A Highland fling

Greetings, gentle readers, and welcome to the first post in what may be the world’s first ever model horse pedigree blog! Unless of course, as they used to say on That’s Life’, you know different.

What prompted me to start? Well, at the moment I’m having a bit of a ‘project’ to sort out and type up pedigrees for all my current showing models, and I just thought that other pedigree-ers might find it interesting to read about how I approach it. As for the ‘…and beyond’ bit of the title, well, it is my hope and aim to get back to a bit of repainting/customising, so I may be telling you about that, if and when I do any. We may even touch on other, non-model-horse-related creative activities that I indulge in from time to time. And if I go to any model or real horse shows, I might mention that too. It’ll be a veritable smorgasbord, I tell you.

With regard to the technical side of blogging, this is the first time I’ve done it, so I’ll be feeling my way for a while, hopefully with the help of my long-suffering non-horsy friend Al. Expect fairly basic at first; we may get a little more ambitious as time goes on. Al at least has hit the ground running, though, by kindly designing the header you see on this page, for which I am very grateful.

So without more ado, and because we have to start somewhere, I’m going to tell you about the pedigrees which I found for two Highland ponies recently. These are currently my only Highlands, a mare and a stallion, and because I wanted to create an ID bred from them as a Secret Santa present before Christmas, they got ‘jumped to the front of the queue’ and pedigreeing them became a priority.

My stallion is a handsome Border Fine Arts chap called Fear Liath Mor, which is the name of a mythical ‘Great Grey Man’ said to haunt the mountain Ben Macdhui in the Cairngorms. As soon as I heard of this being, traditionally regarded as supernatural but claimed by some as a ‘crypto-hominid’ in the style of the Sasquatch, I thought it would make a great name for a Highland, and not much later I was tempted by the BFA model, which is grey, so thus he was named.

I think he is a fairly typical Mainland or “Garron” type of Highland, so set about looking for that type of parents for him. When I last visited the Equine Event, which is longer ago than I care to think about, I treated myself to several purchases from the Highland Pony Society stall including their 2001 Stallion Guide. The pony in here who particularly caught my eye was Auchnahillin Scarba (f.1995), primarily because of his look of substance, or, as one might say in more common parlance, the fact that he was built like a brick privy. Except that as he’s grey, perhaps comparison to a concrete privy might be more appropriate. A brief Internet search revealed that Scarba is alive and well and living at Carlung Stud - scroll down their stallions page and you’ll see some photos of him and mention of his successful show career.

Dams are usually more difficult to find as they are not so widely publicised on the Internet or in stud directories, etc. I therefore turned to a show catalogue: the 2005 Ponies (UK) South Show at Newbury, which I had attended with Marian Rickerby. The amount of information which one can glean from a single entry in a show catalogue is limited; however, when two or more entries are combined, more can be inferred. For example, I found the 8-year-old grey mare Dunedin Fraochlan competing in a ridden class at this show; I also found her 3-year old son (foaled 2002), Balleroy Mercury, in a youngstock class. Put together, these entries tell me that the mare was alive and capable of producing a foal in the years 2003 or 2004; also, since she was still owned by the same owner in 2005 as when she foaled Mercury, that Balleroy would be the correct prefix for such a foal. Things meshed together even further in that it appears from various websites that Scarba spent the years 2001-2006 at stud in England, before going back to Scotland, so just right to sire a 2003 foal from an English mare!

With the parents sorted, I then researched the pedigree back, at least as far as it fits onto the form I use (5 generations). I did this by using both the All-Breed Pedigree Database and also my Highland Pony Stud Book Indexes. Where I have a printed source, I always like to use in to at least check on All-Breed – there are mistakes on there, and also it sometimes fails to record the foaling year and/or colour. The Indexes always include this information if it is recorded in the original stud books.

I don’t know a great deal about Mainland Highland pedigrees, but this one seemed to come from well-respected stock, with an emphasis on the Whitefield Stud. Happily the Carlung Stud website showed me not only Scarba but his great-great-grandsire, Major of Whitefield, while Sergeant Major of Whitefield and others in the pedigree may be see on All-Breed. I was especially pleased to find that Dunedin Fraochlan’s paternal grandsire was called Kincardine Ben Macdhui, thus providing a nice placename link to Fear Liath Mor!

I had had this pedigree ‘lined up’ for my stallion for some time before fully researching and typing it up, but parents for my mare were less certain. This little yellow dun Stablemate repaint came to me as a surprise ‘Secret Santa’ present from Fran Griffin in 2008 and was soon named Morag, but I got no further with her for a while. However, I’d very much enjoyed attending one of the Brownbread Stud’s open days in 2007 , and so it seemed sensible to pick parents from the ponies I’d seen on that day. The stud’s resident stallion was the impressive veteran yellow dun, Duke of Glengarry of Dykes, who seemed perfect for Morag’s sire.

Choosing a dam was more difficult as I saw several extremely lovely and eligible mares there, but eventually I went for the beautiful black silver Rhum Mary V, whom I had seen with Duke and with a foal at foot by him. As Duke is also out of a Rhum mare (Rhum Duchess), this gives a concentration of the Western Isles lines which I particularly like. In fact, I had been lucky enough to meet Rhum Mary V’s grandsire Claymore Ben-y-Hone several times when he was spending his later years in Devon.

The only slight problem here is that Morag is a 2004 foal and I suspect Mary may not have arrived at Brownbread until around 2006. However, I really liked her pedigree and so decided that ignorance of her exact whereabouts was bliss and I would gloss over that part. There is after all nothing ‘impossible’ about the breeding – both parents were alive and of a suitable age to produce the offspring – probably the only dubious part is my use of the Brownbread prefix for the offspring.

Looking at this pedigree as a whole, the name which crops up more than any other is the 1948 stallion Mackoinneach. He appears at least five times in Mary V’s pedigree, through three of his sons, Daibhidh of New Calgary, Seamus Mor of New Calgary and Chuidich’m Righ of New Calgary, and is also Duke’s maternal grandsire. Model horse collectors will of course be familiar with Mackoinneach as the name of the Beswick Highland Pony, although I’m not too sure how exactly this model was based on him, as the real Mackoinneach was grey!

The pedigrees completed, I was all set to create a 2010 foal from these parents, which was sent as a Secret Santa present to my friend, avid Highland enthusiast, Carra McClelland in the USA. Carra has chosen to make this a grey (bay) filly named Clifton Duchess Morag, and I look forward to hearing more of her in due course.

Well, that concludes our first entry – I hope some of you have found it interesting, or at least enjoyed looking at the pretty pictures! Next time we’ll be delving into the world of veteran British model Arabs and PBAs, so that will be different, at least.