He was a very classic horse with great appeal and he was an outstanding sire of unusual prepotency. Several Crabbet oriented breeding programs have utilized this blood, as well as many very different breeding programs, widely scattered, with quite dissimilar goals. Some of thebreeding plans using *Raseyn blood have inbred heavily to him (this began, in a few cases, even during his own lifetime), while others have preferred smaller more or less “single shots” of the particular qualities *Raseyn offered. However, his blood is so widely disseminated that today some breeders use his descendants somewhat incidentally just because *Raseyn happens to be in the pedigrees of animals selected for other considerations.

By pedigree, *Raseyn was actually 50% Polish, 25% Ali Pasha Sherif, and 25% the Blunts own desert breeding.

*Raseyn’s sire, the gray Skowronek, foaled in 1908, and bred by Antoniny Stud, Poland, was one of the greatest sires the Arabian breed has known. Indeed, some of the closebred breeding programs in which *Raseyn participated were actually designed with Skowronek as the focus, rather than *Raseyn. Skowronek’s reputation as a sire was made by his brilliant success at Crabbet under the direction of Lady Wentworth. While Skowronek was acclaimed for his wonderful head and neck qualities, he absolutely excelled in his back, loins, pelvic structure, hip, croup, and hind leg perfection, and these latter were all areas where many Arabians, including those at Crabbet, needed improvement. Skowronek thus proved beyond value in this respect, as well as in the matter of passing on exquisite classic type.

Including *Raseyn, a total of 27 Skowronek sons and daughters are in the background of American Arabian pedigrees.

Ibrahim, sire of Skowronek, was a gray desert bred horse foaled in 1899 and taken to Poland at the age of 8. He was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1917 at the age of 18. He was a smooth horse with excellent bone and good strong legs; he is further said to have been a quiet and kind individual. His sire and dam were both desert Arabs; his dam’s designated name is probably a corrupted translation referring to her strain name, Seglawi Faliti.

Jaskolka, dam of Skowronek, represented some of the finest and oldest Polish lines of her day; her dam line traces on the bottom to the Kehilan Ajuz desert mare Iliniecka, taken to Poland in 1820. Jaskolka, a gray, was foaled in 1891.

*Raseyn’s dam Rayya was the product of one of Crabbet’s favorite linebreeding formulas to Mesaoud - a Mesaoud daughter to a Mesaoud grandson; Rayya’s sire and dam were also of the same dam line. Rayya’s sire Rustem, a brown stallion foaled in 1908, was one of Wilfrid Blunt’s favorite horses; after his successful Crabbet career he was sold to Egypt in 1920, where he also had important influence. Rustem’s sire, *Astraled, another brown, was foaled in 1900 and came to the United States in 1909; he was certainly a very important sire. He was also noted for his trot, as was his dam, the brown Queen of Sheba. Chestnut *Rose of Sharon was a mare of outstanding quality and phenomenal influence; Ridaa, chestnut and foaled in 1892, was her most important daughter.

Rayya’s dam, Riada, yet another brown in *Raseyn’s pedigree, was foaled in 1904. She is said to have been a beautiful mare with a lovely head and good disposition. As we learned in the *Nasik article I wrote for this magazine, Mesaoud was the most important sire influence at Crabbet up to the advent of Skowronek, and Rodania was the most important foundation mare in England - and one of the most important in the world.

With this illustrious pedigree background, one might naturally expect the brown Rayya, foaled in 1915, to have been an individual of very real quality. Stangely, she was just the opposite - a shockingly poor mare. It is nothing short of amazing that she managed to somehow produce a horse of the caliber of the great *Raseyn who bred on so consistently, strongly, and well, with such beneficial positive influence. This must have been one of those rare cases where pedigree (Rayya’s) did come through with hidden (in her phenotype) good genetic material, and it belies the oft-heard but nonfactual cliche that good stallions never have poor dams. Conversely another school of thought has it that good pedigrees will win out in breeding (as with Rayya) even if poor individuals are bred from, but in real life this doesn’t seem to be true with any more consistency than the cliché about good stallions always having good dams.

How could Rayya have been so awful when she was so well bred? Well, this happens sometimes (more often than many people will admit) because of the extreme complexity of the countless genetic combinations possible—a certain amount of randomness is always present, even in extremely inbred animals. No breeding dogma is ever totally consistent.

The only source of Rayya blood in American pedigrees is through *Raseyn.

*Raseyn came to America as a 3 year old, in 1926, imported by W K. Kellogg of Pomona, California.

In early 1925 Will K. Kellogg, the breakfast food magnate, founded his extremely influential Arabian stud. To stock it he made his first purchase, of eleven animals, from C.D. Clarke, Indio, California, on March 25, 1925; the price averaged about $1636 per horse. Carl Schmidt, who was caretaker of the Clarke Arabs, went with them to Pomona and became the manager of Mr. Kellogg’s ranch. Six more Arabs were purchased on December 1, 1925, from F. E. Lewis II, Spadra, California. All of these animals represented the pooled genetic resources to be found in America at that time, with Davenport breeding being the overwhelming influence among them. Some of these horses were, indeed, fine Arabians. For additional foundation stock, Mr. Schmidt, who had traveled widely, including prolonged trips to the desert Arab breeding countries, suggested that Mr. Kellogg send him abroad on a horse buying expedition. Accordingly, Schmidt arrived in England the end of January 1926 and visited Crabbet on the 28th. It was decided that Mr. Kellogg would buy his Arabs there and so the idea of Schmidt journeying on elsewhere was dropped.

Fourteen Arabs were acquired from Lady Wentworth for a total price of about $83,000, which averaged out to some $5930 each. However, the two mature stallions, *Nasik 604 and *Raswan 607, were apparently gifts from Lady Wentworth; if they are subtracted from the total of fourteen we are left with twelve animals among which to divide the $83,000 - an individual price average of about $6900. Another choice of price appears when we consider that three of the mares foaled after their arrival in California, bringing the importation total up to seventeen, or a price average of $4882.

These fourteen Arabs, together with the registered Welsh Pony stallion, *Kilhendre Celtic Silverlight, who was Lady Wentworth’s gift to Mrs. Kellogg, left Crabbet the morning of March 26. The animals were walked the three miles to Three Bridges railway station where they boarded the train for the trip to the London docks. *Raseyn unloaded from the train quietly, but finding himself one of the last to go aboard ship became quite worried. His handler managed to reassure him and got him to walk up the 35 foot gangplank to board the Minnewaska. The horses were placed in large padded crates. They arrived in New York City April 5th and that same evening left by train for California, arriving on April 10th.
Apparently immediately after his arrival at the Kellogg Ranch, *Raseyn was worked excessively hard for a 3 year old - he reportedly was made to carry some 245 pounds frequently on long, rough hill rides. H.H. Reese, who replaced Schmidt as ranch manager on January 1, 1927, found on his arrival that *Raseyn was “shaky” in the forelegs and over at the knees. Total rest, with free corral exercise, corrected the condition in a few months and *Raseyn got over his soreness and went sound again. In his very old age *Raseyn once more went over at the knees. One wonders if this early trauma, from which he seemed to recover entirely, really did lasting damage to him.

However, *Raseyn took well to saddle work and by 1927, when he was 4, he was being used for jumping, which he seemed to enjoy, and which did not bother his recovered front legs. That year his training took him to the point of going over hurdles three feet high.