Monitoring of the sire lines of the Danubian horse breed

Maya Popova, Nadejda Lukanova, Radka Vlaeva

Abstract: The Danubian horse was created in the former sate stud ”Clementine” near Pleven, to meet the
needs of the Bulgarian army of light draft type horse and to improve the efficiency of the population of
local horses. For its creation were used stallions of the Hungarian breed Nonius. More than 14 stallions
were used in the breeding process, but only some of them found good compatibility with the local
mares in the herd and became the founders of genealogical lines. The breed was officially recognized
in 1951. After the privatization of the Clementine stud farm in the late 1990s, the lack of economic
activity led to a sharp reduction in the number of mares and stallions and their sale to private owners.
All оf this has led to the loss of information about many valuable stallions and mares, and difficult
tracking and recovery of the available information. In this regard, the purpose of our study is to trace
the development of the lines and their representatives for the period 1990–2018. From the main lines 5
of them are currently continued – of Zdravko, Kalif, Lider, Hrabar and Torpedo. Currently, the largest
number of licensed and certified stallions for breeding is the Torpedo line – with 6 stallions, followed
by the lines of Kalif, Hrabar and Lider – with 5 stallions, and from the line of Zdravko – 1 stallion.

Keywords: Danubian horse; genealogical lines; horses; selection

Date published: 2020-10-02