Photo of the Day: Shamlan, Ubayyan al-Suyayfi, Saudi Arabia
Another photo from our trip to the Najd Stud near al-Kharj, in Saudi Arabia is that of Shamlan, a 10 year-old stallion by Qais out of al-Shaymaa, from the ‘Ubayyan al-Suyayfi strain.
A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
Another photo from our trip to the Najd Stud near al-Kharj, in Saudi Arabia is that of Shamlan, a 10 year-old stallion by Qais out of al-Shaymaa, from the ‘Ubayyan al-Suyayfi strain.
I am certainly enjoying all of these, but this one does seem special to me. Thanks!
He does look like many Davenports, doesn’t he?
thanks Matthias for sharing!
I enjoy the perfect condition of the horses…they are really stunning.
Actually, he reminds me of the early Kellogg horses that were Davenport-Crabbet crosses. Just a fine horse!
Yes, this stallion Shamlan was special, without faults and with geat style and movements you look for in dressage horses. I asked the Doyles who had been with us if he was similar to their horses and they agreed.
So once again I’m moved to ask if you can ship semen from these horses? And if so what the protocols are? Since he does resemble CMK horses in phenotype, but would clearly be a genetic outcross, as a type of back breeding, I’m betting he would reinforce good riding horse qualities in american arabs.
Best wishes
Bruce Peek
We will try to get there someday, although there is a cultural/religious obstacle to shipping semen, and not covering horses live, the way God/Allah intended it.
It would be wonderful to be able to save, and I do mean save in the literal sense the non asil show system weeds currently popular here in the west from continuing to be bred away from sufficiently sound structure and sound dispositions. I think the best way to do that is to add in the blood of middle eastern asils. Look at the picture Matthias posted of the Bin Jiluwi( hope i spelled that right) mare. Clearly she’s an easy keeper. But she has a coupling to die for. I suspect the cold back cross to the Middle Eastern horses would be most effective because you wouldn’t be duplicating any of the foundation blood which were good horses indeed,Haleb, Nedjme, Hamra, Mesaoud,etc. Rather the back cross should, hopefully, overwhelm the overly refined weakness a lot of our horses show, while REINFORCING the correct structure shown by the foundation horses. Something akin to Tesios idea of line breeding on both the Sire and dams sides of the pedigrees.
Best wishes
Bruce Peek
To answer Your questions about semen that could be exported: The farms we visited breeding Straight Egyptians and show horses on a large scale use fresh semen and are equipped with newest technology. I do not know if they also freeze. So technically semen collection and shipment would be possible.
But maybe it could be a better way to try to buy one stallion and take him abroad. Nejd stud has sold or given away mares to Iraq and maybe other Arabian countries. Someone really interested should try!
Don’t forget that there are a number of excellent stallions of desert lines in North America that could/should also be used!
I am nearly certain that a friend told me who works with Arabs in Saudi that they had used frozen semen from his UK based stallion out there so I think it is acceptable to at least some people.
I am a big fan of the use of shipped semen for the genetic benefit of the breed internationally especially in the terms Bruce outlined. ( However I don’t know if it just here but not all ‘non Asil’ Arabs are weeds… there are many absolutely fabulous Arab riding horses here, especially of Crabbet lines…. if you ever want cheering up go to a high level endurance competition and feast your eyes on some truly lovely, tough, sound, generous Arab horses, well that applies here anyway! ). However, and this is off thread really but I was horiified when I went on all breed pedigree and looked at the numbers of progeny of …(whoops nearly named names then) … lets just say some of the most popular ‘typey, extreme’ stallions in America, their blood is saturating the breed worldwide, they are unproven apart from poncing round a show ring and often not of sound functional conformation. Easy international distribution of bloodlines is a double edged sword. Some of these horses have covered more mares by the age of 4 than Oran for example did all his life. As I keep saying ad nauseam, I would like, like Bruce, to see the whole breed ‘saved’, I believe there are many wonderful Arab horses in the groups not accepted as Asil who are of extreme value for their individual virtues and the blood (lost to Asil breeding) that they carry BUT if a worldwide Asil register, excluding these horses is established, as it’s founders would you consider performance testing as a pre-requisite to a stallion license??
BTW I think this should obviously equally apply to WAHO but that is never going to happen is it??