Scamper, the legendary barrel racing horse owned by rodeo star Charmayne James, now has a young twin thanks to cloning company ViaGen. ViaGen and James announced today (Nov. 15) that Scamper’s clone Clayton was born in Texas on August 8 of this year.

James says she named the foal after her childhood home town of Clayton, New Mexico, where she met Scamper. Though Scamper was considered unrideable, the adolescent James and her father admired the horse’s conformation, so her father bought him from a cowboy who worked on his feedlot.

James trained Scamper, and in 1984 at age 14 she rode him to win the World Championship in Barrel Racing. The pair went on to win the next nine World Championships, making James the all-time leading money earner in Barrel Racing, the first million-dollar cowgirl, and the holder of more world championships than any other woman in professional sports.

This year, James decided to clone the 29-year-old horse in order to continue to use his exceptional genetics in her breeding program. She hired ViaGen, the Austin, Texas-based world leader in animal cloning, to do the cloning work. A few months later Clayton was born at Paradise Farms in Boerne, Texas.

“The baby looks so much like Scamper, conformation-wise,” said James. “He’s so balanced, he’s got the same shoulder, the same bright eye.”

“We were honored but not surprised that Charmayne would seek to clone Scamper,” said ViaGen President Mark Walton. “Horse breeders increasingly recognize that cloning is an excellent tool for maximizing the value of their best genetics.”

Cloning produces a later-born identical twin, thereby preserving and multiplying the genetics of superior animals. Many horse breeders, who already use assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, view cloning as the next step in breeding