Pirouette CF in the center (and the center of my interest back then), Wisteria to the right, turning her back and acting like the aloof princess she is, and unidentified chestnut mares at Craver Farms in 2002. Click to enlarge.
I am not sure I posted this photo before, but it shows Brassband (Plantagenet x Tyrebah) at Craver Farms, with my father in 2002. Click to enlarge.
One of the most striking stallions bred at Craver Farms is the 2001 grey Flourishes CF (Lydian x Fragrance by Regency) with Randal Abler and Gail Wells in Georgia. Jeanne Craver, Jenny Krieg and Darlene Summers who saw him on the way back from the Al Khamsa Convention In Floriad were all taken by him. Jeanne even said that he looked like those paintings of the legendary Weil stallion Bairactar. I never saw him but the photos below, by Jeanne and Darlene, are a testimony to that.
Vice Regent CF (Regency x Violetta by Salutation) is the sire of my Jamr, out of Jadiba. He will be 24 years old now. Photos by Jeanne Craver last week. He looks regal. I love that big eye (wish Jamr had inherited that).
Carver DE, a Saqlawi Jadran stallion of old Doyle/Crabbet lines, gone too soon. Photo by Lucy Doyle.
This mare is the daughter of the mare featured in the entry below. Same breeder, a Bedouin of the Fad’aan. I had written about her breeding in the early times of this blog, here.
New scans, taken in 1997, of Wadeehah, 27 years old, the Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah from Atiyah Abu Sayfayn at Kamal Abd al-Khaliq outside Aleppo. An outstanding mare, born under a tent, and one of purest in Syria.
Rehan Ud Din Baber has this amazing Facebook page where he displays dozens of pictures of desert Arabian horses in their original environment. Most of the photos are from the US Library of Congress Digital Archives. My absolute favorite is this photo of the mare of Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. The photo, taken by John D. Whiting, has the following caption: “Emir Talal’s wedding. Emir Abdullah’s mare. The bridegroom wedding mount. c. 1934 – 35“. If this mare was the mount of the Emir (later King) of Jordan, and the mount of his son on this special day, then she must have been the best mare of the Jordanian royal family at that time. The precise date of the wedding of Emir Talal to his cousin Zein el-Sharaf is the 27th of November 1934. She was the eldest daughter of Sharif Jamil ‘Ali bin Nasser, and was to be the mother of King Hussain of Jordan, born in November 1935.
Gudrun Waiditschka has this nice article on her website about the stallion Tajar 1811 of Count Jozsef Hunyadi, a foundation stallion of European breeding imported from Egypt by Baron Von Fechtig to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Tajar was from the stud of the Mamluk Murad Bey. He does not have lines in Al Khamsa today.
I was unpacking today and I found my negatives’ scanner in a box I had not opened in years. I also came across some old negatives from the days of our travels to Syria, my father and I, to see desert Arabian horses, so I scanned them. These times did not feel particularly blessed back then, just normal days off from high school or university. If only I knew how fleeting these moments were.. During one of these trips in the mid to late 1990s, veteran Alepine horse merchant Abdel Qadir Hammami took Radwan Shabareq, my father and I on a drive a couple hours outside Aleppo — now a lawless area infested with ISIS thugs — to see three mares that had just arrived from the desert. This was our chance to see something new and different from the stud farms of our breeder friends. Hammami had brought the three mares for an Alepine man, the owner of an ice cream store who did not know much about horses, but Hammami — then in his nineties — knew what he was getting him. It did not take long for the old man to admit that he had the mares smuggled from the other side of the…
Also from my scans is this photo of old Leelas, the Kuhaylah Khdiliyah (an ‘Ajuz branch, highly esteemed in the Syrian desert) of ‘Abbud ‘Ali al-‘Amud of the ‘Aqaydat Bedouins, which he got from ‘Udayb al-Waqqa’ of the ‘Anazah. He was so attached to her, he would not sell her at any price, even though he was poor and he was getting handsome offers for her. He would not breed her either, because he thought no stallion was worthy of her. In old age, he agreed to lease her to Qatari diplomat Yusuf al-Rumayhi for a year, where she produced a filly by his Egyptian stallion Okaz (Wahag x Nazeema), and when she was in extreme old age, ‘Abbud finally conceded that the Hamdani Ibn Ghurab stallion al-A’war was worthy of her, so he agreed to breed her to him, and she produced a stallion, Saad al-Thani. She is in her late twenties in this photo. Note the extremely deep jowl, the small cup-shaped muzzle, the lower lip longer than the upper one, the bone structure in the face, and the large eye, naturally lined and extended in black, like kohl makeup. That’s how the Kuhaylans derive their name.
I took this photo in the early 1990s, on one of the trips my father and I used to take to the Biqa’ valley of Lebanon to see our horses. A flock of sheep grazing in the morning sunrise.
I have been saying it over and over, but the Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare FinDeSiecle CF, with Jeannie Lieb, has one of the most beautiful heads I have seen on an Arabian horse. It’s perfection, in my opinion. The eyelashes, the muzzle, the deep jaws, the proportion. A case study.
He is growing nicely. Just in July he was still a big colt, a bit clumsy; now he is a young stallion. He put up quite a show, and has some of the trotting and prancing action of his sire Triermain.
The day before yesterday marked a milestone in my breeding career: it was the first time I horse I bred (Wadha in 2010) was ridden by a girl I bred (Solenn in 2012). Solenn was feeling very proud, and it was the first time Wadha was around children, let alone being ridden by someone other than her trainer, Sue. She turned out to be very accepting of young children screaming and running around her. Sue says she will be very reliable as a mount for children.
There is a very nice Facebook page about the Beirut racetrack at its beginnings, when it was called “Hippodrome des Pins”. It’s full of historical pictures. Here is one of my favorites, which came with the following caption: “The first race meeting was held on 06.10.1921 at the Hippodrome: the meeting consisted of 4 races, each one including between 3 and 5 horses.”
It’s time for little Haykal Al Arab, born two months ago — on August 11, 12.30 am — to make his online debut. He was born three weeks early, so I waited till he grew stronger before showing pictures. He is by Monologue CF out of CSA Baroness Lady (Sab El Dine x Takelma Rosanna). He is an example of a rare cross of a Davenport stallion over a mostly Straight Egyptian dam (three crosses to Alaa El Din) with the addition of the code-red, rarest of the rare Ferida tail female of the Ma’naqi Sbayli strain. I like him VERY much, and I now somewhat regret letting go of his sire Monologue CF before seeing what Monologue would produce. I think little Haykal takes a lot after his sire: the strong, long, flat croup, the very broad forehead, the long neck, the huge eyes surrounded with black skin, and above all, the delicately tipped ears. His dam has the black skin and the long croup too. His back looks like it would be shorter than his sire’s, and closer to his dam’s, whose back is so short she almost does not have one. He does credit to both his dam and…
A rare photo of the Tunisian stallion Raoui (Cheikh El Ourbane x Bornia by Loubieh x Benti by Ibn Fayda I) has surfaced on the Internet, and I just gleaned it and saved it here. He was a great racehorse, winning 19 races in Tunisia. He was the son of the last desert-bred stallion imported to Tunisia from the Syrian desert.
The equine dentist I have been using for the past 4 years, Ron (he was recommended by my previous dentist, Larry, when he retired), visited Elegance yesterday October 9, 2015. He palpated her entire jaw line on both sides, checked how much chewing motion she had, and checked her TMJ area before he looked inside her mouth. And what he found when he did made me gasp as I looked over his shoulder. Her left upper side molars were worn at about a 45 degree angle from the inside edge of the tooth to the outside edge of the tooth. You can see all the hay packed between her molars and her cheek because she can’t move her jaw cleanly to the left without running into those upper teeth. She lacks a level chewing surface so she gets very little masticated correctly and she gives up eating sooner than a normal horse because of the pain associated with eating. Needless to say the other molars, both lower left and right side upper and lower are affected. So you know what a normal left side molar area should look like here is the same picture of Fin DeSiecle CF 1999cm taken…
Now that we know Elegance has metabolic imbalances, as well as toxicities, the question becomes how best to supplement her to detox the toxic level of Aluminum and the overload of Iron? The first step is to have either hay and/or pasture tested for what the horse is consuming as the bulk of their diet. In Elegance’s case, it is definitely hay. And it just so happens I received 6 ton of hay a couple of days ago which will last until next summer. Therefore I will describe the process of testing your hay and where to get it analyzed. I use Equi-Analytical for analysis. They are a leader in testing hay, first for dairy cattle and now for horses too. Therefore they have analysis packages geared toward what the horse owner needs to know. In addition they offer free postage paid mailers for your sample. The test I use is 601 – Equi Tech. It gives a great comprehensive package of information at a great price. What it doesn’t test, by default, is Selenium for example. To add that particular result to your report is an additional dollars. I don’t normally add Se because I know, here in the Northeast, we have…
I received the Hair Mineral Analysis results for Elegance yesterday. It is very revealing. She is over the top in Fe(Iron), Li(Lithium) and Al (Aluminum). She is below normal for Ca(Calcium), P(Phosphorus), Mg(Magnesium), Mo(Molybendum) and Se(Selenium). The low Se is not uncommon in the US. Even when the USGS Soil Selenium Map shows adequate soil selenium levels. I’ve zoomed the map in on the Eastern Central States. To see Frederick County’s level (where Elegance has lived most of her life) move your pointer up to north east Maryland. It is very enlightening to read the comments about her analysis and note how vitamins and minerals all interact with each other. Her analysis is a case in point about the need to balance what our horses eat. Excess in one area can cause a deficiency in another and the opposite is true too. Here is a a look at how only a few of the major and trace minerals interact with each other:
I had all abut forgotten about this long article, in two parts, adapted from a presentation I made at the Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse’s February 2005 Symposium on Preservation. Both parts were previously published in Al Khaima, the Institute’s magazine (part 1 in vol. II no. 2; part 2 in vol. 3 no. 1) as “The State of Arabian Breeding in its Area of Origin.” Oh, how much worse has it gotten since 2005… 2020 update: I added a link to this blog, in case the page it is on is taken down.
Meet the newest member of my little herd: Elegance CF 2001gm Darlene Summers graciously allowed me to acquired this mare from her after I fell head over heels for her the first time I met her in August of 2015. These pictures were taken the morning after I’d brought her to my place in September 2015. She looks pretty good in the left photo. She doesn’t look underweight to me based on the amount of fat (just right) covering her ribs. But the picture on the right shows a backbone that is somewhat prominent and hips that aren’t nicely rounded. You might think this is just an angular mare, however when you see her in person you are struck by the fact that she has no muscling anywhere except the underside of her neck (she’s big on the “listening horse” stance). And she is 100% Davenport and they tend to be nicely rounded Arabians. Elegance has been trained to ride and was ridden more than just occasionally before she delivered her first foal in May 2012. She has been ridden sporadically since and not at all in the last year. Still, she should have more muscle that she does. If she’s…
Edouard asked if I would write a series of posts explaining how I provide optimum nutrition for horses in my care. What is Optimum Nutrition? It is about feeding what the horse requires not just in the way of calories but equally important the major and trace minerals they require in the proportions they require, and the vitamins that are missing from their diet. That is optimum nutrition. Sounds like a lot of work right? Nope! The learning took time because I was part of the leading edge of owners trying to solve metabolic issues via diet. The actual implementation is very easy! I always find case studies with before and after pictures interesting you will be following with the case of my most recently acquired asil Arabian. But before I do that I will show you some before and after pictures of another asil Arabian to find its way into my care. So you can see what the “restored” horse looks like. This is the completed case of the tail female *Hadba mare RL Bilquis 2006cm. RL Bilquis time with me lasted from November 2012 until September 2014when I delivered her to her new home in Ohio to be part…