A previous comment has me thinking about some other bits and pieces of information that I have picked up over the years. However, make no mistake, my musings will not result in any 1/2 Corollas being used in the Off Site Breeding Program which is designed to be a safety net to help prevent the extinction of these amazing little horses.
The comment pointed out that a cross between my Spanish Mustang stallion, Ta Sunka Witco and Amanda's Corolla mare, Secotan, would likely produce a great horse. I cannot disagree, but there are so few Corolla mares out there to breed that I do not want to waste a breeding of those mares to anything but a Corolla stallion. But on the other hand, Ta Sunka is everything that I could want in a horse, but for a trot that is a bit slower than I would like and at a little over 14 hands, he is taller than I prefer a horse to be. He is amazing. The grand son of the famous Choctaw Sun dance on his fathers side, and descended from Yellow Fox on his mother's side, he still is a great horse for anyone who would want to still be able to walk after riding a fifty mile day. He is smooth, comfortable, and provided there are no mares around, can be handled by a kindergartener. His father had heavy appaloosa coloring and Ta Sunka is a blood sweat with all of the other features associated with the LP gene.
I also am aware that some of the finest horses in the Spanish Mustang Registry trace their lineage back to Sailor, a Corolla/Shackleford, who ran with a herd of mares on the Cayuse Ranch for many years. Of course, Tom Norush, president of the Horse of the Americas Registry, developed an entire breeding program based on crossing western mustangs and those who lines went back to the beaches of North Carolina. I know that that program produced great horses. Jacob's great young horse, Uncle Harley, HOA Pleasure Trail Horse of the Year, is a result of that breeding program.
Lastly, I am rattled by a comment that Dianne W. made to me at the HOA annual meeting. She is a particularly keen thinker whose posts on the various mustang message boards are always worth reading. She opined that breeding SMR horses to Corollas would not be bringing in outside blood but would simply be replacing blood that has been lost. Without a doubt there has been a great deal of loss of genetic material in the Corolla herd. They have fewer alleles in their DNA than hardly any other group of horse that has been tested. In the past fifty years pinto coloring of any form has been all but lost on the Outer Banks. Would it be wrong to put that back in? She makes a very good point.
I am afraid to play with fire. As long as possible I want only pure Corollas in the off site breeding program. I am not even willing to take the very short leap to include any Shacklefords in the program.
That does not mean that I oppose out crossing to other Colonial Spanish Horses. I simply do not want any of the mares in our program to be bred to outsiders. We have several stallions that we will happily breed free of charge to any HOA registered mare.
I have a few 1/2 Corollas left that I bred from my non Corolla mares for sale. There are only three left. In the future I hope to breed Ta Sunka to a Shackleford mare. Should an SMR mare come into my hands I will only breed her to my Corollas and my one Shackleford stallion.
Vickie Ives of Karma Farms in Texas has a few Corollas and I expect that she will breed her Corolla stallion to other strains of Colonial Spanish Horses and I am very curious to see the result. I can already picture product of such a cross in my mind--small, tough, endless endurance, and friendlier than a milk goat.
(Here is a quick snap shot of Ta Sunka. The picture does not do him justice. For some reason I do not have hardly any shots of him on this computer. Perhaps it is because my little photographers only like to take pictures of the horses that they ride.)
I want to make very clear that I do not think any non-Corolla horses should be used in the Corolla Off Site Breeding Program. Its purpose should be to establish a stable population of 100% pure Corolla horses. The only reason to use non-Corolla horses would be if the Corollas developed reproductive problems. This can happen in an inbred population.
ReplyDeleteWhen working with a strain, an animal is usually considered to be “of the strain” if it’s breeding is 90% in the strain and 100% in the breed. To do strain recovery, one would outcross to appropriate horses from different strain(s) of the same breed (Colonial Spanish, in this case). Then one would backcross to Corolla horses for at least three generations, selecting for Corolla type within each generation. Since this requires at least four generations of breeding, it should be started at the first sign of reproductive problems. A pure breeding program can be continued at the same time for as long as the pure strain will reproduce at all.
The Abaco horses will probably be lost because no strain recovery program was implemented. There have not been any Abaco foals born in years, despite the fact that the mares have been with a stallion most of the time. The last several foals that were born, were lost. The caretaker blamed their deaths on feral dogs. She had no way to know whether the dogs actually killed the foals or just scavenged their carcasses. I think that the possibility that the foals were non-viable and died before the dogs got to them needs to be considered. Horses that were 90% Abaco would not be quite the same as horses that were 100% Abaco, but they would be immeasurably better than no Abaco horses at all.
P. S. I was surprised to read that you have put Persa in with Tradewind. Is she too closely related to Wanchese to mate them?
This is what I mean when I said that Dianne's comment shook me up. Her knowledge of the subject matter is such that if I disagreed with her on a point I would quickly and closely examine my own views.
ReplyDeleteThe best use of the message boards is to give people like her an opportunity to share her knowledge and people like me an opportunity to benefit from that knowledge.
If we experience reproductive problems in the program my first choice for an out cross would be to a Shackleford. I would then consider other CSM strains. We have not yet reached that point but our program is just at a beginning stage.
Dianne, Wanchese and Persa have been together previously and no foal resulted. I suspect that one of them may have a reproductive problem.
Suppose a great foal results from Tradewind and Persa. Would you suggest using that horse in the manner suggested in paragraph 2 of your comment.?
Should Persa and Tradewind produce a great foal, three possibilities appeal to me. Since a horse can have more than one offspring, you could do more than one of the following.
ReplyDelete) Cross her/him with a Corolla, as suggested in my paragraph 2 above. This would be the beginning of a Corolla recovery program, just in case.
2) Cross her/him with a Shackleford. This would be the beginning of a Shackleford recovery program. Of course, you would select for Shackleford type in the offspring. If I remember correctly, the Shacklefords have a smaller gene pool than the Corollas. The fact that Persa and Wanchese failed to reproduce could be just a coincidence or it could be a sign of things to come. This would be my first choice. If you get a filly, you could try her with Wanchese.
3) The above two option would be the most responsible. I think it would be interesting to breed the Corolla/Shackleford cross to a Florida Cracker. If you get a filly, that gorgeous gray colt we saw at the 2008 HOA meeting jumps to mind. The Corollas, Shacklefords, and Crackers share a rare gene. This suggests that the founding animals of each strain came from the same source population. Crossing the three could give us some idea of what that source population looked like.
Actually a fourth option wouldn’t be bad either. Cross her/him with an unrelated Colonial Spanish strain and sell the offspring to non-Banker breeders. I think Sailor is the only Banker to have significant influence on the current Spanish Mustang population. It would be good to have more Banker genes in the general mix.
P. S. Has Wanchese been put with any other mares? You know he is a favorite of mine. I would hate it if he is infertile.