Cloning - Royal Blue Boon

Fort Worth Business Press How will cloning affect the cutting horse industry? Sally Harrison - March 20, 2006.

Who says that you can't turn back the clock?

Not Elaine Hall of Weatherford and the people at ViaGen Inc. History was made Feb. 19, 2006, when a recipient mare gave birth to a clone of Hall's 26-year-old mare Royal Blue Boon, the all-time leading producer of cutting horses.

In appearance, the healthy filly, that Hall has named Royal Blue Boon Too, is a knockoff of her dam, with the same steel gray coat and refined good looks. When mare and clone met for the first time last Wednesday at Royal Vista breeding center in Purcell, Okla., more than a few of the assembled visitors had goose bumps as the two touched muzzles with their ears pricked forward in greeting.

ViaGen Inc., based in Austin, Texas, specializes in advanced livestock technologies and has cloned more animals from a broader range of species than anyone else in the field. Their scientists include Irina Polejaeva, who was involved with the production of Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell.

Elaine Hall and ViaGen were introduced through Weatherford-based Encore Genetics, owned by Milt Bradford, Jim Ware and Brad Stroud, DVM. ViaGen and Encore joined forces in 2005 to produce the first commercially cloned horses in the United States.

Bradford and Ware have extensive experience in the sales and promotion of performance horses, as well as in breeding and pedigree analysis; Stroud is a pioneer in embryo transfer technology.

At 26, Royal Blue Boon's reproductive years are behind her. The "Grand Dam" of cutting has produced offspring with earnings of more than $2.6 million, a figure that most stallions, with many more foals, never attain. But the blue roan mare's last foal was produced in 1996, via embryo transfer.

With Royal Blue Boon Too, who genetically is Royal Blue Boon's identical twin, Hall has the opportunity to perpetuate bloodlines in a way never before possible. "It's fun to be on the frontier of new science and be a part of it," said Jim Bailey, DVM of Royal Vista Southwest, where Royal Blue Boon Too was produced. "I think cloning will continue to grow to where it will be an important way to manage genetics in many animals."

Operating from facilities in Purcell and Fort Collins, Colo., Royal Vista has developed a nationally recognized embryo transfer program that boasts a pregnancy rate of 78 percent and includes the use of 1350 surrogate mares. Last year, Royal Vista in Purcell conducted 788 transfers, not including the cloned embryos that resulted in a 60 percent pregnancy rate, according to Bailey. "I feel confident that we will have a pretty good number of cloned babies born this spring," Bailey said.

Royal Blue Boon is not the only clone born at Royal Vista this year. On March 6, a recipient mare gave birth to a healthy clone of Tap O Lena, owned by Phil and Mary Ann Rapp of Weatherford. And Weatherford-based trainer and breeder Lindy Burch is anxiously awaiting the birth of two clones from her 16-year-old NCHA World Champion Bet Yer Blue Boons, the earner of $350,000 and a daughter of Royal Blue Boon. "There were two reasons I did it," said Burch of her decision to clone her famous mare. "One, in order to make sure that I would always be able to have that genetic material, in case anything happened to 'Bet.' And, two, the trainer and horseman in me wants to see if [the clones] perform like her. "I studied animal behavior and I know the environment has a tremendous influence ... it will be interesting to see the similarities with a different environment." For more information, visit www.ViaGen.com or www.encoregenetics.com.

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