The Arabian and Egyptian pure-blood horse breeds that are being bred in the Shafaq Horse Stables belong to the Emir of Qatar. The horses, which can often run for tens of millions of US dollars in value, live and sleep in air-conditioned stables away from the scorching 45°C+ of summers of Doha, Qatar. They have a swimming pool to cool off, special treadmills to workout twice a week, and saunas and special oils that are rubbed on them regularly to smooth their muscles in cases of cramps and so.
Sounds too perfect to be true? This is where the catch comes in. All breeding is through artificial insemination. According to our guide in our trip around the stables, the stallions have never had “the real thing.” We passed through a room containing what is called artificial vaginas, which are used to collect the sperms and then use them to impregnate an egg from a mare before it is reinserted to grow within the mare’s womb.
They take it even one step further. If a mare has especially good and desirable genes, then they would take several eggs and impregnate them with sperms (from a stallion with perfect genes too) and use surrogate mothers (who’s genes may not be that perfect) in order to breed more horses.
That is how far they would go to breed genes that produce perfectly formed horses. Note these horses are not bred for speed, but for form and beauty. they compete in beauty contests for the perfect body (with very stringent standards at that!)
Now what I found particularly interesting (and worrying) is that the breeders are basically breeding out any genetic diversity or evolution. There are variations brought forward – the horses are almost identical genetically on and on. As pretty as the horses are, I can’t help but wonder what if they are susceptible to one mutated bacteria or virus? That could wipe out the entire bloodline due to the lack of any variations.
According to our guide, they don’t worry about that now because the horses are already getting extremely high quality health benefits. However, they have started sending some breeds out to different continents to spread them out.
“Maybe in possible smaller countries, they might have to rely more on nature a little more,” she adds. “The horses are completely vaccinated and they will go through six months of quarantine, but it will be interesting to see what kind of immunities they will build up for something in South America for example that we don’t have here in Arabia.”
I just hope it is not too late to build up those immunities after wiping out any sort of genetic variations in the bloodlines. For now, you can enjoy the pictures here of the extremely beautiful horses being bred in stables that would be the envy of humans, let alone other horses!