Building a Team For Preservation

The conservation and promotion of heritage breeds of livestock works best when networking produces solid team work. The Choctaws are an incredibly rare strain of Colonial Spanish horse. Our preservation efforts for Corollas and Shacklefords lead us to meet Monique Henry whose love of the Choctaw horses brought the  first three Choctaws to our program. I have long been an admirer of Dr. Phil Sponenberg and his work lead me to first learn of the  Breeds Conservancy. Jeanette Berenger of the Conservancy assisted us in obtaining our Marsh Tackys.

Last spring I contacted Dr. Sponenberg concerning borrowing a Choctaw stallion to breed to our Choctaw and high percentage Choctaw mares. He put me in contact with Mary McConnell who loaned us one of her Choctaw stallions, Big Muddy Miracle, last August. We produced five foals from him with the last one being born two days ago.

Several weeks ago I received and email from Laurel Sherrie in California. She is one of the leaders in the efforts to preserve and promote San Clemente Island goats.  She had traced down living members of the New Hampshire strain of these goats and it turns out that my main San Clemente doe was of that strain. Since I have had her she has produced three little ones. One of them is a beautiful buck. We sold the buck to a San Clemente breeder and I offered to exchange the doe and her young female off-spring for two San Clemente does of a different strain. Getting goats too and from California from here in Virginia is not a simple matter. A team of breeders and enthusiasts worked together to shuttle the goats across the continent.

Yesterday two goats were delivered to our program and three left. That took a lot of team work and cooperation.

And in some ways this picture is the most important one of them all. This is Ututtompkin, a week old Scottish Highland calf born to Seven Leagues and Anne Bonny. Due to the work of dedicated preservationists and with the support of the Livestock Conservancy The Scottish Highland cattle have reached sufficient numbers so that they are no longer on the conservation watch list.

A very bright light at the end of a very long tunnel.