Between 2011 and 2016, Betty Finke was a regular columnist for The Arabian Magazine. As we enter a new year – and some fifteen years down the line – we thought that now would be a good time to share Betty’s articles, which remain as pertinent as ever.
Technological advances have their uses. Within our own lifetime, the improvements to everyday life have been staggering. Without them, I’d be writing this on a piece of paper with a pen and would have to rewrite and rewrite again, instead of just pressing ‘delete’. And I am sure that most of us wouldn’t want to go back to washing their clothes by hand in a tub. Mind you, all these things also mean that we use a massive amount of energy, which opens a whole new ecological can of worms. Progress comes at a price.
There have been equally staggering achievements in animal breeding, including horses. Though strictly speaking, the term should be ‘reproduction’, not ‘breeding’.
Remember how it used to be? The breeder loaded his mare onto a trailer, hauled her to the stallion of his choice – which might be quite a trek if the sire didn’t stand nearby, and stallions outside were available only in your dreams – got her back, hopefully in foal, and anxiously awaited the result for the next eleven months. That’s all straightforward and uncomplicated, but of course, involved all sorts of risks: the trailer might have an accident en route; the stallion or mare might be injured during breeding; there might be complications during foaling; and last not least, the resulting foal just might not have been worth all the bother.
Technological advance has taken care of all those problems, in three steps.
Step 1: AI. Thanks to frozen semen, it is now possible to use almost any stallion you want, no matter where in the world he stands, without your mare even having to leave your yard. Yes, that’s extremely handy if that one stallion who is absolutely right for your mare is out of reach. It is also useful if you have a stallion who is competing in sports, because he won’t have to retire for the breeding season. Unfortunately, it seems to be the done thing nowadays, certainly in some populations. Call me old-fashioned, but I still think there’s something odd about an individual being produced be two parents who never even seen each other. Anyone who has ever watched a mare and a stallion under natural, unrestrained conditions will know there’s a lot more involved than just mechanics. Courting and mating behaviour are survival skills which in time might become lost because they are no longer needed. One of these days, a stallion and a mare that are put into a paddock together might not know what to do anymore. But then, we have taken care to make sure they don’t have to, anyway. AI also takes care of the problem that not every mare likes every stallion. I remember a case, back in the 1970s, where a mare was totally opposed to the stallion they wanted to breed her to. She was far more in favour of the other horse on the premises, who happened to be her half-brother. Nowadays, they’d probably solve that problem by inseminating her. Back then, they gave in and bred her to the horse of her choice. The result? A British Supreme National Champion. Maybe sometimes, Nature knows what is best…
Step 2: ET. Not as in extra-terrestrial, but as in embryo transfer. This has several advantages: you don’t have to risk a valuable mare through pregnancy and birth, and you can breed from mares that have problems carrying their foals to term. Of course, you might ask yourself: should we be breeding from problem mares in the first place? But there is another advantage: you can now breed several foals from a top mare in one year, by different sires. You no longer have to wait for years to find the right nick. And you can start breeding your mare when she is just two years old, because she won’t have to carry the foal herself! The possibilities are endless. Embryos from as yet unproven, but highly decorated champions are sold for huge sums before the foals are even born. Some farms offer foals by catalogue: choose your mare, choose your stallion, they’ll produce the embryo. I have visited a breeding farm whose owner was heavily into ET and proudly showed everyone his embryos under a microscope. This may be fascinating for scientific reasons, but frankly, I’d rather look at actual foals. And just as a footnote, some of those expensive horses that were sold as embryos, who are mature now, have never been heard from since.
Step 3: Cloning. Cattle and pig breeders do it, and at the time of this writing, there is a cloned Arabian stallion siring foals in France. He is the clone of a hugely successful endurance gelding, and he is supposed to sire endurance horses. Now, there’s something wrong with this way of thinking. For one thing, a clone isn’t the same individual – he’s a twin. Secondly, we don’t even know if the original horse, had he not been gelded, would have been equally good as a sire as he was as an athlete. As the song has it, it ain’t necessarily so. Winners don’t automatically make great breeders. Chances are that plenty of the clone’s offspring will compete in endurance, and possibly do well, if only for the simple reason that that’s what they were trained for. If the offspring of any stallion – any at all! – were put into endurance training in large numbers, they’d probably do just as well. Wouldn’t that actually be better?
There’s no doubt that AI and ET are here to stay, and both have their uses. But if cloning were to become just as commonplace, it would be the end of breeding. Why bother, if you can just reproduce your champion again and again? No one would have to worry anymore that the foal won’t turn out just right. How practical – and how dull. Frankly, I’d rather leave a few things to nature. It might be less safe and predictable, but it is a lot more interesting.
Printed in The Arabian Magazine June 2011
