New Direction. New Registry.
“Promote and preserve the Caspian horse.”
That’s easier said than done,
Many people believe that promoting a Caspian’s capabilities will get the breed noticed and generate demand for Caspians. Once you have enough demand, then you can produce foals to fulfill it. But there are some flaws to this way of thinking.
Imagine someone sees a small rider on a small horse and then thinks, “I really like that. Where can I get one?” And they discover they have very few of choices or none at all. This is the problem.
First, there is nothing a Caspian can do that another horse cannot already do - from a functional standpoint.
Second, promoting them as a child’s mount when none are available on the market means a missed window of opportunity. A child isn’t a child for very long, and they will move on to another breed or a new interest if there is nothing available right now.
Parading a horse on the street or in sporadic shows are not going to improve the current situation. Our market has shifted over the years. Our pool of potential horse owners is shrinking, and we’re in hot competition with all the other breeds. What do we do when we create a demand in a region if there is nothing to satisfy it?
What does promotion mean to us?
Simple. Promotion means breeding and showing off new foals for sale. Promotion is sales; it’s creating a market share that we take to the world and offer as an alternate to the competition. It is in this space where we have the opportunity to talk about Caspians. While we focus on what makes the Caspian horse a better choice, we can also appeal to the humanitarian side: “Help save a rare breed by owning one!”
This practice of production for promotion sets us up to make more horses available for breeders, too. We can work together to keep bloodlines going, which goes hand-in-hand with breed preservation. Although there are few breeders worldwide, we will continually have young stock to trade with one another to prevent genetic bottlenecks. The more the population grows, the greater the opportunities we’ll have to bring on new breeders and keep expanding.
We have a plan
In the words of Dr. Dan Wharton, animal conservationist, “without a plan, any road will get you there.” In order to preserve a breed, you need a plan, and you need to reinforce what success of that plan looks like. Promotion is only one tool in the toolbox for saving the Caspian breed. Another angle is keeping watch on the population. Is the population in trouble?
According to statistics of Caspians registered worldwide, the breed is in trouble and reproducing at very low rates. It is not sustainable. Ideally, we should have a breeding population of 200 horses to allow for natural mutations to occur that stave off the effects of inbreeding and keep coefficients of inbreeding low. To open our net, we accept all Caspians from other registries into our studbook. We track both purebred and part bred Caspian horses with at least 50 percent Caspian bloodlines. We believe that genetic preservation for the sake of genetic diversity also includes horses that carry Caspian genetics.
Join us in our venture
We invite you to participate in this great effort. While we plan to fundraise, aid, subsidize, and facilitate efforts for getting more Caspian horses into more homes, what we really need is participation with breeding. Success relies upon people, and our people are the breeders.
