 And have most of you heard of or seen the old Walt Disney 1970s movie, Justin Morgan Had a Horse? Yeah? It was a Disney version, Hollywood, if you would, about the origin of the Morgan Horse. It was not intended to be a documentary, but it was very entertaining. And we all loved it. It did skirt on a lot of the facts. One fact that they skirted upon was that Justin Morgan, or figure, the Colt, was not a two-year-old toss in to settle a debt. In fact, Justin Morgan the Man made the long trip from central Vermont to Hartford, Connecticut to purchase figure as a three-year-old. He had already bred 35 mares his three-year-old year. And that was in 1789. 1792 when he made the trip for a three-year-old. And from Vermont to Connecticut back then was not an easy trip. Figure, also later known as Justin Morgan, was a wonderful anomaly. He could outwork, outlast, outpull all others in New England. And the New England hardships did not affect his soundness. He remained sound and hearty throughout his long life. He did not affect his easy keeper qualities. We always say that our horses gain weight on air and sunshine, and that is just about it. And to put it into perspective, Figure was fold in 1789, the year that George Washington became our first president. This horse singly founded America's first breed of horse. This was done through careful and intensive line breeding and inbreeding back to the founder to set type. It has not only preserved type, but the nervous system, the fearlessness, the work ethic, the soundness and hardiness that you find in today's Lipit Morgan over 230 years later. The Lipit Morgan became defined as a distinct family of high percentage morgans in the early 1970s by a group of people who were concerned and rightfully so that these wonderful horses and this gene pool were dwindling and becoming meshed into something new and improved by those who wanted something else. Today's Lipit Morgan has nearly as much blood of figure as would one of his grandsons or granddaughters, which would be 25 percent. Our horses often have 23 percent or slightly more. The Lipit Morgan is the only family of morgans that can lay claim to this much of that blood. All Lipit morgans are defined as descending from 25 foundation horses, eight stallions and 17 mares that were selected on their bloodlines and closeness to figure. All Lipits go back on all lines of their pedigree to our cornerstone stallion, Ethan Allen II. He was in it very intensely line bred Justin Morgan horse back in the day and all of our foundation, 25 foundation horses go back on every line of their pedigree to him. One reason for the type. So that testifies to the purity of this horse. Also, you cannot breed up to a purebred Lipit Morgan. By breeding a purebred Lipit Morgan to a half, three-quarter, seven-eighths Lipit Morgan, there would always be a line that did not meet the criteria to go back all the way to our cornerstone. So therefore we are the purest thing you can get today to Justin Morgan. Today's Lipit Morgan still looks and moves like the original figure of over 200 years ago. That is quite an accomplishment. Our trot is not high action like the show Morgan, they were called daisy clippers and they were ground covering and they often drove these horses in the rugged hills of Vermont and New Hampshire a hundred miles in one day pulling freight. These horses still possess the vibrance, the nervous system and energy, the love of work and they love their people. They love to have a job and they are very faithful to their owners. As we know with all of our heritage farm animals, the Lipit Morgan was bred for usefulness and to work alongside his master no matter what the task. A hot or ill tempered horse was not desired and while these horses do have an abundance of energy, it is controlled energy and it should never be considered to be hot. They have a keen nervous system but they are not hot. The hot is purposeless wasted energy. They are a wonderful family horse. My mare is back there today in the stall. I'm an old lady and my grandchildren are very young and they show and ride and play with all of our horses on a daily basis. They love children. Her sire will be here tomorrow on Saturday in the stall and doing demonstrations. And he's a very people oriented horse too. Today this horse is critically endangered and has been declining in numbers for several years. One reason is the transition to the show Morgan. Is that this poster, the show Morgan? Okay. Thank you. And the show Morgan often has less than 8% Morgan blood. They have been out crossing to saddle bred, standard bred, hackney, range mares and others for years and under rule two of AMHA, American Morgan Horse Association, which was viable from the 1920s until the 1950s. If one horse had a pure bred Morgan parent, which probably at that time had 35% Morgan blood, was crossed on anything else, the progeny could be registered as Morgan. And if you see today, if you see a palomino, buckskin, done, whatever colored Morgan, it's not a lipid. We are only Bay, brown, chestnut and black, and we generally have few or no white markings. Our numbers have that drastically declined and we lose more horses each year now than we begin to replace by breeding. The best estimate is that while there may be 1,100 horses, lipid horses in the USA, Canada, a couple in England and a few in New Zealand, and I think that estimate is high. There is at best guess less than 400 breedable mares ages 3 to 22 and fewer than that of stallions about 70 and probably many of those have been gelded or are sterile. And with the mares, for instance, you know, you don't know how many of those mares are not able to produce for one reason or another even if they're in the right age group. The Lipid Morgan is listed by Equus Survival Trust as critically endangered and the Lipid Morgan Horse Registry is an affiliate of the ALBC and we are trying to attain that status with them now. Now let's talk about this graph. Can you see that? Sort of. Okay. This is a listing of a graph of purebred lipid foals over a 15-year period. I started in 1998 and you can see the trend. In 1998 we had 128 foals. That was probably a hiatus year for us nationwide and in Canada. 1999 we had 93, 2000 we had 78, 2001 we had 82, 2002 we had 90, 2003 we had 109 and 2004 we had 76 foals, lipid foals. That was an average of 89 per year in that first seven years. The next seven years starting with 2005 we had 92, in 2006 we had 44, 2007, 60, 2008, 45, 2009, 41, 2010, 23, 2011, 32 and 2012, 30. That's an average of 39 foals per year. Now these numbers prior to 2008 were taken from the AMHA, American Morgan Horse Association Registry. We know those foals were registered and also a publication called the lipid report that lipid breeders put out every few years because we were small backyard breeders and we keep track. We know who's having foals. There's not that many of us. We know who each other is and we know how many foals there are. We know that we lose foals to not being registered and in 2011 of those 32 foals that we know were born, we know there were 32 foals, eight of them were not registered with AMHA. That's nearly a fourth of that number of foals. If they weren't registered by now as a yearling they're not going to get registered probably and I'll get to that in just a minute. So we assume and we're probably rightfully so that in the years past we lost at least the fourth of our horses to not being registered also because we have mature lipids now that are not registered and people are trying to jump through hoops to get them registered in DNA and they're from registered parents. We also know that some of those unregistered horses are second generation and their siren dam may still be living and they were registered but their siren dam weren't ever registered so we've lost a lot of horses over the year to not being registered. The lipid Morgan horse registry was formed approximately two years ago as a non-profit DNA based registry for purebred lipid morgans to protect and preserve this family of the true Morgan. So we know that we lose some through not being registered as we just talked about. AMHA charges $70 to belong to them annually and for that $70 membership fee you get the bargain price of $90 to register your foal with them before it's six months old. Six months to a year it's $125 to register it. After that it goes to $200 and then $400. Hard breeders cannot and will not be able to they can't pay that they just can't. The lipid Morgan horse registry has a flat fee for registering purebred lipids it's $45 that includes the DNA. We have no salaries to pay we have only a board of trustees that manages and oversees the integrity of the registry and the working of the registry. We have no members what we do have is we call friends of the registry there are no demands on friends of the registry we just like to be able to use their names on our website and that they support us you know verbally or out in public or at a horse event or whatever say hey have you heard about the lipid registry it's really a good thing. A couple of those that are friends of the registry do get our information and take it to shows that they go to or whatever but we don't have we don't really ask them to do that unless they just volunteer. We do our DNA testing through Texas A&M and we also provide any of the services that AMHA would provide such as transfer leases for just almost nothing. We also can provide farm prefixes so that no one else can use your prefix mine is ash royalty when I purchased it from AMHA about 15 years ago it was $100 and I believe it's close to $300 to purchase that's a lifetime farm registered farm prefix now the lipid Morgan horse registry has farm rate farm prefixes $25 we're trying to reach the backyard breeder and those who champion the purebred lipid to keep us going there are only a handful of lipids that actually compete in AMHA sanctioned shows I can think of about five in the US and Canada that do driving events or something like that you know or maybe dressage but we're not their type of horse and unless you want to compete in their trail rides or their competitive trail rides my personal opinion is it's a lot of money when you when you still have the when you're preserving the lipid Morgan through the lipid Morgan horse registry now I did register my cult this year in both only because he's going to be a stallion and I think that perhaps somewhere in his lifetime he may breed other Morgan mayors and put some type back into them and that's fine but we're very protective of our fillies and I can't think of a better way had he been a filly I would not have registered him with AMHA because I figure the people who want to buy our mayors to breed for color morgans or whatever else they want to breed they can absorb the cost if we decide to sell them outside the lipid world the purchaser can absorb the AMHA cost to register them AMHA I think it's a good way to protect our lipid mayors because we know they'll only be bred to lipid stallions that way but one of my favorite sayings is that you need to get your hands on the hair so please come pick up our handouts come see our horses and come get your hands on the hair