Breedism and Warmbloods

[NancyM]

I always find that “REAL” horsemen are not breed snobs. Fake horsemen, beginners and fools, and the mega rich, tend to be.

A good horse is a good horse, for a particular purpose. For h/j/event, we need gallop, rhythm, jumping ability, athleticism, sensitivity, soundness, courage, and a brain. There are a number of ways of getting this in an individual. There are also a number of ways of failing to get this, no matter how much you try, or how much you pay.

I am a TB person. They often suit me as a mount for sport pursuits. They may not suit everybody. Fortunately for me, they have been inexpensive to buy, as they are often on their second career, or not pursued by the mega rich. The warmbloods have been “selectively bred” for sport disciplines, and sometimes have had great success with the outcome. And sometimes not, no matter how much someone has invested into them. What concerns me about them is the unsoundness thing seen in these horses, and they haven’t even got the excuse that they raced, and may have previously been owned by someone who did not have their long term soundness as a goal. If they do not get a constant infusion of TB blood into the breeding program, the offspring start to get coarse, heavy. Selecting for “size” is never a good thing IMO, and personal opinions and egos get involved often with selection of breeding stock and breeding decisions, when RACING is not the determining factor in quality. RACING is the ultimate culling for soundness, not a “breed inspector”. The problem being encountered IMO, is that with the TBs being “not tried” in sport disciplines like they used to be, it is hard to know what TB families and lines should be included in sport breeding these days. Because quality in terms of athletic ability can be lost in a single generation. Unless the individuals of each generation are constantly and skillfully tried (like they used to be before the “warmblood invasion”), it is hard to know where the talent that we need for sport disciplines is these days. This is a pity, both for TBs, and for warmblood breeding programs.

The 1/4 draft, 3/4 light horse (mostly TB) are a great cross. Very similar to most warmbloods, and a good one is better than many selectively purpose bred animals. I’ve put few of them out there of my own, who are still dominating in this area in several disciplines. The “purpose sport bred” horses who have a royal pedigree are regularly defeated by these “unbranded” horses.

But if you are a rich person, and think that you get a better animal if you pay more, and their pedigree is well marketed, and “popular”, and your coach tells you that “to get a good horse, we will just have to go on tour to Europe”, you may not own one of these. You will, however, have to compete against them, much to your dismay LOL. And if you have paid a huge amount for the animal you are mounted on, and are defeated… well… somebody has some explainin’ to do.

In each breed, in each breeding program, there is a “normal curve of distribution” of talent. Though selective breeding, we try to shift that curve to the right of center. The meat quality horses are located on the tail end of the left side, and they are there in every breeding program, and every breed. But there are so many different aspects to the breeding of livestock that finding success and dependability in this are elusive. IMO.

[Draftygirl]

I once had to correct a veterinarian who wrote on a coggins that my mare is an “American Warmblood.” No, she’s a draft cross. Yes, she’s perfect, but that doesn’t make her a warmblood.

[toady123]

[QUOTE=Caol Ila;8199121]
As others have said, the modern warmblood is the result of selective breeding for hundreds of years, not throwing drafts and light horses together in the hope that it doesn’t end in a horribly fugly horse with a draft front end and TB back end.[/QUOTE]

I think this is the overall point that others are trying to make OP. Nobody is arguing the original lineage of ‘warmbloods’, however they have been selectively bred over many generations, based on standards, and demonstrated successes at the job they were bred to do.

In a discipline like hunters, where success is measured by an assessment of how an individual performs agains a set 'standard, obviously the horse that has been purposely bred for that role has the better chance of winning. That isn’t necessarily ‘breedism’. It’s simply rewarding the horse that does the job best.

I say this as someone who rides a bum high appendix quarter horse in the dressage ring. I fully realize it will be harder for us to achieve success - his is simply not built to do the job as well. Am I going to cry breedism?! No.

[offtracked]

I’d like to think breedism does not effect judging … how much of a concern do people have about that? Do some judges want to see the kind of movement that would only come from one general type of horse, without taking a horse’s conformation in to account?

[mvp]

[QUOTE=NancyM;8199270]
RACING is the ultimate culling for soundness, not a “breed inspector”. The problem being encountered IMO, is that with the TBs being “not tried” in sport disciplines like they used to be, it is hard to know what TB families and lines should be included in sport breeding these days. Because quality in terms of athletic ability can be lost in a single generation. Unless the individuals of each generation are constantly and skillfully tried (like they used to be before the “warmblood invasion”), it is hard to know where the talent that we need for sport disciplines is these days. This is a pity, both for TBs, and for warmblood breeding programs.[/QUOTE]

What you are asking for, in general terms, is performance testing. You, I and all students of selective breeding agree on this point. And to take it further, one should test for performance of the individual, prepotence (that is, the degree of heritability of the trait and that individual’s ability to “stamp” offspring with it), and, if I had my way, we’d performance test mares much more thoroughly and also put more thought into creating mare lines/mare families. But the focuses on female animals, performance testing and heritability testing are expensive, time-consuming propositions.

[mvp]

[QUOTE=toady123;8199282]
I think this is the overall point that others are trying to make OP. Nobody is arguing the original lineage of ‘warmbloods’, however they have been selectively bred over many generations, based on standards, and demonstrated successes at the job they were bred to do.

In a discipline like hunters, where success is measured by an assessment of how an individual performs agains a set 'standard, obviously the horse that has been purposely bred for that role has the better chance of winning. That isn’t necessarily ‘breedism’. It’s simply rewarding the horse that does the job best.

I say this as someone who rides a bum high appendix quarter horse in the dressage ring. I fully realize it will be harder for us to achieve success - his is simply not built to do the job as well. Am I going to cry breedism?! No.[/QUOTE]

Also-- and for the purposes of clarity-- if one had a fabulous-moving, uphill Appendix horse, he’d have the same chances of doing the dressage job easily as a similarly-built horse with different genetics. And if one bred Appendix horses (the American answer to the WB before the WB invasion), for the traits one wants in the modern dressage ring or USEF hunter ring, that breed or registry of horses would win there, too.

The only reason to be a breed-, registry- or even “type” snob is to increase one’s chances of buying a horse with the traits you want and you can’t yet see them because he’s young or unfit or trained badly as yet. And the reason to care about breeds-- closed studbooks with known parentage-- is to increase genetic consistence. In other words, if you liked an individual animal and wanted to produce more like him, you need a way to see just how predictable his genetics are. The F1 horse just won’t give you that.

[grayci]

Back a bit over a decade ago, F1 draft crosses were HUGELY popular in the lower-but-still-graded shows around my area. There was one in particular whom everyone just LOVED - an 18-hand behemoth who more resembled a full draft (Clydesdale) than the more-than-half TB he was. He basically had his own fanclub. He did both Hunter and Jumper and wasn’t often in the blues (bit too slow in jumpers and too heavy for the hunters), but always placed, and well.

No idea if that’s still the case as I’ve not been to anything but my boarding barn’s l’il schooling shows (currently more OTTSTB’s, TB’s, and SB’s at those than anything) in several years, but my horse (a draft-cross) does have her own fanclub and one of the stereotypical ‘spoiled rich girls’ there was looking to buy a $10k+ horse because he looked like my horse (whom… well, let’s just say I paid more for her saddle than her, but wouldn’t sell her even for $10k!)

There’s just something about draft X’s that just seems so appealing. She’s exactly the type I’ve always been looking for, and seems to be sought out in higher-level amateurs. Maybe it’s that they often end up similar to what’s known as ‘Cobs’ in the UK… nice, heavy but not SO tall all-arounders?

(not sure if mine would really be considered a WB or not. She’s draft x morgan… so really no ‘hot’ blood to speak of, unless morgans are considered hot?)

[raff]

It’s just as true as saying Rose is just red and white wine mixed together.

[Bombproof]

@Scaramouch;8199162

How is it “breedist” to suggest that the descendants of Olympic/top level competitors are likely to outperform the offspring of a (typically) failed racehorse and a heavy draft?

I think the point of the article was that the writer feels people look down upon the draft cross as something less than the Warmblood even when it performs equally well. I don’t know if it’s as common as the writer thinks it is, but I have definitely seen it. That’s the attitude I referred to as silly. I agree that probability is more in your favor if your horse is from a bloodline which was bred for that purpose for generations, but once you go into the ring, that’s all out the window. When my leg goes over the horse, all I care about is how well this horse performs the task at hand and quite frankly, I think any other attitude is counter-productive. It creates divisions among people who should be banding together to promote their sport.

[Bombproof]

[QUOTE=mvp;8199365]
And if one bred Appendix horses (the American answer to the WB before the WB invasion), for the traits one wants in the modern dressage ring or USEF hunter ring, that breed or registry of horses would win there, too.[/QUOTE]
The development of the American Quarter Horse mirrored the development of the European Warmblood breeds and for the same reason – to fill a specific niche which existing horses couldn’t fill very well. In fact, IMO the modern QH meets the definition of a warmblood (lower case “w”); i.e., a “colder” type of horse (feral horses and a variety of working horses) bred to a “hotter” type of horse (sprinting Thoroughbreds and a dash of Arabian and who-knows-what) and refined over multiple generations to get a horse for the job. In recent generations the working and racing bloodlines have diverged somewhat, but there is still a lot of crossover in performance.

@mvp;8199365

And the reason to care about breeds-- closed studbooks with known parentage-- is to increase genetic consistence. In other words, if you liked an individual animal and wanted to produce more like him, you need a way to see just how predictable his genetics are. The F1 horse just won’t give you that.

Correct. The problem with an F1 horse is that you won’t know for years what you have. That’s true to some extent with all horses, but it’s less of a gamble with a horse of a known pedigree. You can reduce the risk somewhat by breeding two horses of known pedigree to get your cross, however. In Alaska, most of the hunting guides use horses which are Percheron x QH and they can say with a high degree of certainty that Percheron A x QH B will give them a horse with the characteristics they want but Percheron X and QH Y not so much even though all four are good examples of their breeds. Genetics is complicated stuff.

[mvp]

[QUOTE=Bombproof;8199445]
The problem with an F1 horse is that you won’t know for years what you have. That’s true to some extent with all horses, but it’s less of a gamble with a horse of a known pedigree. You can reduce the risk somewhat by breeding two horses of known pedigree to get your cross, however. In Alaska, most of the hunting guides use horses which are Percheron x QH and they can say with a high degree of certainty that Percheron A x QH B will give them a horse with the characteristics they want but Percheron X and QH Y not so much even though all four are good examples of their breeds. Genetics is complicated stuff.[/QUOTE]

Nice to speak with someone who understands selective breeding as it relates not only to phenotype but to stabilizing prepotency.

To continue for educational purposes. Were those QHs and Percherons in to be crossed very stable, very in-bred animals, the F1 cross between them would be reliable. That’s because there’s little genetic variation in each of the parental breeds. Were the Percherons and QHs each a genetically-variable breed, then the F1 cross would be hard to predict. In some individual offspring, you might get the phenotypic traits you saw in the sire and dam. And in others, you’d see a “mix-n-match” of characters you didn’t expect.

All this relates to the article’s underlying misunderstanding of an F1 cross vs. a WB produced by selective breeding (with some unity of purpose and over time) because of the amount of genetic variability in each of the parents’ breeds. So an additional question that the article’s author would have to know before touting a draft/TB cross as equivalent to a WB is “How much genetic variability is within the TB and draft breed?” That would allow her to say with authority (or BS) that all of those F1 draft crosses she likes so much will be similar.

[Manni01]

By the way a very good example for a very young breed is the German Riding Pony. About 30 years ago it was practically non existent. At that time there was a huge demand for performance ponies and the breeders did not have sufficient breeding stock. So they used what they had…
I know this because I do have probably one of the last products of that time When I got her I thought she was a pasture accident. Her mother was a mixture of Arabian and Duelmener Wildhorse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSeJ-UF4zaU and her father was an English Riding pony.
But I did some research and was told that at that time that was quite common. There were not enough English Riding Ponies in Germany and so they acquired some very good studs (my mares father was very famous at that time) and used them on whatever they had on mares… And my pony is Westphalian thats where the Duelmener Wildhorses live. Obviously they crossed them with Arabians to get something more flashy. The mother of my pony produced approved Stallions and States premium mares (Just think she was Wildhorse-Arabian)… My pony was bred by one of the most influential pony breeders at that time. Unfortunately he died in the year she was born. So she was sold as a foal. But I wanted to say, this type of mares was the foundation of the German Riding Pony. It just took very few Generations to create this new breed which is now famous for its performance… But there were a lot of skilled people doing this. Creating a breed required skills and knowledge…

[Bombproof]

[QUOTE=mvp;8199453]
So an additional question that the article’s author would have to know before touting a draft/TB cross as equivalent to a WB is “How much genetic variability is within the TB and draft breed?” That would allow her to say with authority (or BS) that all of those F1 draft crosses she likes so much will be similar.[/QUOTE]
Unless I misunderstand, though, her point was that the WB people look down their noses at draft crosses even when they are competing successfully. I have no doubt that a higher percentage of WBs than draft crosses will be successful dressage or H/J horses, but when a horse has proven his ability his parentage becomes irrelevant. The best argument against breedism is a blue ribbon.

[Bombproof]

Also, I think many of the F1 crosses are fairly predictable. I’ve seen a number of Percheron x Arabian horses and they are relatively uniform in their characteristics. It’s in the F2 generation where the genetic variability becomes problematic. If you breed an F1 horse to a purebred, you may still have a reasonably good chance of getting what you want, but if you breed an F1 horse to another F1 horse or to a horse of uncertain genetics, it’s a total crapshoot.

[Alagirl]

[QUOTE=Manni01;8199457]
By the way a very good example for a very young breed is the German Riding Pony. About 30 years ago it was practically non existent. At that time there was a huge demand for performance ponies and the breeders did not have sufficient breeding stock. So they used what they had…
I know this because I do have probably one of the last products of that time When I got her I thought she was a pasture accident. Her mother was a mixture of Arabian and Duelmener Wildhorse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSeJ-UF4zaU and her father was an English Riding pony.
But I did some research and was told that at that time that was quite common. There were not enough English Riding Ponies in Germany and so they acquired some very good studs (my mares father was very famous at that time) and used them on whatever they had on mares… And my pony is Westphalian thats where the Duelmener Wildhorses live. Obviously they crossed them with Arabians to get something more flashy. The mother of my pony produced approved Stallions and States premium mares (Just think she was Wildhorse-Arabian)… My pony was bred by one of the most influential pony breeders at that time. Unfortunately he died in the year she was born. So she was sold as a foal. But I wanted to say, this type of mares was the foundation of the German Riding Pony. It just took very few Generations to create this new breed which is now famous for its performance… But there were a lot of skilled people doing this. Creating a breed required skills and knowledge…[/QUOTE]

The German riding pony is older than 30 years. But not unlike warmbloods, their job desription changed, the breed goal followed.

[Manni01]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Riding_Pony#History

My pony was born in 1994 and her mother was 20 at that time…

[Foxtrot_s]

I remember back in the day (my day, that is) warmbloods were hardly known out here. They were often coarser, showed the link back to their utility days of pulling, with camped out hind ends, and often colouring that would give a hint of their ancestry. They were labelled as ‘dumb bloods’ and the TB people abhorred them.

Through the process of selective breeding, breeders have spent much effort on improving the interior qualities, the gaits for the specialised job they have to do as sporthorses and their inspections are designed along the lines of improving the abilities…hence Totilas, Hickstead etc.

The Dutch Warmblood breed is an example of how far they have come in a very short time, not hundreds of years.

[CHT]

Back when I was a kid, a few of the local trainers did quite well with clyde x TB crosses in up to the small open jumpers. On paper, these horses would look great, but the definitely took more work to get fit and to convince to jump clear and quick! Yes, they could beat the purpose bred horses from time to time, and were very nice horses, but it wasn’t hard to understand why they wouldn’t command the same prices.

(and just because hot+cold = warm in terminology doesn’t mean a draft+tb is a warmblood…any more than a quarter horse is a only a quarter of a horse…warmblood is a term that has evolved to have a more specific meaning!)

[mvp]

[QUOTE=Bombproof;8199466]
Unless I misunderstand, though, her point was that the WB people look down their noses at draft crosses even when they are competing successfully. I have no doubt that a higher percentage of WBs than draft crosses will be successful dressage or H/J horses, but when a horse has proven his ability his parentage becomes irrelevant. The best argument against breedism is a blue ribbon.[/QUOTE]

For that one individual already performing, yes, parentage doesn’t matter. That’s because you know the phenotype you have and you/the judges like it.

But dig any deeper and you can see why people would be “breedists.” If you are buying a very young horse, or one to breed, or one with some bad condition or training, you are buying some of the latent properties of the animal. And there, it might help to know about what its parents did.

In other words, there is a time and a place to be fussy about heritage. And to be “breedist” really means “to favor the practices and standards that went into making this individual animal.” So, for example, I’m not an AQHA breedist insofar as I don’t agree with some of the practices of that registry (e. g. how HYPP was handled).

[HenryisBlaisin]

Kind of an aside, but what I don’t get is people trying to call these crosses something they aren’t. Instead of making up a “registry” that’s basically meaningless without a breed standard and inspection process, why not just call them what they are? If your horse is a draft cross, that’s what it is. Same goes for your dog-unless it’s an actual breed with a written standard, no matter what cross it is, it’s a mutt, not a Whateveradoodle. Nothing more, nothing less.

You can have a great crossbreed horse. My grade QH/some other stuff has done quite well for himself in the show ring. My mutt is an awesome, well-trained dog.

If you want to breed, of course, hopefully it’s being done responsibly, for a specific purpose It’s all well and good to purpose breed a dog or a horse for a certain characteristic. Just don’t call it something it’s not.