> Interesting. Would be interesting to figure out
which blood lines have > that. However, like CID and HYPP, the big
high powered high dollars > folks won't allow such information to be out
amongs the 'little people' > of the horse world.
Actually, with
the advent of SCID testing, one can request test information on breeding
stock prior to making breeding choices. Very simple, very
straightforward.
> I have quit breeding and many others quit long
ago as can't even recoup > the feed bill for the mare. The IRS
changes in the 80s killed the small > breeders. The fancy
breeders have kept their numbers down so demand > will keep the prices
up. Horse prices have not changed much over the > past 20
yrs. Cutting horses and barrel horses are where the money is. >
The balance sheet has not happened for Arabians. Also, when
Arabians > were first introduced, their owners did not do it in a
friendly manner > but as snobbery. Also, with the breeding pool so
small, some qualities > that were not the best were retained.
A
bit of a different perspective... When Arabians first came on the
scene in this country roughly a century ago, there simply were not very
many of them, hence the prices were high for the times. But snobbery
wasn't a part of it--while they indeed were often owned by the wealthy,
they were often readily available at stud to grade mares and were openly
advertised in publications such as Western Horseman. They were
promoted as quality family and riding horses--which they were. During
the post WWII era and on into the 60s, Arabians frequently WERE family
horses, and could be found in many ranching operations, etc. The
American gene pool of Arabians far surpassed that of any other country at
that time, and was a much larger gene pool than that of, say, the TB (which
is now down to two sire lines in this country, for instance). It was
the laxity of the tax laws that was actually the downfall of the breed, in
a genetic sense, although the 70s through the mid-80s were a financial boom
time. Investors who had no clue which end of the horse the feed went
into "collected" Arabians like so much pottery, for exhorbitant
prices. Fad breeding went into high gear, and if your horse wasn't
sired by something with an asterisk at the front of his name, you were
nobody. THIS was the era of snobbery--not the era when Arabians were
introduced....
A great deal of valuable genetic material WAS lost to
this craze, sad to say. But a great deal of what was valuable about
the breed still remains, and there WERE breeders at the time who saw the
handwriting on the wall and who rode out those times and remained true to
the breed, instead of caving in to the investment mentality.
Those
who continued to breed good riding horses really didn't have their markets
dented at all until the crash of the scam years. At that point, there
WERE huge "fancy" breeders, as you call them--and the huge numbers of
horses that they were producing, many of which were NOT suitable
riding stock, did indeed flood the market. Additionally, many small
breeders who depended upon the shirt-tails of the "big names" went by the
wayside and added to the flooding of the market.
But now we have
pretty well moved through that phase. Only a handful of the "fancy"
folks are breeding in high numbers now. The grassroots folks who
stuck to their guns are finding new outlets not only in endurance but in
the upswing of sport horse events. But these ARE small
breeders, because they do not have disposable fortunes. It is now the
serious small breeders who are really making up the backbone of the
breed. We seem to be entering a new era, where the market flooding is
drying up to a trickle. What we do with the new era remains to be
seen.
