On the Road Again

I despise travelling. In my case, the feeling may be genetically rooted. My first white ancestors landed in this part of Virginia in 1674 and since that time I have had at least one (and often many) relatives living within a twenty mile radius of my horse lots. (It seems that I come from hearty, though not adventurous stock.) Such a lack of movement leads to a restricted gene pool. Like the Corollas, my ancestors were a genetically homogeneous group. This weekend the national Gwaltney family reunion was held here in Smithfield. I got a chance to learn exactly how close kin I am to myself. We are a people who are well suited to multi tasking. For example, my father's grandmother also found time to be my mother's great aunt.

However, judging from the size of our individual families it does not appear that we are approaching genetic collapse. That means that it will not be necessary to develop an off site breeding program to keep our genotypes and phenotypes around for centuries to come.

While Gwaltney/Edwards/Jones have sufficient genetic diversity to insure our survival the same cannot be said of the Corollas.

For that reason I am strongly inclined to take a trip down to Shackleford this weekend to bring some more first rate Spanish genes into the offsite breeding program. The young mare in the picture above is the type of mare that would produce great colts when bred to one of my Corolla stallions.