by Moira Walker

By The Numbers: A Brief Introspection on Al Khamsa Registration

by Moira Walker

Al Khamsa breeders have always been concerned with the viability of their breeding populations and the ability to carry them forward. It’s no secret that registrations are down across the board for the breed, and there are concerns about what the future holds for the Arabian horse: for us, this more specifically means the Al Khamsa Arabian. A rather shocking statistic has been making rounds in the community of late, based on a datasheet provided by the Arabian Horse Association:

Annual Registrations, 2000: 9,660 horses

Annual Registrations, 2021: 2,189 horses

A 77.3% drop in the number of annual registrations between the start of the 2000s and two decades later at the start of the 2020s is alarming by any measure of imagination, and it is all the more concerning for Al Khamsa Arabians, which make up a very small percentage of the total population of North American Arabians; this has necessitated further parsing the data available to glean a deeper insight into how this impacts our Al Khamsa Arabians. As luck would have it, researchers are now bending themselves to the task of cataloging the raw data for yearly registrations of Al Khamsa Arabians based on date of birth for both a historical perspective and an attempt to stay abreast of contemporary trends. One consideration to make as you digest the material is that the AHA statistics track yearly registrations — i.e., new registrations for foals, older horses that were registered late, and imports of horses. Unlike the AHA, Al Khamsa, Inc. is not a breed registry and derives more utility through tracking horses by birthdate — evidenced in the structures of both the Al Khamsa Roster and the Preservation Task Force. Relevant data for us therefore differs slightly from the official statistics the AHA provides.

Another consideration to keep in mind when looking at the statistics provided — particularly the further back in time we go — is that all data we utilize reflects a modern composition of Al Khamsa foundation horses as they stand now and does not accurately reflect Al Khamsa as it was then. Regardless of whether the Foundation Horses were accepted to the Roster after the years from which the data was pulled, the fact remains that these horses still existed, the Al Khamsa designation has been retroactively applied following acceptance, and the data presented is still representative of all bloodlines in North America currently tracked by Al Khamsa, Inc.

Years ago, before the Arabian Horse Datasource became a resource available to the public, Al Khamsa researchers set out to get an idea of how rare the Al Khamsa Arabian was. Their statistical research found that Al Khamsa Arabians represented roughly 5% of Arabians in North America, but this was, of course, an estimate based on extrapolating data from the studbooks circa the 1990s, and the research was never repeated. We now have at our fingertips the tools to more precisely examine what registration numbers look like today for the Al Khamsa Arabian, utilizing a database that not only updates quarterly and instantly with new registrations (as opposed to yearly studbooks) but which also allows us to sort by bloodline designation and birth dates, and cross reference with the enormous Al Khamsa Roster. These are truly powerful tools that allow us to extract and contextualize large swathes of registration data with relative ease. With this data, what unfolds before us is a picture of a declining breed with over a century of registration information to give us both an immediate and a more historical perspective for what we are looking at.

The first registering body for the Arabian horse in North America — The Arabian Horse Club of America — was pulled together by a group of breeders in 1908 in partial response to difficulties registering their horses with the Jockey Club, and comprised just a mere handful of horses. The following year in 1909 they published a stud book, and within it, 71 horses had been registered. Just 11 had been born in the year prior, although the finalized data for North American registered Arabian horses born in 1908 would ultimately come out at 19. Five horses were imported to North America later, and three horses were born in the US but bred from the bloodlines of Randolph Huntington by his protégé Spencer Borden, who refused to register their horses with the AHC and instead continued to register his horses with the Jockey Club. The bloodlines of these horses would ultimately be included into what we now know as the Arabian Horse Association. Registration locations and numbers aside, all 19 horses born in 1908 were Al Khamsa Arabians.

The ensuing registration of new foals was, conceivably, quite small as it pulled from a very small breeding population. Volume 1 of The Arabian National Studbook was subsequently published in 1913, and contained 127 registered Arabians. Just 10 horses had been foaled in 1912, with one of these being a mistaken DOB. The official number would ultimately be 23 horses — 19 of which were Al Khamsa horses, the other four of which contained bloodlines that have in the past been considered for inclusion to the Roster. As in the 1909 publication, not all of the horses born in 1912 were registered in this book (three were later imported), and once more, Spencer Borden had declined to register his six foals with the AHC.

He wouldn’t relent until 1917, just a few years before his death in 1921. Borden would not be the last breeder to decline to register their horses with a governing registering body. Even today, Al Khamsa includes within its roster horses that have not been registered with the AHA, such as the Cavedo mare Lira II, registered with the IAHRONA and which the AHA declined to register. This is an issue that also impacts the Tahawi horses, most of which are unregistered with any WAHOaccepted registry.

A decade ago, Bruce M. Johnson, a member of the AHA Registration Commission and writing for Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse, outlined some of the ensuing early registration statistics in his article “Where have all the Arabians gone?” He reported that in 1932, there were 75 horses registered; thirteen years later in 1945 just before the World War II boom, 398 horses were registered, an exponential explosion of breeding; by 1956 there were 1,097 new registrations; 1960 saw a doubling this number with 2,084 registrations; and finally, in the hey-day of what we now call the Golden Age of the Arabian Horse, 1985, there were over 30,000 horses registered for that year. Read that again: more than 30,000 horses registered in a single year.

In the backdrop of this era was the rise of what you could term the Egyptian Phenomenon, an explosion of the popularity and population of this subset of Al Khamsa bloodlines, which benefited from both an extremely successful marketing campaign and availability of breeding stock. The landscape demographics of various bloodline subsets shifted dramatically during this era, from virtually no horses that fit the modern definition of Straight Egyptian at the beginning of the 20th century to over 70% of annual Al Khamsa registrations fitting within the Straight Egyptian by the time 1985 had rolled around. For those familiar with their history, you know what happened next: in 1986 then-President Ronald Reagan closed the tax loophole that allowed Arabian horse breeders to utilize these horses as tax shelters, and almost overnight, the value of the market collapsed and the incredible upward trajectory of the breed crashed. There was a dramatic and immediate decline in overall AHA registrations, and breed registrations have been in a downward slide ever since.