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Re: [RC] CA breeders - heidiHeidi "I agree that there has been overbreeding of mediocre horses. >But there is still a relative shortage of good ones."Magness Arabians was breeding between 250 and 500/year--- hardly what I would call mediocre. They would pick out 20 for their first string race prospects and then another 20-40 backup and then give-away or sell for peanuts the rest. They were just one of the race breeding farms in CA. Bette, that IS mediocrity! If it takes that many foals to get enough to have that size a racing string, we are talking about breeding a lot of JUNK in the remainder. WHAT YOU DESCRIBE HERE IS PRECISELY THE PROBLEM! People will buy the dross because it is "related to" the successful race stuff--but what they have is still a cull! If only 10% of my foals were of useful caliber and I had to "sell the rest for peanuts" I'd have to assume I was doing something terribly wrong. The problem in CA (I'm not talking about other states here) is not mediocrity so much as overproduction. I've looked at MAgness' "discards" and they were very nicely balanced, good conformation and good attitudes. Can't speak for Magness in particular, but I see a whole LOT of these same sorts of horses out on the trail--they don't look all that bad, certainly not the sausage show horses, but they are NOT top-drawer athletes. And any program that has to ditch that many in order to produce a few good ones is the VERY thing that is driving our breed into the gutter. And if all these "overproduced" horses in CA are of such good quality, why is it that we see buyers from CA going elsewhere for their horses?? I know there are good horses in CA--but time and time again we get folks inquiring here because they can't find horses that meet their standards. Barbara went to Montana for her gelding, and I know she's been looking for a couple of years. While the horses you talk about may not be "bad" horses they are nonetheless not necessarily what the riding public is looking for. And therein lies a lot of the problem! We are in a unique position perhaps in CA as the race industry for Arabians centers here, Texas, FL and Delaware. They breed numbers to beat the odds. Translated, that means they don't have a well-enough designed program to produce the qualities they want with any sort of consistency. I would also submit that specialization for racing does not particularly produce good riding horses--otherwise, the world would be beating a path to the barns of the TB breeders for their rejects. The problem was that many of these horses wound up at killers-- not enough buyers and they were not promoted as trail or show horses nor trained-- simple gotten rid of ASAP for pennies. Again, had they been successful on the trails in any great numbers, people would have been beating paths to their doors. That has not been the case. Many of the other breeders gave up as we could not compete with these big farms. IT was responsible of us to lay low If you are producing the same thing they are--then yes, it is the responsible thing to do. Most of the breeders in my acquaintence are NOT breeding what they do, and do not have the same problems with marketing "culls." what with ARabian registrations down and horse production skyrocketing. Kind of a contradiction. Or are you saying that these farms are dumping their culls unregistered? Well, if so, double shame on them, not only for breeding something with no future, but for robbing it of whatever heritage it has. Meanwhile, if registrations are down, that means that there are fewer registered Arabians being produced. The quality ones still find a niche. Fortunately (in one ironic sense) with the introduction of the French so-called "purebreds" entering the racing field and blowing away the competition, racing revenues went down, purebred breeders went out of the business or cut way back, and now things are much better in CA. In fact the Riding MAg wrote that there was a shortage of show horses due to breedings being down. Too bad so many of those athletes went for cat food at the zoo. Yet, the pendulum swings for a reason. The overproduction of racing specialists may be seeing a lot of those going for cat food. But it has become increasingly rare to find old-style classical traditional Arabian RIDING horses in that sort of plight. And when one does, there is usually a story behind it, such as a bitter ex-spouse trying to "get" theirs, or some such--not a matter of a breeder dumping excess horses. While I don't deny that race horses are athletes, I would submit that we are talking about two different groups of horses here. Heidi ============================================================ When you ask a Quarter horse for something he says - Sure - and when you ask an Arab for something he says - Why? - ~ Heidi Smith ridecamp.net information: http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/ ============================================================
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