SIRE LINE–SKOWRONEK PART 3, NASEEM/NEGATIW

SKOWRONEK WAS SOLD TO ENGLAND WITHOUT EVER SIRING A FOAL IN HIS NATIVE POLAND, YET HIS LINE WAS TO BECOME ONE OF THE STRONGEST IN POLISH ARABIAN BREEDING. IT RETURNED MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY LATER IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY, TAKING A DETOUR VIA RUSSIA.

In 1936, the Russian state stud Tersk purchased six stallions and 19 mares and fillies from Crabbet Park. Most of them were proven breeding stock; all six stallions had been used as sires at Crabbet. The most expensive among them, and certainly the pick of the selection, was the Skowronek son Naseem, 14 years old and at the height of his breeding career. His tremendous impact on Arabian breeding around the world through the foals he sired in England has been described in the last issue.

Naseem was used at Tersk for another 16 years, longer than in England. With 19 daughters and three sons, he was the only one of the six Crabbet stallions who founded his own sire line in Russia. While the first of the sons left nothing of note, the second, Nomer, is found in pedigrees today through two of his daughters. Foremost among them was Napraslina, grandam of the chief sire Naftalin and founder of her own dynasty in England and Australia. It was the third son who was destined to establish the Skowronek sire line in Eastern Europe and bring it back to Poland: Negatiw, foaled in 1945 out of the Polish mare Taraszcza, who followed Naseem as chief sire at Tersk. In 11 years, Negatiw sired over a hundred foals, including six breeding sons. And that was just at Tersk, with a lot more yet to come.

Negatiw was not only one of the greatest sires of Skowronek’s line, but also its perfect representative. Like Skowronek (and unlike Naseem), he was a homozygous grey and a dominant sire who consistently passed on his own type, often through several generations. His most typical and similarly dominant son was from his first foal crop at Tersk: *Naborr, foaled in 1950 out of Lagodna. *Naborr’s dam was also a Polish mare, who carried two additional lines to Skowronek’s sire Ibrahim DB. Her sire was the Ibrahim son Posejdon, who, unlike Skowronek, had been used in Poland, but had left no male line.

*Naborr — originally registered in Russia and Poland as Nabor — closely resembled his sire, as he was also a homozygous grey who frequently passed on his own type. He was used at Tersk for two years, but left nothing of note there, although one son and one grandson were also used. At the age of six, he was sold to Poland, becoming the first stallion of the Skowronek line to