It is not just mine that are aging

Smart Little Lena at 29 is finally giving up on breeding--at least naturally. Well not naturally as he never does that, but It has been recommended that he not be collected any more, as the risk of heart attack is way up there now.

Today, on allaboutcutting.com, the following info was provided about the clones. Some of this has been paraphrased to make it more palatable

SMART LITTLE LENA CLONES:

Manion said that they had collected semen on the five clones to see which of them were fertile. Three were extremely fertile; however, the other two were not. Also, the two that were the least fertile were the least desirable individuals. He said they collected the two least-fertile clones again a month later. After the first collection, the semen looked pretty good, the second was marginal and the third – nothing. Also the two undesirable clones at Performance Equine were not doing good.

The three nice clones have been at Phil Rapp’s facility since August, being gentled and saddled.
Rapp said that they were exceptional colts; however, one was better than the other two, but he could see Smart Little Lena in all three of them. He said they get them out and brush them and work with them five or six days a week, but they have not ridden them. “We just exercise and groom them.”

Rapp felt they had some value as breeding horses if they didn’t charge a huge fee. He thought they could get 20-25 paying mares to them even though they would only be DNA-registered.
Chatham said they were going to send registration applications on the clones to the AQHA just in case something happened down the road where they could be AQHA registered.

Manion said that if they are not registered their only value was as show horses – so they needed to be trained. Phil has agreed to train them for $3,600 per month if the Syndicate members agree, but they needed to be started soon. If they were, Phil felt that by March he would know if they were going to be worth going on with. If even one turned out great, it could have significant value – even if it had no value as a breeding horse.

Rapp also suggested that if they didn’t want to have all three clones trained, he could train the best-looking one and they could sell the other two overseas and see if a foreign country’s registration association might accept them for registration. Joe Hayes suggested that Brazil might be the best market.

Manion said they did a survey regarding the two least-desirable clones and there were 25 “yes” and 1 “no” to either donate the clones or put them down. Four said to donate, two said put them down and the rest didn’t care.

The survey also asked if they got the three desirable colts registered, should they train them. Five said “yes” and 25 said “no.”

Another question was “If these colts were unable to be registered, should we train them?” There were 23 “yes” and 8 “no.”

Levison said there were 53 partners in the clones and that no one else got in after the original members paid their money. However, some of them haven’t paid what is due. There was only $1,188 in the clone bank account and they owe $28,000 to Performance Equine. Ron Ward said that he had $10,000 in expenses from his clone share so far, meaning that shareholders already could have $530,000 in the clones.

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No matter what you think of the cloning process and what should happen with it--that some of these members think that two of the five should be culled suggests there is more at stake her than money. Ultimately in the end though, money may be the undoing of this deal, with people already behind on their financial obligations. That is the horse business though, isn't it?

On a related note, it sounds like a settlement is close on the whole syndicate deal.

What do you all think of the cloning thing? Whether they should be trained and shown? Anything else