My Breeding Project- Overo Arabians

First, a bit about me:
I am an anti-critic. Whenever someone criticizes a book or movie, or dislikes something for no real valid reason other than out of spite or to be 'different' than the crowd, it makes me want to defend it more. I enjoy things. I really like food, and all kinds of books, and all kinds of movies. And to relate this back to our favorite topic-- all kinds of horses. There are several breeds that cause a lot of debate, and one of these is the Pintabian. It is considered a 'designer' breed and yada yada yada. What matters is it's beautiful. And it's mostly Arabian. Arabians with color. Really? You can't get much better than that.

So I wanted to make my own beautiful breed. Same concept. Just....I've always fancied overo slightly more than tobiano. And I had several models of Arabian type sporting a frame overo pattern. Why not? The overo gene is lethal in its homozygous form, but the goal of my program would be breeding back to pure Arabians, which would never carry the gene and allow it to become homozygous; therefore, the lethal aspect would not exist in my program. The only stipulation of course, being that an Overo-Arabian (Ovab? Overabian? Arabero? so much fun!) could not be bred to another one of the same type. And of course this pretty much negates the idea of being a real breed. A breed in which members can't breed to each other? Nonsense!
I can only imagine all the critics now. But the great part is-- this is model horses, and everything is hypothetical and theoretical and fantasy, and fun.

So, I had the idea and the motivation. The next step was the models. My end goal was to create him:

SFC Fire Song, 99.2% Arab

Not only did I have to breed up the overo pattern, but the cream gene as well. Finding models (I do not like creating a string of BSOs for breeding projects, as that isn't enough of a challenge for me) with both would be tough, but I was sure I could make it work. In fact, I had a huge group of pinto patterned horses awaiting IDs, too many to make all of them Paints!

Honestly, I could've made him a Paint-Arabian cross and called it good, but he is one of my favorite Arabian molds and I wanted to keep him as high percentage as I could. If I wanted to mimic the Pintabian, 99% was high enough. It takes seven generations to reach that from two parents of different breeds. I decided mares and stallions could produce foals at 4. I started with a mixed list of stallions and mares until I figured out an acceptable year to begin breeding. That happened to be 1988.

SFC Sultan of Luck

I started with an ambiguous foal. No one can tell exactly how a 50/50 cross will look, as genes don't always influence exactly half the time or in the same way. So I knew the first foal did not have to contain a lot of Arabian characteristics. He was also a passable buckskin, so he was a good start for the cream gene. 

I crossed Sultan on my Arabian mare, SFC Desert Night by Cass Ole(r) and got a lovely palomino filly with a more expressive form of frame-

SFC Desert Sun

She was bred back to our stallion SFC Ambition by Paarden (r) to create a stunning palomino colt SFC Desertion.

SFC Desertion

SFC Desertion bred with my Arabian mare SFC Pirouette by Padron (r) to create a smoky black mare SFC Dark Ballet.

SFC Dark Ballet

Dark Ballet was a custom done for me by my good friend Cari. She was originally pedigreed in my stable as a Paint, but I knew her Arabian features and flashy color deserved a more important role. She was bred to SFC Fire At Bey by Huckleberry Bey (r) to produce SFC Bey Ballet, a fiesty buckskin colt.

SFC Bey Ballet

By this time, Bey Ballet was foaled 2004 and 96.88% Arab. I still had a few breedings to do before I reached 99% Arabian, and that foal would be too young to immediately produce 'full' Overo Arabian foals. Of course I opted to make that last horse a stallion so he could sire multiple foals his first foal crop.

Bey Ballet covered SFC Sirens Song by Ruminaja Ali (r) and produced SFC Ballet Song. She is the key-at 98.4% Arabian, when crossed with a pure Arabian, she would foal 99.2% foals. And she only had two open years- 2012 and 2013. 2012 went to my foundation stallion Fire Song. 2013 went to auction, to hopefully be won by someone with as much vision as I have for my special project.

SFC Ballet Song

I am so happy to finally have it finished, but I will be even more excited in two years when Fire Song's first foals start making their debut.

I plan to breed Bey Ballet again to create another 'key', this time a stallion. This key will have the ability to produce 99.2% Overo Arabians even though they aren't 'full' themselves. That way I will have a half sibling I can use to promote in the next auction, as well.

My next goal will be to breed up the roan gene with the overo, but I don't have to tell you how hard those models will be to find! Looks like I might have a lot of cm'ing to do in my future ;)

I was a little disappointed that most of my breeding stock turned out to be foals, but that just happened to be what I had needing to be ID'd. Hopefully my roans will be more adult bodied than foal.

Thanks for reading about my breeding project!