Viagen in the News
Champion Horse Cloned by Texas Breeder
By Maryann Mott, National Geographic News
April 4th, 2006
Meet Royal Blue Boon Too, the first commercially cloned horse in the United States.
The cost of the frisky foal: U.S. $150,000.
That may be a bargain, considering that the original Royal Blue Boon, a 26-year-old American Quarter Horse now past breeding age, has earned more than $380,000 as a competition and show horse.
“Cloning is a very powerful tool,” said Mark Walton of Texas-based ViaGen, one of the companies that produced the clone, at a press conference last Thursday.
“It literally takes the guesswork out of breeding.”
ViaGen hopes the foal, born on an Oklahoma farm February 19, marks the successful start to a partnership it has struck with Encore Genetics, a horse-breeding and marketing firm.
Until now, horse cloning has been a purely scientific experiment. The first cloned horse was produced by Italian scientists in 2003. Since then, several more have been created.
Now, ViaGen and Encore hope to take cloning to the next level by duplicating as many horses per year as possible. To encourage sales, the company even gives horse owners a $60,000 discount on the price of a second clone of the same animal.
In addition to Royal Blue Boon, the companies have duplicated another horse, Tap O Lena, whose clone was born March 9.
ViaGen says it expects to produce seven cloned foals this year. It has also collected and frozen tissue samples from more than 75 champion horses for future cloning.
The cloning process used by the company is called nuclear transfer, in which DNA from a donor animal is transferred into eggs that have been stripped of their own genetic material.
The new embryos are grown in an incubator for several days and then implanted into recipient females. After a normal gestation period, the cloned foals are born.
This process has been successful so far, but there may soon be a hurdle for ViaGen to jump.
The eggs needed for cloning are purchased from U.S.-based slaughterhouses, which the federal government and animal welfare groups are feverishly trying to shut down.
If that happens, ViaGen’s Walton said, his firm may import horse eggs from overseas.
A Horse Is a Horse?
Elaine Hall, the owner of Royal Blue Boon, says her horse is a genetic superstar.
The mare is the all-time leading producer of champion cutting horses, her offspring having earned more than two million dollars combined.
“She is an exception to the rule, as a brood mare,” said Hall of Weatherford, Texas, at last Thursday’s press conference.
“And so I thought it would be an injustice not to allow her this opportunity to be able to go on and perpetuate the blood lines.”
The National Cutting Horse Association will allow clones to compete in the sport of cutting, in which horses separate cows from a herd.
Not everyone, though, is thrilled by the birth announcement of Royal Blue Boon Too.
The news spurred the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Racing Association to push for legislation to ban clones from the state’s racetracks.
Many horse registries in the U.S. have also begun to establish policies regarding cloned horses.
The Jockey Club, the breed registry for all Thoroughbred horses in North America, refuses to register clones.
The American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) in Amarillo, Texas, also does not permit clones to register. The group says it’s concerned about the long-term impact of cloning on the breed.
“We do not know how this emerging technology will affect the breed, and we will continue to study it,” said Gary Griffith, AQHA’s executive director of registration, in a press release after the clone’s birth was announced.
“We must bear in mind that decisions made today could have unanticipated effects on the breed many years down the road.”