I got my copy of the Khamsat magazine in the mail two days ago. Articles by Jeanne Craver, Joe Ferriss and RJ Cadranell on rare asil lines of yesterday and today, plus a primer on genetics and color inheritance by Michael Bowling, and much more. I waited till everyone was asleep and locked myself down in the basement to read it..
I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but the alarming situation of some of the rare asil lines here in the USA has become a cause of real concern to me, so much so that most of the entries of the past few weeks have been dedicating to writing about these lines. Here is rare picture of a representative of one of these rare lines, courtesy of Jeanne Craver: the 1966 stallion ASF David (by Daaldan x Dihkenna by Gharis). Back in the 1950s, the blood to his grandsire Gharis (Abu Zeyd x Guemura) was really popular in the USA, and his great grand-dam Tebuk was one of the foundation mares of American Arabian horse-breeding at large. David himself is one of the survivors of the Arabian Stud Farms tragedy, where scores of asil horses were left to starve on the farm, and this picture was taken one year after he was rescued from there, at 24. Today, only seven mares in the USA and Canada, known to be alive and of breeding age, trace to ASF David, and as far as I know, are the single remaining tenuous link to Gharis. Two are Krush by strain,…