TAMWORTH is the new home for Australia’s first cloned horse.
The stallion, Salute, is an exact genetic copy of the world’s most influential performance horse sire, Smart Little Lena, and arrived three weeks ago.
Richard Bull, of Tamarang stud, Tamworth, bought Salute at the Western Bloodstock Annual National Cutting Horse Assoc-iation (NCHA) Futurity Sale in Fort Worth, Texas, last December.
And with the cost of cloning a horse being $150,000, the elite genetics came cheap.
Mr Bull paid just $US27,000 for the clone of the first horse to ever win cutting’s prestigious Triple Crown in the US, which had lifetime earnings of $743,275, and whose progeny have earned $US39.3 million and grand progeny have earned more than $US80 million.
Smart Little Lena died in September 2010 at the age of 31.
“I didn’t expect to get him – I thought he’d make $250,000,” Mr Bull said.
“He looks absolutely magnificent, I’m so impressed.
“I knew the original – Smart Little Lena – pretty well, and this horse is so much like him with his temperament and movement.”
Mr Bull said Smart Little Lena had always been his yardstick for champion horses.
“I’ve owned three sons and over the years wanted to acquire Smart Little Lena mares for Tamarang, however the price has always been prohibitive.
“I have done a lot of research on cloning and I’m completely satisfied that breeding to Salute is exactly the same as Smart Little Lena himself.”
While the Australian Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) does not currently allow the registration of clones, Mr Bull isn’t concerned.
“I purchased Salute to breed Smart Little Lena daughters,” he said.
“He’s been such a great sire, and there is only one mare in Australia by him.
“Horses don’t need to be registered for cutting so it’s not a huge issue for us.”
He said the introduction of these genetics to Australia through Salute – who is one of five clones of Smart Little Lena – would offer tremendous opportunities to the Australian performance horse industry.
“The cloning was undertaken to preserve Smart Little Lena’s genetics because of his dominance in the cutting industry,” Mr Bull said.
“Whether I agree with cloning or not, the horse had already been cloned and the chance to have this horse here was too good to miss.”
Five-year-old Salute, currently unbroken, will be sent for breaking following his appearance at the NCHA Tamarang Futurity in Tamworth from June 2 to 12.
However, the stallion will not be trained or shown.
“As he’s a stallion, we just want to get him broken to make him easier to manage,” Mr Bull said.
“His sole purpose will be to breed.”
While not identical in appearance to Smart Little Lena, Salute’s genetic material is exactly the same and his offspring will therefore be equivalent.
A male clone breeds identically to the original copy.
The world’s first horse to be cloned was Haflinger mare, Promotea, in Cremona, Italy, in 2003.