Winged Beasts, a squandered resource?

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

most of that, as I said was predicated on a situation where Sauron did, though pre planning have hundreds or thousands of winged beasts at his disposal (i.e. he had though ahead and spend a good potion of his time in effor in his "hidden years" breeding winged beasts and incresing thier numbers.

But that's the problem, Alfirin: there's absolutely no reason to think that was the case... in fact all we are told of the beasties points the other way:

A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. And the Dark Lord took it, and nursed it with fell meats, until it grew beyond the measure of all other things that fly; and he gave it to his servant to be his steed.

–RotK, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

So–

1. The winged beasts are very rare– in fact they're now extinct in the wild.
2. The Ringwraiths' mounts seem to be the first generation to be domesticated.
3. They probably all come from a single clutch/litter/whatever you call a family of adorwable widdle cuddly baby winged beasties.

So– why didn't Sauron use "hundreds or thousands" of winged beasts? He didn't have them. It's that simple.

A more interesting question is: why didn't he start his breeding program earlier, so that he would have hundreds by the time of the War?

Well, the passage suggests these things are "living fossils", something that had supposedly vanished long ago. If we assume that even the Dark Lord didn't know of them– or at least didn't realise they were still around– they must have been a chance discovery (by some evil minion, I suppose).

By the way– I hope I'm not being rude, but would you mind breaking up your paragraphs? They're hard to read.