THE EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE HISTORY ESSAY   pt2    2500w

HORSE BREEDING IN THE WORLD AND IN SRI LANKA

The earliest people who recorded the breeding of horses are known to be from the Middle East since 1330 AD. Even Europeans started horse breeding many long years back. And further it’s believed that the nomads of the Mongolian steps have bred horses for several thousand years.

In the modern day world, many of the countries breed horses on their own for many purpose but Americans Arabians and Europeans mainly breed horses now for equestrian sports. Also many of the western countries breed horses for commercial purposes.

Considering the horse breeding in post independence era in Sri Lanka, most significant developments came as the horse lover cum business tycoon Mr Upali Wijewardane started breeding horses and it is said that he had upgraded the delft blood lines to a certain extent by the time of his untimely death. Then in the mid eighties, the Government of Sri Lanka started the much awaited project of upgrading the delft blood lines in to the Sri Lankan thoroughbred horse with introducing Australian thoroughbred blood lines by importing a white stallion named Sydney through the mount police division. The first official half bred of this project was a grey stallion named “Super Charger” that stole the hearts of local horse lovers. Later the project was expanded through the Mahaweli scheme by establishing an official breeding farm at Kalawewa with the horses owned early by Mr Upali Wijewardane and the new Australian influenced local blood lines, success went to the extent of being able to breed a three quarter bred horse. But during the insurrection in 1988, the facility was destroyed unluckily and all the horses and some pregnant mares carrying the embryos of the upgraded horses were killed by the insurgents.

Picture Although some efforts made to revive the project using Pakistani blood lines in early nineties had not flourished due to various constrains including health complications. Since then no government projects were conducted for breeding of horses. But some of the animal lovers started breeding horses in private capacity. And they were not much interested in br