Desert Heritage Arabians focuses on breeding beautiful, athletic, personable horses with outcross Egyptian bloodlines and rare Asil bloodlines. The horses of the breeding program all have a rich history full of performance backgrounds. All of the young stock/homebred horses go under saddle and have so far proven to be sporty athletes with good minds. Although they do not have some of the more “popular” bloodlines, they are continually proving to be excellent partners nonetheless. Common misconceptions about how bloodlines become rare are that “it must be for a good reason” or “they do not produce good horses,” but the truth is that bloodlines become rare for a multitude of reasons that do not tarnish the quality of the horses that have them. The goals of this breeding program are to produce excellent and athletic individuals, preserve these rare and precious bloodlines, prove what they can do, and share the gifts that these wonderful horses bestow with others.

The group of Straight Egyptian horses preserved at DHA are termed “Low Nazeer New Egyptian” meaning that the horses have 10 or less crosses to the stallion Nazeer and are not Old Egyptian (related to the Babson imports). Although Nazeer was a prolific stallion in his own right, he was also vastly overbred and linebred in the New Egyptians to the point that there are hardly any New Egyptian pedigrees that do not have less than 20 crosses to him. And while the breeding program is mostly committed to preserving this Low Nazeer group, we do have some wonderful individuals with heavier Nazeer and Babson breeding which provides a nice diversity of bloodlines and type here at DHA.

The rare Asil horses here are recognized as such by various organizations such as Asil Club and Al Khamsa. The rare Asil horses of DHA generally only have a handful of descendents left and really are the last hope for preserving these bloodlines. It is a source of great pride for the breeding program to be able to continue on these bloodlines and to preserve genetic diversity in the future – all while breeding and caring for beautiful, sweet “in your tent” Arabians.

Some of these rare lines occur in the middle of the horse’s pedigree, while some other are called “tail male” or “tail female” lines. Tail male lines refer to a horse’s sire’s sire’s sire’s sire, etc., whereas tail female refers to a horse’s dam’s dam’s dam’s dam’s dam, etc. until you reach the Foundation horse.