36 The Times Magazineo the casual motorist driving down
the long, flat country road outside
Gainesville, an hour north of
Dallas, Blake Russell’s 80-acre
horse farm looks like any other in
the area. The wide, green pastures
are dotted with hay racks and
bored-looking mares flicking away
flies with their silken tails. A steel
ranch sign, depicting a man, a
woman and two horses crowded around a
cross, hangs over a narrow driveway that
winds up a hill to a cosy limestone house.
But a particularly observant traveller might
take note of the unusually wide variety of
breeds represented in the fields. There are
compact, reliable American quarter horses,
renowned for their speed over short distances,
a Friesian with the glossy black mane of
a shampoo model, draft horses the size of
Airstream trailers, and a Dutch warmblood
with long legs and the haughty, regal
demeanour of minor European nobility.
One might wonder how a veritable United
Nations of the equine world ended up here.
And maybe, if the motorist has an
especially keen eye for such things, she will
remark upon how similar those two sorrel
fillies look or how that chubby blue roan bears
an uncanny resemblance to a famous cutting
horse, bred for herding livestock. But even
then, she probably won’t guess what’s going
on here. You don’t generally assume you’re
looking at clones, after all.
This is no regular horse farm, and Blake
Russell is no regular horse farmer. Russell
is the president of ViaGen Pets & Equine,
a prolific commercial animal cloning facility.
The company primarily clones cats, dogs and
horses, though it has also cloned pigs, cows
and sheep. More recently, ViaGen started
applying its technology to conservation efforts,
cloning an endangered Przewalski’s horse,
Kurt, for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance,
and an endangered black-footed ferret for the
US Fish and Wildlife Service.
You name it, ViaGen can clone it for
you – just as long as “it” is a nonprimate
mammal and “you” are someone with tens
of thousands of dollars to spare. Replicating
your beloved Pomeranian will set you back
$50,000 (£38,000); cloning a horse costs
$85,000. Cats are a steal at $35,000. (The
cat side of the business hasn’t taken off the
way the other two have. Russell’s not sure
why but offers, “Cat people and dog people
are very different.”)
These prices are prohibitively expensive
for most, and questions remain about the
ethics and implications of commercial cloning,
but the practice is increasingly popular.
ViaGen is one of just a couple of companies
around the world that provide the service:
to ranchers hoping to strengthen their stock,to equestrian athletes looking to replicate
dependable steeds, and to wealthy pet
owners who want to enjoy Russell’s copy of
their beloved animal companions.
ViaGen’s headquarters are just north of
Austin, but ever since Russell bought his farm,
in 2018, he’s started bringing more of his work
home with him, so to speak. He cares for some
of the company’s pregnant surrogates and their
clone babies here in his personal stables with
the help of visiting ViaGen employees, farm
staff and his family. On the day I visit, Russell
guesses that there are about 150 ViaGen
horses on the property or on nearby tracts he
uses – pregnant surrogate mares, soon-to-be-
pregnant mares and postpartum mares that
are raising their newborn clones until they are
old enough to be sent off to their new homes.
Most of the farm’s operations are related to
ViaGen, but Russell also has 20 horses of his
own, including two clones. One, Royal Blue
Boon Too, is a 17-year-old blue roan quarter
horse mare derived from a revered cutting
horse. This current iteration of Boon is a “tick
too fat for her age”, Russell admits. “But we just
love her so much, we can’t tell her no.” Russell
is similarly indulgent with his second clone,
Pure Tailor Fit, whom I saw from a distance
at first and then, suddenly, right up close.
Fit, as Russell and his family call him, is
a 15-year-old stallion copied from the late
gelding Tailor Fit, the two-time world champion
racing quarter horse. He’s a muscular, stocky
bay who maintains his physique by spending
long hours trotting back and forth in the
paddock, trying to impress the mares in thefield across the way. Fit dashes to the edge of
his enclosure to meet us. Alarmingly he makes
his approach butt-first, his huge, glossy rump
speeding towards our faces, like a great
mahogany moon blotting out the sky.
Though admittedly no equestrian, I know
that when a horse aims its back end at you,
it’s usually bad news. I calculate that despite
the sturdy wire fence between us, a swift,
strong kick of Fit’s rear leg could, depending
on the angle of propulsion, easily pulverise my
kneecap. Russell, standing next to me, seems
unfazed, so I hold still, trying to look as blasé
as one possibly can when every muscle is fully
braced for impact.
When Fit’s rear is pressed against the
fence, I scan him for any signs that he is
getting ready to two-step along my skeleton.
He appears to be relaxed, though, as does
Russell, who reaches out and scratches
the base of the stallion’s tail. As he does,
he looks at me apologetically. This isn’t a
clone thing, he explains.
“When he was a baby, we rubbed his butt
all the time,” he says. “I’m a horse person;
I knew better. But I would sit in a chair in his
pen when he was a baby, and he would back
in and I would rub his tail head right here,
and then he’d want to sit in my lap. That’s
a terrible thing to teach a horse that’s gonna
get to 1,200lb. But he loved it so much, I just
couldn’t stop. So nowadays he’ll see me and
he’ll say, ‘Hey, come rub my butt.’ ”
I reach out and rub Fit’s butt. The stallion
leans into the fence, his ears twitching happily.
“President of an animal cloning company”T
Rosita, cloned to order
by ViaGen for her owners
in Europe. Right: Russell
checks cryopreserved horse
embryos; with cloned mare
Royal Blue Boon TooJUSTIN CLEMONS, GETTY IMAGES