1. Leonid10/11/2005 13:19:49
Homepage: http://www.shael-teke.ru

But, what problem? It is his choice, his way.

2. Jessica 10/11/2005 14:09:07

Exactly Leonid, every person has a right to his opinion and to do what they want to with their property.
But for the breed association that is created to protect and promote the breed the situation is different. The breed association that works with a mother studbook must respect the rules of the mother studbook. Had the AT studbook been inside the EU the AT association of Sweden had not been allowed to change any breed requirements at all for the AT breed.
My point is that a national breed association must always follow the guidelines and standards for the breed set up by the mother studbook. There is no other way to work with imported breeds. If a single breeder that has a stallion that obviously is not recommended for that breed by the mother studbook, a breed association can never promote such a horse in breeding without violating the rules of the mother studbook. I think the grading system of today for Akhal-Tekes is very generous when it comes to give such a good grades to horses that the breed associations can afford to recommend mare owners to breed from elit stallions (or at least 7 and above in type) and still allow for a wide range of preferred types (genetic diversity) within the breed.
We can also afford and in my opinion should avoid to breed untypical horses that has not been tested for consititution. The breed associations shall watch over the trademark of the breed they where founded to work for. If they want to change typical traits in order to satisfy certain breeders, the breed will change and loose its trademarks. The PR firm that came up with the idea to reconstruct the Ferrari so that you can use it to pull your plow with would not be hired by Ferrari.

3. Leonid10/12/2005 01:29:25
Homepage: http://www.shael-teke.ru

I am not agree in this case. A am against of grading. I wrote about this in my article. Akhalteke horse can be use in breeding by birthright. Take this situation to yourself. For example me. (... that was graded 6.5 for type by T. Ryabova and G. Kiarizov and recommended by both, to not use in the pure bred breeding program.) What I must answer: " Get out. Who are you? Gheldy, go to your Stud. I have interest for your oppinion like privet only. By. Tatiana, go to registrate horses into the Book by Bookrights and basta."
Other breeders must show to our customers real level of akhaltekes on rings and events by judging of authority persons.

4. Jessica 10/12/2005 12:13:59

Well, we will probably never agree on the stallion approval issue but it is stimulating, at least for me, to discuss the ideology of breeding approval. I have been fostered into the breed approval system and have been able to study the effects and the work with the system. First however, Tatyana and Geldy where invited by us to evaluate our horses and educate us on breed type etc. We wanted their opinions very much and as I said before we appreciate their advice.
Breed approval is not only used for warmbloods or by people of warmblood mentality. It springs from the ideology that the whole population of a breed would benefit from a breed plan, a master plan that is worked out at a certain point to improve and conservate the breed, it also aims to correct faults that have been observed in the breed. In order to make the master plan, I call it a master plan because is must be worked out by masters, more efficient a breed organisation can choose to intense the selection pressure by using the rule of approval of animals that can fulfils the criteria worked out in the master plan and are believed to improve the breed. There are two moments for approval, test for type and test for constitution. Depending on how big the population the breeding plan is worked out for the selection pressure, eg how many stallions do we need to approve every year and how many mares. The stallions must reach higher standards to be approved as they affect the population more than the mares. This can be studied in for example USA and Germany where few foundation stallions where used and stamped their type to a large part of the population, in 1999 Tatyana referred to this phenomena in the USA to the development of a sub breed of the Akhal-Tekes.
Anyways, the judges that are educated and ackredited have the mission to select animals that have traits that will benefit the whole population. Normally many judges are involved in each moment of the tests for type and constitution. If they do a good job the breeders have a large variety of breeding animals to select from that will create breed progress for the whole population.
The breeders always make the selection of the breeding animals of course, but as little as I can use Babakhan for pure bred breeding they can use not approved animals for breeding within breed approval breeds. Statistics within breeds that do not use the breed approval system but still recommend stallions tested by the breed organisation shows that the "owner approved" stallions often, but not always, are of lower genetical quality than the "association approved" stallions. Not surprising I would say.
How does the stallion approval system affect the breed and breeders then. I have seen the positive sides and the negative sides, the positive sides are that more horses are sold and used for sports. Stallions that are prepared for the tests and not approved are gelded and often becomes nice sport animals that market their parents and the breed. Stallions that are not even taken to the test because owners think that they will not be approved are educated and used for sports either as stallions or geldings, if they become stars in sports, like Stavropol's Edinburgh that became a Swedish Warmblood, they can be entered into other stud books and used for breeding there. Stallions that are approved increase in value, they will get more mares and stamp their "approved genes" into the population. Negative sides are that it costs more for the stallion owner to get his horse approved, it also costs more for the breed association to arrange the evaluations, some stallions that had a high genetical value will be not approved if the system is not effective. Every year as much of the population that is possible is evaluated and the breeding value via BLUP-index etc can be calculated for each approved stallion. Statistics will later show if the stallion is an improver or not (did the association do a good job). If he cannot show that he is an improver, or inherits defects not allowed in the breed, he will be withdrawn from the breeding program.
With a clever presentation of the statistics for each stallion, this can of course be done without the approval system, the mare owners/other breeders can eventually see what traits the stallion might improve. I think this is a very powerful tool for breed improvement, breeds that use these tools have progressed a lot and seem to have good market value for geldings, mares and stallions. The evaluations tests and other statistics also give a lot of objective information about the stallions, with objective I here mean information not provided by the stallion owner.
Maybe one step in a more efficient selection for the ATs could be to ask for more statistics, look at the thoroughbred breeders, they have access to a hughe amount of statistics when they do their selections for stallions. And these statistics are very clear and open about every horse and everyone can verify claimed performance abilities. To be honest I think we quite soon need to do something here in the west about the approved by ownership stallions, otherwise we will soon have to hand out out signs to Teke owners that they can put on their horses that say, "this IS an Akhal-Teke, his father was" here the owner can check one of the following;
1.related to an Olympic champion
2 almost an Olympic champion
3 good in sports
4 from a rare line
5 imported
6 tall
7 had 50 elite horses in his pedigree

5. sophie10/17/2005 17:13:42

Hello,
I'm french and I visit regularly your website. I want to thank you for your courage with creating this blog and for discussions of this quality about the evolution of the AT breed. I'm not a speciallist, so I only can to tell you the vision of a "neophyte". AT breed seems to be on development aroud the world. It's obvious that the horses and the breeders will become more and more. So, I think maybe it's time to define clear international rules to preverve the characteristics of the breed and to bring more and more quality. There's no interest (intellectual or even commercial) AT breed becomes like others breeds or becomes like a "patchwork" . Yours horses seems like a dream for me : I think that shael and karakum studs have a special place in the world of AT breeders. Thank you for following the way you choose.

6. Jessica 10/20/2005 10:14:16

Thank you for your encouragement Sophie and welcome to the family of lovers of the heavenly breed. You are so right about the increasing numbers of Tekes and breeders world wide and therebye the need for more presence and support from the international breed association.

7. Darya09/04/2006 03:58:03

That horse looks like Hannoverian of some sort. The thing I do not understand is why someone want to breed the Teke that looks like Hannoverian? Why don't they just breed Hannoverians instead?