SKOWRONEK- A Polish Prince Invades England

SKOWRONEK
A Polish Prince Invades England

by Suzanne Phillips

FAST FACTS:

Sex:	Stallion
Sire:	Ibrahim PASB
Dam:	Jaskoulka PASB
Color:	Grey
Markings:	snip on nose, left fore fetlock
Born:	1909
Number:
Registries:	PASB/GSB/AHSB
Breeder:	Count Joseph Potocki of Antoniny Stud Poland
Importer:	Winans (to England)
Tail-Male:	Ibrahim PASB - desertbred stallion
Tail-Female:	Jaskoulka PASB
Height:	14.2 hands (he was registgered as being this tall)
Strain:
Died:	1929 at age 20

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IBRAHIM
(Heijer x Lafitte)
Was imported to Poland from the desert by Count Joseph Potocki in 1907. IBRAHIM also sired ORNIS, found in Spanish pedigrees; KALINA, dam of DZIEWANNA who is commonly found in Polish and Russian pedigrees; ELSTERA, dam of MOROCZ and FLISAK; and POSEJDON, sire of LAGONDNA who was the dam of *NABORR. *NABORR had several lines to IBRAHIM.

SKOWRONEK was bred in Poland at the stud of Count Joseph Potocki at his Antoniny Stud. His sire was listed in the stud’s books as being IBRAHIM, a desertbred stallion brought to Poland. His dam was JASKOULKA, who had several generations of European Arabian breeding behind her. He was born in 1909.

(While most Arabian horse purists will never concede that JASKOULKA was a purebred, SKOWRONEK is never-the-less accepted by WAHO as being a purebred Arabian).

The translation of SKOWRONEK from Polish means "lark." His dam, JASKLOULKA, was the "swallow."

SKOWRONEK was brought to England, changing hands a few times until he came to the notice of Lady Wentworth of Crabbet Stud. She first saw the silver white stallion in 1920 at a pony show in Islington in 1920. SKOWRONEK was eleven years old at the time.

SKOWRONEK
With Lady Wentworth
1926 at Crabbet Park Stud

SKOWRONEK
with Lady Wentworth. Skowronek
is beginning to show some age.

SKOWRONEK'S first foals were produced while he was in the ownership of Mr. HV Musgrave Clark. They were born in 1920.

Lady Wentworth acquired SKOWRONEK through some nefarious means, as she was certain that he would be her new outcross stallion, that would take her broodmares from their Blunt and desert backgrounds, into a new realm of type.

His first foal crop at Crabbet was born in 1921 and consisted of six foals.

SKOWRONEK produced 47 foals at Crabbet. Of that 47, 23 were eventually exported to other countries and of that 23, nine were brought to the United States.

By 1926, Lady Wentworth was feeling the pinch of the Depression, and offered SKORONEK to W.K. Kellogg in the hopes that he might endow Crabbet Park with an infusion of cash. The deal never materialized and SKOWRONEK'S last foal crop was born at Crabbet Park in 1929. Although his death was not recorded, it is felt he died that same year. He was 20 years of age. He had served only eight years at stud, but his impact is still felt in the show rings around the world.

SKOWRONEK
at peace with his eyes closed

Excerpts from the Crabbet Arabian Stud Catalog, 1924:

"Champion SKOWRONEK, a White Kehilan Ajuz of the strain imported to Poland by the Antoniny Stud. G.S.B. Vol 24. P.P.S.B 664. Hurlingham 12003, and R.S.B. Sire Ibrahim (white) by Heijer ex Lafitte. Dam Yaskoulka, 99 vii, R.S.B., a Kehilet Ajuz by Rymnik ex Epopea by Dervish ex Lyra, 198 R.S.B. Count Joseph Potocki's famous Arab Stud at Antoniny dated from before the year 1700. It was destroyed by the Bolsheviks during the Great War, 1916."

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"This horse is the ideal type which Abbas Pasha I., of Egypt, spent a fortune in collecting from the desert where it is now unprocurable. No more perfect specimen has ever been imported to England. The pure white colour is very rare and greatly valued. Lady Anne Blunt spent the last twenty years of her life in a vain search for a horse of Skowronek's type."




	Skowronek ("Skylark"), foaled in 1909, was bred by Count Potocki at Antoniny Stud in Poland. His sire Ibrahim was imported to Poland from Constantinople, Turkey in 1907 as an 'Original Arab'. His dam Jaskolka (Yaskoulka) ("Swallow") was of established Polish bloodlines. Skowronek was a beautiful homozygous grey, snow white in his maturity. He was imported into England in 1913 by Walter Winans, was sold to Mr. Webb-Ware, and then to Mr H. V. Musgrave Clark, from whom Lady Wentworth subsequently acquired him. (Above information is paraphrased from the SKOWRONEK and IBRAHIM entries in The Raswan Index)
	Just how influential has Skowronek been in the breeding programs in the US and Canada? Let's have some fun with statistics. As of January 1, 1998, my personal data base contains 32,367 USA and/or Canadian registered Arabians. 10,732 of these horses are descended from Skowronek one or more times. This does not give us a reliable picture though, since I've done exhaustive research on Egyptian Arabians for my books. 16,194, or about half, of the horses in my data base are straight or pure Egyptians, and Skowronek has had practically no influence in Egyptian breeding programs, with only one son, Registan, in Egypt. Only 43 of the 16,194 Egyptian horses in this country are descended from Skowronek.
	If we discount the Egyptians, we have 16,173 non-Egyptian horses, out of which 10,689 are descended from Skowronek. This count is still biased, as I've also done exhaustive research into Spanish Arabians for the books. I have 2,095 USA and/or Canadian registered Spanish Arabians, out of which 494 are imports. BUT!!! 2,062 of these are descended from Skowronek, which leaves only 33 without Skowronek blood. 31 of those 33 were imported, which leaves us with a whopping 2 (count 'em, ONE, TWO) straight Spanish Arabians bred in the US that are not descended from Skowronek.
	All of the later imports in this group are descended from one or more of the mares belonging to the Duke of Veragua. We know nothing about the breeding of these mares, except that the Duke bred only purebred Arabians and of mostly Crabbet bloodlines. Therefore, we can not assume that we don't have some more Skowronek blood running around in these horses. That leaves us with only the Draper and Steen importations and one horse bred in this country from the Draper imports that we know have no Skowronek blood. 17 horses from 2,095 pure Spanish! I think we can safely say that Skowronek has been EXTREMELY influential in the Spanish breeding programs.
	Let's leave the Spanish horses off too and see what is left. We have 14,078 horses that are not pure Egyptian or pure Spanish, 540 of which are Sheykh Obeyd and 406 of which are Babson + Turfa, which leaves us with 13,132 horses, out of which 8,627 are descendants of Skowronek.
	This should give us a fair cross section of the Arabian population in general, as I've subtracted all the major breeding groups I've been doing research on. The remaining horses are a mix of English, Polish, Russian, Desertbred, part Spanish, part Egyptian; whatever I have come across as I've been doing pedigree research. I've done a bit of 'all get/progeny' of some horses, but it has been scattered, some with and some without Skowronek blood, and in any case not more than one or two generations, so should have no major influence. So, what we end up with is that about two thirds of these 'All American' Arabians have Skowronek blood.
	Out of the 465 pure Polish horses in my data base 156 have Skowronek blood. Out of the 143 pure Russian (other than pure Polish) horses 122 have Skowronek blood. Again, this is only counting horses registered in the US and Canada.