When a person has firsthand experience with many generations of Fjords, the traits that clearly are passed along to each successive generation are more known and help me in making breeding pairings that are more likely to produce offspring that are even closer to the Breed Standard than the prior generations. Serial siblings and half siblings are helpful too, but not as much as the deep generational knowledge.
One of the deepest generational lines in our herd is the Ashwood line, with 6 generations known to me personally and the 7th generation due in 2025. I met the Ashwood mares’ sire, Fair Acres Garth, as a 24 year old stallion at a local farm, owned by an 80+ year old gentleman. Garth had a lot of similarities to our stallion Ragnvald and was easily handled by this elderly man. Two of Garth’s daughters, Ashwood Alma and Ashwood Helma are in our horse’s backgrounds.
We owned Alma and after producing some great foals for us, she spent her retirement years as a therapy horse. Alma produced 74 progeny to date, of which we have retained a bunch: Daughters Nora, Vilde and Sejline, Granddaughters Lucy and Greta, Great-grandfoals Raisa, Orven and Sunnev, and Great-great granddaughters Viska, Vindkast and Drifa.
I met Helma when I purchased the Double C mares in Minnesota. Helma has 77 registered progeny as of 2024, and produced our mare Double C Lilli, who has produced 7 registered progeny. We have retained Lilli’s daughter with Ragnvald, 1dr Moena, as a broodmare and she has produced 2 foals so far.
Helma also produced Double C Vanilla, the dam of our mare Double C Gracelyn. I wanted to buy Vanilla, but she wasn’t available at the time. Gracelyn has produced 20 registered progeny (as of 2024). We retained Gracelyn’s daughters Koryn, Erica, Eileen and Ingunn, her grandson Mathis, and her granddaughter Stenetta. So, there has been 5 generations in this line (Garth, Helma, Vanilla, Gracelyn, Koryn, Mathis) and the 7th generation, sired by Mathis, will arrive here in 2025.
We would have retained many more from this line if we had the pasture space to manage them without overgrazing the available acres. As such, many other herds around the country are benefitting from outstanding breeding stock that we sold due to our herd size constraints. This year’s foals are no exception; they will be an asset to the breed if used for breeding by their new families.