Mustangs

Mustangs have their own issues in regards to pedigreeing (PA). Most of the time, real Mustang horses and their pedigrees are rare to come by, especially when searching for older stock. That results in many PAers using the same bloodlines, either by using the same real horse parents or by breeding from the same model farm (there are only a few that carry stock from the 70's and 80s). The other option is to create a whole herd of BSOs (bloodstock only, i.e. imaginary horses with no body, only a pedigree) to back one single model body. The more generations you want to fill, the more horses you have to make up. The last, and my least favorite option, is to assign the horse a vague "rangebred", meaning there is no pedigree backing it.

A post on one of the forums, ABMHA, asking for Mustang parents made me realize not a single one of mine was pedigreed. I *had* been content to leave my '70s horses with "rangebred" in the parent slots, but I became curious as to what I could find for them.

Sierra Vista

When it comes to older stock, there are three farms that immediately come into my mind: Caballos Del Mar, Double Hart Ranch, and VnV Stables. (If you carry a lot of old stock and you're not in that list, leave me a comment so I can remember to check out yours! For me, old stock refers to horses born in the 80's or earlier) Well, I knew my friend Samantha over at VnV hadn't been feeling well lately so I didn't go to hers right away because I didn't want to bother her with a request atm.

Del Mar had a buckskin old enough, Take The Fifth, who had sired the rest of their older stallion stock, so if I wanted to keep my bloodlines as unrelated as possible, I would only be able to breed one horse from there. I was able to narrow it down to my gray, The Albino, thanks to her older gray mare, Norinal. As soon as she replies, that is! ;)

Red Rock

However, that still leaves my 70s pair, Red Rock and Sierra Vista without parents. Red Rock could've been bred from Del Mar stock, but I wanted to take advantage of the gray available for The Albino. Even if I go ahead and use another stallion, he will still be partly related to The Albino through Take The Fifth.

And Sierra Vista, what a problem child. I pedigreed her as tovero, due mostly to the color on her ears and not the rest of her face. Is tovero very popular in the model horse crowd? Uh, no, not at least in comparison to the vast numbers of tobianos. Tobiano drafters, tobiano stock horses, tobiano ponies, tobiano part-Arabians. Yeesh. I could maybe get her by crossing a tobiano and overo, but even old overos are hard to find.

Final question to myself. Do I stick with rangebred? Do I go through hours of frustrating research to find real old Mustangs? (I'll pass) Or maybe just...make them younger? (Is that equivalent to giving up?) I could make up a three generation pedigree to at least provide new blood to other PAers, given my stable ever gets big enough to warrant such a need. I think I convinced myself into it. Hopefully it's worth it ;)