Progeny of Dahess Hassaka, Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq stallion from Syria now in France
Arnault Decroix from France sent me this photo of two yearling fillies, daughter of his excellent Syrian asil stallion Dahiss Hassaka (Al-Ameer Dahiss x Ogharet by Marzouq, out of Hanadi), a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq from the marbat of Shaykh Abd al-Jalil al-Naqashbandi, a leader of the Sufi Naqashbandi mystics of the Euphrates valley.
Dahiss Hassaka (photo below) was bred by Radwan Shabareq and later imported to France. I owned his grandsire Dahiss, as well as a sister of his dam, “Zahra” who was by Dinar out of Hanadi. A head shot of hers was published earlier, you will find it if you scroll down.
I am wondering if I am going to get frozen semen from him in regards to outside demands and his exceptionnally prolific vitality, which is one of the main quality of the oriental blood, the first one is the “BLOOD” according to Mauvy meaning and included, performance, longevity, prolific capacity, morphology and type.
that would be a great idea, Arnault, this way people in the USA and elsewhere can use him as well. We need to tell Louis to freeze Nimr as well.
When I put in 2003 pictures online of a new stallion of Egyptian-Russian bloodliens, I was bombarded by requests for frozen semen from all over the world – the following winter we prepared a stock of frozen semen (think I paid around 2500 € for all the tests and we colleced semen from about 15 jumps give or take, as he was extremely fertile and suitable to freeze I ended up with the double as normal stocks according to the freezing center). I made a bargain price (500 € for 4 doses, depending of the collection each dose had 8 to 12 straws) and none of the people that reserved frozen semen actually bought and imported semen.
I eventually dumped the straws at 100 €/dose with local breeders, managed to sell to a dozen breeders or so and turned more or less break-even.
Unfortunately none of the vets of the buyers had experience with frozen semen and none catched on. The following year I made a package deal with Pevensey Arabians in Australia good to cover about 5 mares and Zichy-Thyssen’s lawyer in Argentina good to cover 20 mares. They are prepared & well assisted, getting their mares in foals doesn’t seem to be any problem. Especially with the Crabbet mares in Australia the nick gives fantastic results. For the Argentina my freezing center fucked up the export papers and I had to run around the ministeries for paperwork myself to get it ready in time (luckily the ministery of food & health is an important tenant of a business park that we market & could pull the right strings from top to bottom straight away), had a small delay in New York switching to a flight to Argentina and ’cause of the important quantity they got their semen very cheap. The export to Australia was more expensive to start with and got stuck on the Melbourne airport, requesting additional quarantine paperwork (which was done correctly but the Aussie customs thought differently) with the Aussie buyer driving long distances to get it cleared, only just in time.
From the beginning I didn’t focus on selling breedings but was simply selling doses based on a return on investment of 20-30% instead of asking studfees. That way it costed for breeders only 500-1000 € incl transport, lease of container & veterinary costs. They more they bought, the cheaper it was.
Epecially the Zichy-Thyssen made a good deal, he’s breeding at a cost around 200-300$ to get a mare in foal.
Still have a small stock left but besides an occassional enquiry not much is happening with it.
Freezing centers are no longer keen on renting their containers because so many got lost and the cost of the container and way/back transport was usually killed deals. 2 years ago there was a French company working on a disposable container which would only cost 250-350 € and sustainable enough to manage shipments to the USA (not to Australia, you would still need a serious container for that). The production was delayed for 2 seasons so never could benefit from it but unless it was a hoax these containers should be on the market now. Their website is http://www.strepro.com/
Perhaps important for asil breeding as breeders seem to retrieve often elder mares from obscurity – forget about getting difficult or old mares in foal with frozen semen, it is possible but you will probably consume a huge number of doses and still have to be lucky.
Based on my experience, I don’t think I would do it again unless the stallion would become really demanded.
It is however interesting for a stallion that is being used in sport, you can collect semen in winter when weather is too bad to trand and then breed mares in summer and the stallion is never distracted from his training and can focuss on performance.
I’m currently hesitating sending a 3-year old asil stallion to the freezing center this winter. He’s a a very pretty one (see http://i20.servimg.com/u/f20/11/20/41/71/kadir_14.jpg) but all horse and no Ansata style show puppet. Although considering his size and mouvements he would make the perfect outcross for the Ansata & Hanan showpuppets, I don’t think he will be heavily used and at this moment I don’t have any asil mare left for him besides his sister, so I’m hesitating between freezing his semen this winter (cost 2500-3000 € depending of quality & quantity of his semen to make it worthwile), pass stallion licensing this spring & geld him. The alternative to keep him as a stallion to only breed every 3-4 years a foal is not really worth the pain in the butt you have with a stallion compared to geldings & mares which can go out together.
Any recent body shots of Dahess available, I remember one on Agoca http://www.agoca.com/asp/annonce/photoannonce/DAHESS%205.jpg, are there any recent ones available? I would be curious how he evolved now he’s more mature and he looks spectacular on the above picture spectacular of course
You could see a photo took last year on my web site http://www.etalon-arabe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DAHESS1-300×255.jpg Although that photo shows Dahess longer than he is.
Dear Patrick, whats the breeding of your three year old stallion? He appears to have it all, legs, coupling, neck/ shoulder bed, mitbah, and jibba too! Could you see your way clear to train him to collect and then freeze, and then maybe geld him a copuple of years down the road?
Best wishes
Bruce Peek
According to specialists, it seems that oriental arabian horses semen encoutered difficulties to be freeze. I heard by Mr Spalart of EQUITECHNIQUE that in belgium laboratories are studying a new process. Patrick are you aware about it?
@ Bruce, more pic’s & pedigree available at http://www.arabian-horses.be/kadir.html.
He’s straight Egyptian but no show puppet pedigree. I already owned his dam and halfsister for some years but it was his sire that made me aware of the big difference between pure breds & asils. His sire was huge (1m62 – 16hands) but oozed all desert. Ultrafine skin, veins popping out, extreme power and unbelievable intelligent (he turned his head to see what knot I made when I tied him up. According to his breeder he was a carbon copy of grandsire Mahomed. I visited her to see his sire, at that time one of the last Kaisoon sons alive to breed an old Madkour daughter but ended up buying his son. He was brought out, breaking in a huge trot and he was simply a charger that I needed to ride. I was training him for eventing but tore a tendon in a ditch, he heeled but knowing what he was before I would have probably pulled the tendon again so I sold him to Germany. He should have used him more but his main fault were different frontfeet and very careful about that (I would never ever buy a horse with no perfect hoofs so that says a lot about the impression he made on me).
We have two full brothers out of him, Zahir who is more like the dam and halfsister and Kadir who is exactly his sire but with better conformation. Zahir is broken in, very forward, 160 cm and unbeatable ground covering movements & super heartbeat – going to condition him for endurance next year and if he’s no sweater he will be very hard to beat over the years.
Kadir is different, will be also tall but probably less 156 – 158 cm, is a bit more showy, we’ll have to see if he has his brother & sister’s trot under saddle but extremely fast (I really should sent him to Poland to race). He’s still a bit heavy in the neck but I expect that to change (sire & dam had very good necks)
I have already bred my best (non-asil) mare to him, hesitating to breed his 3/4 sister but would regret not having him if one day I have a new asil mare around so that would be a reason to freeze semen before gelding him.
@arnault:
I haven’t heard anything about problems with Arabian or Arabian stallions from Middle-East in particular. As far as I understood it is in all breeds that some freeze and others not. Quality of semen has nothing to do with capability to freeze or not, it’s more about supporting the products & freezing process. I know Helen van Nes wanted to freeze semen of her EAO stallion Ibn Barrada who has good fresh semen but he doesn’t freeze.
Before buying semen, you should ask the motility report (%mot., %progress, velocity …). The motility of La Mirage after freezing is between 62 and 82%, I heard that of Sanadik El Shaklan was only 5-7%.
I haven’t been in contact with the freezing centers for 2 years now but the best centres we have are http://www.hofterleeuwe.be and http://www.ercdemorette.be, they all speak French
“According to specialists, it seems that oriental arabian horses semen encoutered difficulties to be freeze.”
My specialists haven’t mentioned any such thing. Palisades was frozen routinely by SBS and produced a first-cycle pregnancy on the first use (resulting in ADA Skylarking).
As far as I am aware about “occidental origins breeding” but after checking, Palisades Cf (A lot of generations since the desert and foundations strain’s tribe or first imported mare)is not an Oriental arabian horse in comparison with Hussam, Shahm (dead)(their fathers are desert-bred coming direct from foundation strain’s tribes Anaza and Shammar, or Marboub Halab, Nimr Shabareck, Melliar Halab, Dadjani Al Arab with very short tracing to desert and foundation strain’s
tribes and some generations from desert ascendants. Mokhtar, Hussam have good fresh semen fertility but cannot be freeze. Equitechnique encoutered same problems from tunisian and egyptian imported stallions.
Thanks Patrick I am going to make inestigations with those Belgium centers and revert soon.
New process to get frozen semen so as soon as I ll get more information, I will keep you fully posted on.
I understand now why it is so difficult to recover enough good quality of frozen semen on current method practice and especially from orientals stallions.
In our experience with different aged stallions being frozen,4-27, there are certainly differences in freezing semen between them all. Some of ours were frozen several times, with the person freezing making small changes in the freezing techniques if they felt warranted for better results. I do think it all depends on the knowledge of who is doing the freezing. The other point I wanted to mention is to wait until 4 years to begin freezing. We wanted to freeze a just turned 4 year old because of his Asil strain rarity, MSF Hamdani Simri(Faydin x IMF Badia Nafila) and to sleep better at night in case anything happened to him. He was certainly “ready” and able to get mares in foal using fresh semen at that age. Under the microscope you could still see “some” under developed sperm cells when we collected for freezing. The person who does our freezing has noted he sees stallions in his travels that are “accumulators” who need to be flushed to freeze, over several days.