At the end of the Second World War, a great number contraction of the race, due to endless mechanization of the different productive sectors, put in evidence worrying problems of blood relation, up to the introduction of Ragusa’s subjects was necessary, compared of the strong percentages of the Martina Franca blood present in them.The results of that crossing were, unfortunately, lower than the expectations. The products suffered, in deed, of an insufficient height and of a faded cover.
During the half of the Fifties, a number of breeders bought catalonian donkeys considering them, after that of Ragusa, the most genetically suitable to the Martina Franca breed. In the 1958 the Agriculture and Wood ministry named a commission with the task of find in Spain excellent catalonian producers. The “Basile mission” (from the name of one of that commission honourable members) had not a positive outcome, as in Catalogna, very suitable elements for the improvement of the Martina Franca donkeys were not located.
In the 1970, considering that the recourse to improving subjects was without success, two catalonian stallions, Nino and Nitroso were bought and put in reproduction. A further quantitative reduction of the breed was determined, from the beginning of the Eights by the progressive exploitation by the alpine brigade, of the transport by pack animal battery, for which strong mules of Martina were used as carriers.
Donkey stallions “by head” of the Martina Franca Breed, exhibited during the XXV edition of Fiera del Levante
(Picture by the Pastore Family private archives)
Recently, the study of the donkey breed of Martina Franca has pointed out a bitter surprise, because the family of the stallion donkey of Martina Franca, born in the 1924 from Galeone and Rose, resulted extinct during the Seventies, when the last stallions sons of Levantino (from Dorico) were bought.
Since some years the Donkey Breed of Martina Franca has been identified as one of the breeds risking the extinction and because of this is subject to a particular defence by the Puglia region.
To avoid the extinction of the inestimable genetic patrimony of the last examples of this donkey bred, the Puglia region, supported by the regional Martina Franca donkey and Murge horse breed Association, created in the 1985 - in the eighteen-century Regional Farm Russoli, in Martina franca and Crispiano territory - the “Genetic preservation of the Martina franca donkey centre”, a real ecological oasis to preserve such richness belonging to the Puglia region and administered by the Martina franca’s regional State Demesne Forests Management office. These breeds are subject of a technical-selective of the Foggia’s Horse Increase Institute.
During the last years of the XX century, a veterinary medicine equipe of research workers allow an experiment about the application of the reproduction biotechnologies (gametes cryoconservation) to the Martina franca donkeys.
In December 1999 the first results of this experiment permuted the born in Gattia, in the zoo-prophylactic institute, of the two donkey colts Pericle and Perla. The two examples have been conceived thanks to the instrumental insemination using frozen seminal material. They are the sons of Giada and Ermengarda, mares of nine and seven years old, while the seminal freezed material has been obtained by Talete, stallon of seventeen years old.
The birth of Pericle and Perla was possible thanks to the collaboration of the Teramo’s Veterinary Medicine University Physiology section, of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Clinic of the Sassari’s veterinary Medicine, of the Abruzzo and Molise zoo-prophylactic Institute and of the Martina franca Donkey and Murgia Horse Breeders Regional Association which place mares and stallion at our disposition.
Text by Fabio Silvestre
A Thanks to Maria Luisa Tamma for the translation cooperation
C.d.M.it
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