By Bruce M. Johnson

The stock of pure­bred Arabian horses and the much smaller group of Desert Arabians has declined precip­i­tously during the past 25 years. Bruce Johnson presented the trou­bling story at the Institute’s 2005 Sympo­sium on Preser­va­tion. This article, previ­ously published as “Looking Outside the Preser­va­tion Tent” in “Al Khaima” vol. 2, no. 2 has been updated with statis­tics as of March 2010. The story is even more alarming.

Copy­right the Insti­tute for the Desert Arabian Horse. All rights reserved.

The goal of this article is to provide a statis­tical repre­sen­ta­tion of the facts and trends swirling outside the preser­va­tion breeders’ “tent.” For many preser­va­tionist breeders, the time and focus spent in research, breeding, and devel­oping an exper­tise within their selected progress has come at the expense of with­drawing from the Arabian horse industry. Under­standing how preser­va­tion breeders and groups are affected by the trends and events outside the preser­va­tion move­ment can provide insight to the current oppor­tu­ni­ties and poten­tial dangers.

This article will present some of the back­ground to those preser­va­tion­ists who may not be familiar around the merger of two sepa­rate and occa­sion­ally hostile orga­ni­za­tions and the resulting efforts to rebuild a demand for the Arabian horse. The statis­tics on which the following conclu­sions are based have been obtained from the Arabian Horse Asso­ci­a­tion (AHA).

The Problem

Most Arabian horse enthu­si­asts are familiar with the declining regis­tra­tions after the boom years of Arabian breeding came to a halt as a result of the tax law changes of 1986. Completed pure­bred regis­tra­tions dropped from 30,004 (includes regis­tra­tions for horses over two years old) in 1986 to 7,780 in 2004. That is a decline of 74 percent. [Regis­tra­tions for 2009 are likely to be below 6,000.]

Figure 1 graph­i­cally portrays the decline of foals produced as a result of those declining regis­tra­tions. As the pool of regis­tered pure­bred foals shrinks, a smaller number of genetic replace­ments are being born to continue the lines.

The impact of the reduced regis­tra­tion numbers can be seen in our show rings. According to AHA statis­tics, the average age of the perfor­mance horses shown at Youth Nationals is approaching 20. The average age of perfor­mance horses shown at the U.S. Nationals is over 12. And the key fact is that the large number of mares born during the boom years of the 1980s has passed or is approaching 20 years of age, past their best produc­tion period.

The impact of the declining regis­tra­tions can be seen in Figure 2, which divides the horses based on the dates of birth into five-​​year blocks. The data includes the horses regis­tered by the end of 2004, but some totals may be increased margin­ally as a func­tion of regis­tra­tions completed during AHA’s amnesty program to register older horses. This program ended March 31, 2005, and some regis­tra­tions are still being closed as missing data and DNA samples are obtained.

In Figure 2, the horses have been divided into blocks based on their year of birth. Note the signif­i­cant decline in the numbers of horses in each block. This impor­tant concept is also simple; the number of horses in each block of horses aged 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and 20 and older cannot increase, other than the marginal numbers of any late regis­tra­tions mentioned earlier.

For example, the number of foals born and regis­tered for the year 1996 will fall in the 11–15-year-old block. Those numbers cannot be increased. The number of breed­able horses can only decrease as horses die prema­turely or are exported. These numbers are reduced further when consid­ering the number of stal­lions that have been gelded.

If one exam­ines the chart and visu­al­izes the passing of several years, each block of breed­able horses will move to the right. Since block sizes cannot be increased, each block moving steadily to the right becomes smaller. Using an arbi­trary value of 20 years old to denote the end of a mare’s breeding life, as time passes there will be fewer mares and stal­lions avail­able to increase the popu­la­tion back to healthy levels.

Without a dramatic increase in foals produced, the end results could be the reduc­tion of breed­able horses to the point at which the breed cannot survive.

How did this condi­tion come about? Why did our number of regis­tra­tions fall so dramat­i­cally, espe­cially in a period (late 1980s and 1990s) when the country was enjoying a signif­i­cant period of pros­perity? The answers are as many and as varied as the numbers of breeders but area not a subject for this article.

The Reac­tion

Both the Arabian Horse Registry of Amer­ican (AHRA) and the Inter­na­tional Arabian Horse Asso­ci­a­tion (IAHA) had held inves­ti­ga­tory talks on merging their orga­ni­za­tions for many years. However, despite the work of the leaders of both orga­ni­za­tions at the time, merger efforts did not move beyond exploratory talks.

The contin­uing drop in pure­bred Arabian regis­tra­tions and a view of a bleak future caused by the industry’s condi­tion finally caused industry leaders to demand in late 2001 that the two orga­ni­za­tions make a whole­hearted effort to merge. Through incred­ible amounts of time and effort by Board members from both AHRA and IAHA, a new orga­ni­za­tion was created. The Arabian Horse Asso­ci­a­tion was born in March 2003 with AHRA staff members moving from the West­min­ster, Colorado, offices into the old IAHA building in Aurora, Colorado.

Both IAHA and AHRA were dissolved. Owner­ship of the Pure­bred Arabian data­base passed to the new Pure­bred Arabian Trust (PAT) which leased it to AHA. The merger agree­ment funnels money received from Pure­bred regis­tra­tions into marketing and devel­op­ment efforts to increase the demand for Pure­bred, Half– and Anglo-​​Arabian horses. The merger agree­ment also resulted in a new elec­tion process for the new organization’s offi­cers, which commenced a the 2004 HA convention.

As in most merger agree­ments, there are still orga­ni­za­tional chal­lenges. The Arabian Horse Association’s prin­cipal product is infor­ma­tion. The Association’s core busi­ness is built around how it receives, processes, corre­lates, and displays infor­ma­tion. As a core busi­ness tool, the orga­ni­za­tion needs a fully inte­grated data-​​handling package and current computer hardware.

However, there are two older computer systems competing for the time and atten­tion of the limited infor­ma­tion tech­nology (I/​T) staff. The former AHRA Pure­bred regis­tra­tion system has been modi­fied to accept Half– and Anglo-​​Arabian records. The system, while fast, accu­rate, and loaded with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to elim­i­nate errors, is old and has reached the end of its useful life. IAHA’s system, while newer, is hobbled by an inability for most staff users to easily retrieve, sort, filter, and present infor­ma­tion in a useful format. There are currently to sepa­rate Web sites that serve as the prin­ciple vehicle for most members/​customers to do busi­ness with AHA. However, these sites do not talk well to each other as users move from one feature to another. Both sites must be redesigned and rewritten into one inte­grated package.

The Numer­ical Impacts

Desert Arabian horses are having a larger impact statis­ti­cally when compared across the entire breed. Most preser­va­tionist breeders were not moti­vated by the same concepts as those who drove the prices to astro­nom­ical levels in the mid-​​1980s. Conse­quently, preser­va­tion­ists as a whole were not hurt when the prices plum­meted. In fact, the reduced prices across the industry allowed many breeders to improve the quality of their breeding stock or even start entirely new programs. Statis­tics show that the number of horses bred by preser­va­tion­ists remained fairly steady while breeding of all Arabian horses fell sharply over the past 20 years. [For this article, Desert Arabians include horses with AHA regis­tra­tions that are marked in Data­Source as “Al Khamsa” and/​or “Straight Egyptian.”]

Figure 3 provides a graph of Al Khamsa foals produced from 1981 through 2003. There was an increase during the boom years to about 1,350 horses produced annu­ally. When the overall produc­tion dropped, AK births remained constant at or just above 1,000 horses per year until 2003. There may be addi­tions to the last ears if breeders still register horses over two years or age.

Figure 4 details the percentage of Al Khamsa foals as a percentage of the total number of foals regis­tered by year. This further illus­trates the increasing impact that the breeders of those lines (including Straight Egyptian) are having on the breed as a whole.

Oppor­tu­ni­ties

Despite the reduc­tion in the overall total of horses regis­tered, there are several factors which will have a direct influ­ence on the demand for the Desert Arabian horse. As the show horses continue to age, they will reach a point at which they can no longer perform at the Class A, Regional and National level. The number of entries at Regional and National shows has continued to increase throughout the period of declining regis­tra­tions. With fewer horses avail­able, those trainers and exhibitors wanting to compete will have to come to look and purchase more Desert Arabian horses. Addi­tion­ally, the fastest-​​growing compet­i­tive disci­plines include Endurance, Dres­sage, and Sport Horse, which is where the Desert Arabians are the most competitive.

The Arabian Horse Asso­ci­a­tion has real­ized the need to create demand for both today’s horses and those to be bred in the future. The Marketing, Devel­op­ment and Promo­tional Committee (MDP) spent a signif­i­cant amount of time and effort in devel­oping and imple­menting a strategic plan to increase demand for the Arabian horse. The efforts of this committee and AHA staff have already contributed to markedly higher demand for the Arabian horse. One measure­able result has been a four­fold increase in the number of hits on AHA’s Web site for new people inquiring about buying an Arabian horse.

Many new Arabian owners and first-​​time buyers want to ride for plea­sure and want to use plea­sur­able horses to accom­plish this goal. This desire also aligns with the char­ac­ter­istic dispo­si­tion of the Desert Arabian horse.

The Danger Ahead

While the previous para­graphs and graphs may paint a seem­ingly rosy picture devel­oping for the demand for Desert Arabian horses, there are some dangers lurking in the back­ground. The genetic diver­sity in the Pyramid Straight Egyptian horses and the Desert Arabians of non-​​SE pedi­grees is shrinking. Figure 5 details the percentage of Straight Egyp­tians of the total number of Desert Arabian foals born year between 1981 and 2004. While an average bouncing around 90 percent over the past 10 years may not seem alarming, when coupled with the reduced number of overall regis­tra­tions, a different picture emerges.

Figure 6 provides a visual display of the absolute number of Al Khamsa foals born to non-​​Straight Egyptian blood­lines between 1981 and 2003. Note that the number of theses foals for the last five years has hovered between 50 and 75. These blood­lines include the Daven­port, Blue Star, Babson-​​Turfa and Combined Source foals among others.

The number of Pyramid Straight Egyptian foals being produced over the years means that the group is well sustained. However, the marked drop in number of Al Khamsa, non-​​Straight Egyptian foals indi­cates that we are at the brink of losing the ability to main­tain those blood­lines as genetic sources for future generations.

And if we don’t, who will?

Since this article was prepared in 2005, the Insti­tute for the Desert Arabian Horse has initi­ated a study to deter­mine the genetic diver­sity remaining in the Straight Egyptian gene pool and in other heritage groups. Read more about this “Conser­va­tion  Assess­ment and Manage­ment Program” (CAMP).