Jamaal Influence - Lewmack Arabians
By Janine McGregor 

Lewmack Arabians is situated in the north west of England, set in 28 acres on the edge of the picturesque Pennine Moors. This has been the home of my parents, Mac and Christine, myself and my brothers Oliver and Mark for the past 20 years. In this time, the setting has also been the home to an average of around 20 horses as well as countless other animals. It was 15 years ago that we decided to concentrate mainly on Arabians as, for us, after owning an Arabian horse, any other breed had a hard act to follow. From that moment when we first had an Arabian, we fell in love with the versatility, intelligence and enjoyment of the Arabian show scene and we slowly sold our Fresians and Standardbreds before starting to increase the number of Arabians that we owned. Today we own 18 Arabians, 12 of which have lines to Ali Jamaal and with the others having lines to Bey Shah and El Shaklan, we now feel that we are so much closer to fulfilling our breeding dreams.

The first Arabian stallion that we owned was Ibn Sadat (by Bayd), a lovely little bay who we saved from a dealer in 1989. We showed him at many local shows and very quickly, he got us truly hooked on the breed. From there, we bought in mares and youngsters to both show and to be the foundation of our own breeding programme. By the early 1990s and we had bought in horses such as Sonic Saint (Mazari Ibn Melchoir x Kali), Strinesdale Sensation (Esperanzo x Sonic Saint), Secret Melody (Piechur x Jasmin Saint) and Esperanzo (Maliek El Kheil x Kazra El Saghira) from Jim and Dandra Richardson of the Strinesdale Stud. Sonic is still with us today and is now 22 years old and we also have her daughter, LA Vogue (by Esperanzo), who has proved to be an excellent producer for Lewmack Arabians.

From those early beginnings, we went through a Russian phase and purchased For The Moment (Moment x Navaja) and Bint Cometera SFI (Marsiannin x Cometera) from Raymond Fox at Foxfire Arabians. We also purchased the mare Kadera (Gonorar x Kalitva) for her enormous movement and our breeding goal was to produce foals with this fabulous movement as well as Arabian type. Along the way, we purchased many young colts to breed with our collection of mares and we had some success in the show-ring with our homebreds including La Exdream (Eternal Dream x Secret Melody) who was Junior Male Champion at the first Classic Show in 2001 and went on to be Reserve Junior Male Champion the same year at the Northern Group Show.

It was in 2002, however, when we purchased the FS Bengali son Aja Ben Nazif from Justine Bassindale and Andy Hollings of JB Arabians that things were to dramatically change for us. Justine and Andy were the two people that triggered the change in our breeding programme and who made it possible for us to purchase fantastic horses with impeccable bloodlines. Aja Ben Nazif gave us much pleasure: we showed him at all the big shows and each time, he showed off his explosive movement. But we felt that something was missing. We didn’t feel that we were fulfilling our breeding goals and a complete change of direction was to take place.

This complete change was an exciting one, but it was one that involved much help from Justine and Andy. We decided to concentrate on predominately Ali Jamaal, El Shaklan and Bey Shah bloodlines, a combination that has proved successful around the world. We already had lines to El Shaklan through Esperanzo and his daughters, but decided to add the Ali Jamaal and Bey Shah as they passed on qualities to their get which we intended to include in our future youngstock. In particular, we admired the beautiful, chiseled faces with wide-set eyes, tiny muzzles and correct conformation that Ali Jamaal provided as well as the explosive attitude and upright neck set Bey Shah passed on. It was a big step to make, but Justine and Andy encouraged us to take the opportunity to get closer to our breeding goals.

The first purchase in this new phase of Lewmack Arabians was the young colt Imahni, bred by Justine and Andy. This was in 2004 when Imahni was just 15 months old and we could already see that he had the type we needed in our new breeding programme. Imahni was out of Justine and Andy’s very special Ali Jamaal daughter Illyria El Jamaal and he was sired by the stunning El Shaklan son CH El Brillo, owned by Ferdinand Heumer of La Movida Arabians in Austria.

Over the next two years, we purchased two CH El Brillo daughters: Kar Zumba out of Kar Zarzamora, bred by Nico Jung of Germany; and Hyleah El Bri who is out of Hyleah El Jamaal, who was at La Movida for a while, but now resides back in her native Brazil at Haras Meia Lua, home of the great Ali Jamaal himself. Hyleah El Bri was purchased in foal to the Ali Jamaal son Javier El Jamaal (ex Juliet El Jamaal by Ludjin El Jamaal by Ali Jamaal) and she produced for us an amazing bay filly with three lines to Ali Jamaal, two to El Shaklan and one to Bey Shah. Now two years old, La Hyleah El Javier is everything that we could have hoped for and more.

Other new bloodlines that we introduced to the stud included the grey Kouvey Bey daughter FH Bravarda and Orla El Than (Jonathan El Ludjin x Porla El Bri), a beautiful grey filly who we plan to breed this year. With the help of Justine, we also purchased the white Ludjin El Jamaal son JD Chalice from Dr Kirschner. JD Chalice is out of a CWP Chances Are daughter, JD Splendour. He incorporates all of the bloodlines that we need, having all three influential stallions in his pedigree. Chalice is proving to be invaluable as a breeding stallion, producing us our best foal crop to date including a beautiful bay filly out of our homebred LA Vogue, LA Valisha el Chal, as well as a gorgeous, refined colt out of FH Bravarda, who is now owned by Rebecca McEvoy of Raingills Arabians.

This year sees our three young colts reach breeding age and leaves us with breeding decisions to be made, but we do now rather feel that we are spoilt for choice. As well as the Jamaal-related sons, we also have the homozygous black colt Borameer Bey (Borsalino Bey x Ameera Bey) who we imported from Flying A Ranch in the US last year. While Borameer Bey has four crosses to Bey Shah and only one to Ali Jamaal, he has the added excitement of his colour and breeding possibilities.

We also have the WH Justice son Danni Kalifornia who, with three lines to El Shaklan, will be very interesting bred to our Ali Jamaal-related mares. Danni had a good 2007 show season with his first show resulting in the Reserve Junior Male title at the North West C Show and he also achieved fifth place in his class at the All Nations’ Cup in Aachen. We look forward to showing him again this year, his first show hopefully being the Tulip Cup at Deurne in Holland next month.

The final arrival at Lewmack Arabians is an interesting one and he has a desirable pedigree with lines to Bey Shah, Ali Jamaal and El Shaklan. We are grateful that Malcolm and Jane Hickford of Aja Arabians allowed us to purchase Aja Chicane (Psytadel x Aja Shahdiva), a typey colt with lots of attitude and flair. We definitely plan to get him out to some shows throughout 2008!

Lewmack Arabians is still at the beginning of its journey, having experimented with different bloodlines before settling on the ones that work for us. We have four foals due this year, all sired by JD Chalice. The first mare to foal is FH Bravarda and while we hoped that she would have a filly, she presented us with a colt on Easter Monday who is very similar to the stunning colt she had for us last year. We have great hopes for all four foals, especially Hyleah El Bri’s which should mark a pivotal moment in our breeding plans. While Lewmack Arabians has been on a long journey, we think that this year’s foal crop should prove to be the closest to our goal so far, something we are very excited about.