion called The Black (played by Cass-Ole) bonds with Alec after both survive a shipwreck. However it is true that stallions play this role over and over - 'Hidalgo' 'Casey's Shadow' 'Sylvester' 'Spirit, stallion of the Cimmaron' and even 'The Man From Snowy River' (Notably, the second movie) of the horse that bonds totally and completely with a human.
This same Wiki page goes on to say that any horse can form this relationship. It has been known for mares and geldings to form a bond and prefer that person over any other. This is true, but why then, has Holly wood chosen the stallion in so many storylines? Is it his presence? His beauty? Or is there some other reason?
In my experience, stallions do tend to 'pick' a person. I am not sure why, but perhaps it is like the vicious breeds of dogs that are recommended to have only one handler, therefore, one Master. On the Hunter Valley Stud Tour I noted that for each Stud, there were perhaps two handlers for each stallion, and no more. At the few studs I had worked at, the stud boss was the only one who handled stallions.
When I finally found my groove at Fairview Arabians, stud boss introduced me to stallions gradually. I handled Amir, but I never considered this to be a great achievement as Amir was as quiet as a gelding, even to the point of forgetting a mare in season was right under his nose! My first real connection was with SK Shakla Kahn.
I noticed nothing amiss, nothing strange. Yes, he was bigger, more horse, than I was accustomed to. I had heard it said around the horse industry - "Shakla Kahn is the most dangerous stallion in Australia!" and people were terrified of him. But it didnt make sense to me. I could take him for a bath - past mares, stallions and colts - without him even flicking an ear. I could clean his stall with him inside it, rug or unrug, groom or spend hours plaiting his mane and never once did I sense danger. I asked stud boss about it one day.
"Well," He said thoughtfully, "Shooks just picks his people. Sometimes, on a sale day, I'll see people coming up to say hello and take his picture, and I'll think, 'they're ok...yes...fine again....' but then someone will walk up, and back go the ears, and thats when I think...'Oh please, dont try to pat him!"
This led on into a conversation about how people just dont see signals or body language in horses, or if they do, they just dont care. I waited to see this 'dangerous' reaction, wondering if it was all bull, a type of hype designed to play up his name.
Over the years, I did see it, agan and again. Shakla Kahn - and all of his foals be they fillies or colts - have a startling ability to fold their ears completely into their serpent like necks. This is accompanied by a complete drawing of skin over the face, revealing teeth, drawing up nostrils and making their previous deep, pool like eyes waspish little slits. Then they shake their heads in quite an alarming manner and prance with the fore hooves. It is quite confronting when seen up close.
From the moody Shooksy and his offspring I moved on to handling Estasan and other colts. over time I found colts were actually easier to handle than fillies - alwalys preferring female animals of any kind this was hard for me to accept. However where fillies squealed and bucked and flirted and refused, colts soaked up the lessons with good humour and asked for more.
When I bred Teshan to Shakla Kahn, it was purely a romantic notion. I had always wanted her to have a foal, just for the sake of being a mother. Shooks, with his experienced, ardent nature, was ideal for her first time.
I've spoken enough about Shakir on this blog (But I invite you to search my posts on my profile page with keyword 'Shakir' if you would like to read more) but now I'd like to get technical. Stud boss said that Shakir was ugly. That he would always be ugly, and there was no help for it. He tried to discourage me from breeding Teshan again, telling me 'she just wasnt good enough' to be a brood mare.
But in my time there, one thing had already become apparent to me.
The most beautiful mare on the stud, one of the most beautiful arabian mares in the world, Shakla's Silver Dream, was a hit and miss lady. Only one year out of two would she produce quality, and it seemed, the more expensive the stallion, the more money involved, the less likely it would be she produced quality.
Hmmm.....Thought Kleo.
Shakla's Silver Dream is out of the Famous Silver Glint and by - you guessed it - Sk Shakla Kahn. Please feel free to google 'Fairview Arabians' to see pictures of these horses.
And Silver Dream has a younger sister. Silver Sequin. Ands they are not just half sisters, they are FULL sisters. As so often happens in the horse industry, an attempt to repeat perfect formula. Stud boss considered Sequin to be a Failure, as she was as ugly as Shakir.
By 'Ugly' I refer to a longer, coarser coat. Obvious muscles in shoulder and haunches. Perhaps a shorter neck, slightly smaller eyes and not much 'dish' in the face.
Reasons to condemn anyone dont you think?
Silver Sequin produced quality on time, every year, every season, without any 'uglies' along the way.
And I began to think - all that money, all that effort, put into Dream, and she cant produce regualarly. Sequin has none of those benefits, yet she produces quality every year.
I remembered an old article in an Australian Arabian Magazine. I'm sorry but I cant remember the issue or who wrote it but I will endeavor to find those articles. Basically, the woman was writing about trends - high tail carriage, pretty faces, glowing coats, and how emphasis on these attributes for a generation or so was making a huge impact on legs. Beautiful they may be, but useful no more. Shoeing and trimming to reduce the visibility of leg faults was becoming common. She went into detail over family trees, and how a horse from good parents that is considered 'ugly' or 'not showy' is a wonderful breeding animal. Her reasoning was that he/she still contained all of those wonderful genes, he/she just didnt wear them on the surface. Likewise, the perfect, showy animals, wore all the faults of the strain on their insides, and that these faults were utterly overlooked in the breeding program because in a horse that looked so good, surely they must be eliminated? Folly! She indicated that proper study of the family tree was needed before any breeding could commence, and focus had to be on correct confirmation instead of fleeting beauty. Im guessing nobody listened, as all the photos these days are head shots, or, if not, I see top lines so straight I'm surprised the horse can walk at all.
Not so long after this article I spent some time in the library reading up on genetics. It was, specifically, a book on horse colours and how you might breed a certain colour. When they began to talk about how horses have 32 pairs of matched chromosomes, how a foetus must 'choose' from these to create its own, and that 'Homozygous' or 'dominant' would always be chosen over 'heterozygous' or 'submissive', and that traits of personality and physicality would be chosen within these pairs, my brain began to scream like a pot on a stove.
I was taking the most literal and basic laymans view of genetics from this tiny book. But mixed in with those pairs of chromosomes and the strange use of the word 'choose' when it came to the foetus was mixed in pictures of plain or 'ugly' mares with beautiful foals at foot, and stunning mares nurturing their 'ugly' or non productive foals. The previous article I had read came thundering back to mind and out of it all I looked at the breeding programs around me - where they always bred the best to the best and hoped for the best - and realized, I may have found a better way.
Even though I love pure bred Arabians, hence training at Arabian studs, it is not my passion to breed pure bred Arabians. I am a bit of a practical horse person and I can say with equinamity - they are for the most part, mad. Exactly as they are described, the traditional 'Mad Arab'. They see things in doorways, every shadow is a tiger, and I've still to make up my mind on whether this is an effect of inbreeding creating a shallow gene pool, or a method of training that makes them 'pop' all the time.
My interest in the arabian blood is the spirit and the beauty, but I want to use these attributes in real riding horses rather than put in on a shelf and stare at it. I want afarm where people can come to me to buy a pleasure horse, an eventer, a pony club mount, a nice brood mare, a dressage horse or hack horse. In short, I want versatile horses. Horses anyone can use in a multitue of disciplines.
My goal in this was to mix Teshan with the blood of the Silver family.
Teshan is a lovely ride. She has amazing spirit, is competitive and polite. She enjoys a challenge and keeps fit and fat on the smell of an oily rag. She has a lovely, lustrous coat and a pretty face. She carries herself nicely and breeds quietly and without fuss. However, Teshan has short, straight, upright pasterns. This pulls out the angle of shoulder and quater and makes her stride jolty and hard to sit on. She also has a dent above the wither that pulls her topline out of shape.
The females of the Silver family all have magnificent broad chests and shoulders, finely curved toplines and smooth paces. They are however, moody, lazy with little competitive spirit.
Shakir has perfect legs. He is the only offspring of Shakla Kahn not to inherit the slight club foot. He inherited his mother's topline and has combined in himself his father's fury and his mother's insanity. He is the perfect athlete, with a great spirit, but is too stubborn to train effectively. Fail.
Magnus is his father's son. Like so many Shakla Kahn offspring he is a cut out of his Sire - perfect smooth topline and long neck. His chest, shoulders and rump are nice but not quite perfect. He has inherited his mothers long legs and the hieght of Thoroughbred that is in her somewhere. Despite picking up the hereditry SK club, he has won numerous multi championships merely on the power of his beautiful eyes and flaunting paces. His pasterns are longer and on a nicer slope than his mothers, but not quite right. The jowls are a good length apart, and his chest is wide, but this horse would not, ever, have the stamina for eventing. He is competitive, has a drive and spirit to win, but is also lazy and stubborn. I consider Magnus to be a success, but not completely.
The Magnetic Storm
As I have mentioned before, my goal became to mix the blood of Teshan, Shakla Kahn, and the Silver family. This was achieved by breeding Teshan to Fairview Touch of Magic - feel free to google him to see him standing at sud and pics of him and his family. Though I did not ever like Magic specifically, I was caught on the idea that he contaned all the traits I wanted. Through him I would get the perfect horse - nicely correct, without being overly dominant, a perfect blue print to which I could breed any animal to attain correct features and workable temperment. I was hoping for a filly, beliving that I could slow track, breeding her to a different stallion each year to see if my experiment had worked. That was not to be. A week before his birth, ear pressed to Teshan's belly, I breathed, "It's a grey colt....And is name is Zayfir"
Zayf did not grow like Magnus or Shakir. He constantly kept me in the dark over what he was going to look like. It is only now at 3 and a half - he will be 4 on the 21st of January - that I can see, he is exactly the horse I wanted to breed.
Crescent-Moon Zayfir, Offside
Crescent-Moon Zayfir, Nearside
Notice - beautifl length of pasterns on a nice angle that follows through on his shoulder and haunch. The broad chest, the straight clean legs. Notice the smooth topline that is curvy and not too straight. Notice the lovely face. And notice that he is just nicely, correctly, there. He doesn't scream 'presence!' nothing on him indicates that he will be so homozygous as to over power good genes. He is my puzzle piece, my blueprint, from which I can create any type of horse.
Of course, I have not tested my theorim as yet, although I had planned to be breeding him by now. I would like to see what he can produce over pure bred arabian, andalusian, thoroughbred, as well as what he can produce over bush scrubber and saleyard reject. I believe the mingling of blood in his viens will create beautiful, correct horses no matter what he is put over.
Notice as well, that he is over at the knee on the off fore. This is due to an injury when he was about 2 and a half. He uses that leg slightly differently since then. He also has a locking stifle on the right side due to injury. The little bugger likes to go through fences.
As for temperament, he is loving and loyal mostly, only to me. He is unbelievably intelligent, quick to learn and easy going. If all of his foals have his mingling of spirit and co operation I will be happy. Only when very young did he exhibit the stubborness I see in his half brothers.
And I am pleased to mention, after a two hour struggle after this photo session, I did, indeed, clean the shealth. This shall now become a common thing until he learns to settle.
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