Irish show jumping stallion Cruising has been cloned twice by Mary McCann of Hartwell Stud, Co Kildare, bringing Irish breeding into a new hi-tech era. These are understood to be the first horse clones in Ireland.

It has been reported that the two clones, now almost three years old, will be registered in the coming weeks and will hold Irish Studbook green passports. The horses will be registered as Cruising Arish (clone) and Cruising Encore (clone) in the Irish Studbook.

It will be interesting to see how Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) deals with the approval status for these clones. Cruising is the only Irish stallion to have obtained a five-star rating for his own performance and five-star ratings for his progeny’s performance in eventing and show jumping.

Testing

The World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses recommends that if studbooks allow clones to enter the breed improvement programme of the studbook, they should be tested as individuals and not simply accepted as equal to their donor in performance terms. The World Breeding Federation ranking published in November 2014 ranks Cruising 53rd in the world as a sire of show jumpers and fifth as a sire of event horses.

Although there are reported to be hundreds of equine clones worldwide, this development is certainly a giant leap for Irish sport horse breeders. Obviously, this technology will suit only a minority of breeders from a financial as well as breeding point of view.

The cloning of sport horses has enabled European studbooks to preserve outstanding genetics for the breeding and competitive spheres. As Irish involvement with cloning technology evolves and develops, there will no doubt be much debate on the usefulness of such techniques.

HSI reaction

HSI commented this week on the two new Cruising clones that Hartwell Stud will make available to Irish breeders in 2015.

HSI CEO Damian McDonald said that the sport horse sector has always embraced the use of science to breed better horses with techniques such as artificial insemination and, latterly, embryo transfer in wide use in the sport horse sector.

“The international governing body, the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI), allows clones to compete and we altered the rules of the Irish Sport Horse Studbook in recent years to permit the registration of clones,” he said.

No doubt, those involved in the sport horse sector will be interested to see if these two Cruising clones are the only Irish sport horse clones that will emerge over the next few years.