The clone of Sister CD was born on March 15. • Photo courtesy of Jason AbrahamAlthough commercial cloning has been available to the public since the mid-2000s, the first known clone of a gelding in the cutting industry was born March 15 to Abraham Equine. The 2015 colt is a clone of 13-year-old Sister CD, the second-highest-earning cutting horse of all time with more than $850,000 in lifetime earnings.
The Sister CD clone is not the first of his kind. In other performance horse industries, leading gelding performers – most notably World Champion barrel racing horse Gills Bay Boy (“Scamper”) and World Champion racing Quarter Horse Tailor Fit – have already been cloned and started their breeding careers.
Clayton, the clone of Scamper, has produced one money-earner, according to Equi-Stat records. His 2010 gelding son Scamper To Dat Cash (out of Deierita Juno x Juno Dat Cash), bred by Jud Little, of Ardmore, Oklahoma, has garnered nearly $10,000 in barrel racing.
Tailor Fit’s clone, Pure Tailor Fit, was born in 2010. While American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) rules prevent the stallion’s offspring from performing on the racetrack, owner Blake Russell has started breeding Pure Tailor Fit foals for the barrel racing industry, where registration is not required. His first foals were born in 2013.
The cloning of renowned stallions and mares like cutting horses Smart Little Lena (1979 stallion), Doc’s Serendipity (1974 mare), Royal Blue Boon (1980 mare), Playboys Ruby (1987 mare), High Brow Cat (1988 stallion) and Tap O Lena (1990 mare) has become common for preserving top-quality genetics. In other disciplines, prominent stallions like reining horse Reminic (1978 stallion) and barrel racing horse Frenchmans Guy (1987 stallion) have also been cloned.
Sister CD (CD Olena x Little Baby Sister x Dual Pep), a 2002 gelding owned by Skip and Elizabeth Queen, of Allendale, South Carolina, and bred by Bar H Ranche, of Weatherford, Texas, quickly left his mark on the cutting industry. Among his many achievements, Sister CD boasts 2006 National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Super Stakes and Breeder’s Invitational Derby Open championships and an NCHA Summer Spectacular Open Reserve title. The gelding amassed $314,168 as a 4-year-old alone.
Sister CD went on to win the 2007 NCHA Super Stakes and Breeder’s Invitational Classic/Challenge Non-Pro championships, and the gelding’s talents never faded. He turned many heads during the 2009 NCHA Summer Spectacular, when Kay Parker, of Cleveland, Georgia, rode him to the Senior Youth Championship after marking a huge 230. In his final year of competition (2012), at the age of 10, Sister CD carried the Queens’ daughter, Katherine Queen, to two paychecks in the Youth.
“He’s a beautiful, beautiful colt. For sure, it’ll be my stallion because he is beautiful. I probably won’t even show it,” Jason Abraham, of Abraham Equine in Canadian, Texas, said of the clone. “It’s exciting to be able to see that great gelding and bring him back, free of genetic diseases. Of course, we don’t know if he’s going to be worth a damn as a producer, but he’s such a great horse, he’s worth a try.”
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