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Sisu West Ranch wrote:

> I just realized that I intended to send this to ridecamp, but my magic 
> fingers hit the wrong button.  I know the thread has dwindled down now 
> and I hope that you will just take these comments as just food for 
> thought.  I am definately not trying to stir up things.
>
> Subject: Re: [RC] Cash Cloned
>
>
> > As with fruit trees cloning can not improve the breed in the sense 
> > that it could ever produce an individual genetically superior to its 
> > ancestors. It could, however, raise the average quality of the whole 
> > breed.


Not to worry Ed, you did not stir things up, but give me a chance.

The selective breeding of race horses has produced a horse that can't
run a mile much faster than the average time of the great Eclipse for
four of them in one day. The human mile over the same period has been
improved upon by about 20%. TB race horses breed for proformance -
humans breed at random!  Bottom line breeding in the improvment of
equine proformance has been a dismal failure compared to random
breeding! All we can say is the current trend in equine breeding has
produced mediocrity.

The current breeding program is designed to maintain the status quo -
which translated means to breed no offstring worse than the parents but
also means not to breed any offspring that is a quatum leap better.
That's why the selective breeding has not kept up with the proformance
enhancements of random breeding ( as has been experience in humnan
proformance enhancements ).

Actually cloning is not any different that the current approch. No great
leaps of performance are going to be realized by the current breeding
practices, be it with naturally bred horses or clones. Could it be that
there is some gene in some TB stallion out there that when bred with an
Arab mare would produce a colt that when gelded could do a 6:30 100 mile
time. Maybe yes, maybe no - but given the conservative approach we will
never now.

Of course if we are too conservative someone else will not be and we
will be left holding the bag.

Now that's stirring the pot.

Truman

Truman



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