Lynda; this is my opinion and I may be wrong but here it is. I love mules. I have a real good Arabian broodmare. If I am to breed this mare to the donkey for a mule, then the resultant offspring would not be registered as a half arab, it would not be sweepstakes nominated, it couldn't go to many horse shows (Discrimination!!!), although we could go to mule days and mule shows, and the mule could not be bred. They don't reproduce. So everytime you breed one it is a dead end --kinda like breeding geldings, it's the end of the line there. I think its a simple math thing. If my mare only bred mules, she would never have grand-foals , and great grand foals, the line ends there. Maybe that's why there are so few around, someone has to commit to breeding them, and there arent that many mule breeders. (Now with embryo transfer and surrogate mares, we could pop out thousands of them...Arabian mules...hmm, just a thought, things to do when I win the lottery) Beth