Preserving a strain of nearly extinct horses requires more than watching a tv fantasy show and thinking that it has all of the answers.
DNA is a tool for breed preservationist. That is all it is. In addition to DNA one must also look at traits like movement, bone shape, history, and the phenotype of all those in the sample.
Consider the Chincoteagues--to my eye perhaps the most beautiful horses to be found anywhere--yet their Spanish heritage has been intentionally diluted with the blood of modern breeds to the degree that they cannot be classified as a Colonial Spanish Horse. There are some among that herd that are about as perfectly Spanish in their appearance as one will ever find.
But each of those beauties has full siblings that show their partial modern breeding and those traits would surely come up if I used them in the Corolla off site breeding program.
Many modern breeds trace their lineage back in part to the Colonial Spanish Horse. Quarter horses, the most common horse in America is a great example. Most of the gaited breeds developed in the New World also have some Spanish lineage. Those traces of Spanish heritage would not be enough to include in a strain recovery program unless absolutely no other options existed.
The ideal form of strain recovery is to be able to start the project with sufficient number of horses of a given strain to allow 100 percent of the breeding to be with in that strain. We are well past that point with the Corollas. Genetic collapse is beginning to show itself in the wild and if we only used the small portion of those horses that have been domesticated for breeding that collapse would be hastened exponentially among the offspring of such a program.
That is why we look to the closest living "cousins" of the Corollas for limited inclusion in the off site breeding program--first the Shacklefords, who are also in the Banker strain and come from the other wild herd on the Outer Banks. Then we include the Marsh Tacky who obviously shared a common ancestry with the Corollas and,lastly, we season the mix with a touch of Choctaw. Each of these lines are indisputably Spanish and are geographically appropriate. The off spring of these matings will then be bred to pure Corollas and pure Shacklfords.
This spring I am looking at eight such breedings. If you would like to become part of this effort to prevent the extinction of these amazing historic horses now is the time to do so.
This is the time to arrange to own one of these foals and to become part of saving the horse of yesterday for the riders of tomorrow.
I am thrilled to hear this. Although I would be inclined to say that eventually the preservation may out of necessity need to include horses not as similar as those you have chosen.
ReplyDeleteWe have a herd of feral horses in California that I just met; I am not an expert but the collapse of that herd is imminent (isolated for about 100 years) without some introduction of new blood.
The herd in California is thought to be Morgans. Management efforts at this time have not gone far enough forward to think about the long term future...but this is the time to do it, before the degradation is not reversible.
Purity is only possible in a huge genetic pool. Evolution is about change. We cannot archive species, or nature, or anything that lives. It must evolve or die.
This kind of breeding program has been on my mind ever since I saw the black horses of Tehachapi in November. Thank you Deanne Creviston for sharing.