Tamarillo won Badminton and Burghley and was William Fox-Pitt’s mount in the British team for some years. How we have wished that we could breed from him. Now, owing to advances in technology, we think that we will be able to do the equivalent. Thanks to the good offices of Replica Farm a clone of Tamarillo, named Tomatillo, was born in the U.S. on the 20th June and we hope that in due course he will be a breeding stallion at Biddesden and able to disseminate Tamarillo’s genes.
The purpose of breeding from a horse of exceptional merit is to carry forward the combination of genes which produced him. This point is obvious and routine in the breeding of racehorses (for the Flat) but it has been impossible to act on it with the geldings that form the vast majority of Competition Horses. Cloning may provide the solution.
The special merits which we felt made Tamarillo worthy of the expense and nuisance involved in the cloning process are the following:
1. He is a big mover.
2. He is an agile jumper–some people may remember him recovering from tripping in Huntsman’s Close and, on another occasion, finding an extra leg coming out of the Quarry at Badminton.
3. He has superb stamina as his wins in heavy rain and sodden ground at Badminton and Burghley demonstrated.
4. He seemed to find demanding Cross Country courses easy, cantering round the Four Star tracks with ears pricked.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT OF PRISCILLA K. MILLER.