Breeds v. Registries (Genetics v. Paperwork)

[Lord_Helpus]

I am still confused as to the corrrect nomenclature for identifying WB’s. I have a horse who is by a Holsteiner stallion (whose breeding is Holsteiner for at least 4 generations) and o/o a Holsteiner mare (breeding is also 80% Holsteiner, with a TB thrown in).

Yet, he was presented at a RPSI inspection.

When asked, I have been saying that he is a Holsteiner, but is registered RPSI.

Someone told me that this is not correct. That he IS RPSI, because he went to a RPSI inspection. Yet he is a “C” horse by a “C” stallion. So I guess, he is named according to Hols. naming rules…

If a sire is approved by different registries (e.g. Old, Bel. SF, KWPN), does the mare’s “breed” or “registry” control the registry of the foal?

And which ones are “breeds” (by genetics – e.g. Hannoverian, Holst.) v. registries (by location (Old.) or by inspection (RPSI)?

With different naming rules, is there a way to easily tell the breed/registry of a horse? I am assuming that a name ending in “du rouet” or “du Muze” is a SF. And that a name ending in “Van…” is Dutch (?). But is that always true? Some of these names nowadays are very confusing.

Do some people (many/most people) decide on which registry because of the convenience of an inspection site? What are the “rules” for presenting a horse to one registry v. another? IF (purely hypothetically ) I have a SF/Holsteiner foal, am I limited to those registries (plus RPSI since they will take any WB foal of verified parentage)?

Without joining each breed assoc/registry, how does one find a list of inspection sites/dates? I looked, but most of that information seems to be available for members only.

I want to go to as many inspections as I can so I can learn which type of foal is prized by which breed. But with all this cross pollination I wonder if there are breed standards anymore.

I realize that I am asking a ton of questions – thanks for wading through them.

PS: I did do a search, but could not find answers to most these questions.

[ahf]

I’ll tackle the first one.

Naming conventions:
Trakehners name their foals using the first letter of the dam’s name.
Dutch assign a letter for each birth year… for 2015 that letter is “K”, so all foals born this year will be named with the first letter as “K”.
Oldenburg… colts follow the first letter of the sire, but give you an option for fillies. The filly name may begin with the first letter of the dam
Most of the other warmblood registries (I don’t know about Selle Francais) the foals are named beginning with the first letter of the sire.

So, both Holstein and RPSI registered foals begin with the sires first letter.

Do not assume that du roet, or Muze belong to a specific registry. As you know, stallions can be approved with multiple registries, and breeders may be using that suffix to denote the sire line, but it may be a different registry. For example, Balou du Rouet is an Oldenburg stallion (sired by Baloubet du Rouet) that is approved Hanoverian. A Hanoverian breeder may use him, and will need to name the foal starting with “B”. They could easily name the foal BonBon du Rouet, so that people get an immediate connection to Baloubet sireline.

[siegi_b]

I’m not even going to attempt to answer all of your questions because that would be equivalent to writing a book… But… here are some answers -

The only warmblood that is considered a breed is the Trakehner - all others are “regional” registries, i.e. Hannover, Holstein, Oldenburg in Germany, as well as Dutch, Danish and Swedish warmbloods. The reason for that is that Trakehners are only allowed to be bred to Trakehners as well as certain approved Arabians in order to get full registration papers. All other warmblood registries regularly use stallions from other registries for their mares and still get full registration. The above presumes that the stallions used have full approval of their registry…

The mare typically dictates the registry for her foal.

Naming conventions vary from registry to registry… some use the first letter of the dam’s name, some the sire. The Dutch go through the alphabet, i. e. 2015 foal names start with the letter “K” and next year it will be L".

All registries have websites that will have information about inspections… do a little research!

RPSI is an organization that hardly exists in Germany but apparently does a reasonable business in the US mainly because their requirements for registration as well as stallion approval are less stringent than those of the other registries.

Hope that answered some of your questions…

[ahf]

I’m going to expand on Seigi’s response, some of it is duplication…

breeds vs. registries

Traks are a closed book - allowing only TB stallions to be presnted for outside approval (and maybe Anglo-arabs - I’m not sure). If you buy a Trak, it will have Trak blood.

Holstein is semi-closed, in that they allow very few outside stallions or mares to be accepted as breeding stock.

Hanoverian used to be semi-closed, in that to get a Hanoverian foal and using an “outside” sire like Oldenburg, the mare had to be branded Hanoverian or the sire had to have x amount of Hanoverian blood. The Verband deep-sixed this in 2013. Now you could use a TB mare that is approved Hanoverian, and breed her to an approved Oldenburg stallion and get a registered Hanoverian foal. I would now classify them as “semi-open”. stallions and mares from other registries still need to be presented for breeding approval, and they don’t always get it.

The Dutch have been very inclusive… examining and taking the very best of other registries stallions and allowing breeders to use them.

Oldenburg is very open (sometimes experimental), and that has been a long-held tenent of their breeding directors.

The rest vary. Some, like the Rhennish registry (which is Rheinlander - NOT TO BE CONFUSED with RPSI) allow any stallion approved by the mainsteram registries to be used without being presented.

Note that RPSI is essentially an American registry. your papers come from Germany, along with the inspectors, but the registry is essentially defunct in it’s home country.

I really couldn’t tell you how the US registries work.

[ahf]

Inspection dates…

I don’t know of any registry that only has inspection dates available to the member. What you may be seeing is that inspection dates are not up yet. It takes incredible effort and time to nail down inspection sites and then plan the inspection tour around them. No matter what registry.

[ahf]

I just got messaged from a breeder that no longer posts on CoTH, but apparently still reads it.

She says “du Rouet signifies the farm that he is from . Baloubet du Rouet means he is from Grand Rouet…the name of the farm he was bred - it literally means of Rouet.”

To which I replied… I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen horses coming through the Hanoverian auctions in Germany with “du Rouet” in the name. Which means someone is not paying attention to that naming convention. I will look up the auction names later today. But at least you have the original intent.

(I will be the first to admit my SF knowledge is incomplete. )

[andy.smaga]

SF will use alphabet and foals born in 2015 will have a name starting with a “F”.

Today we see a tendency of all registries to become more open and by looking at sire and dam is not sufficient to know what is the registry they belong to.

As said above only Trak, TB, arab and anglo-arab can be considered a closed book, we se the French AA opening more and more their book.

[andy.smaga]

[QUOTE=ahf;8088771]
I just got messaged from a breeder that no longer posts on CoTH, but apparently still reads it.

She says “du Rouet signifies the farm that he is from . Baloubet du Rouet means he is from Grand Rouet…the name of the farm he was bred - it literally means of Rouet.”

To which I replied… I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen horses coming through the Hanoverian auctions in Germany with “du Rouet” in the name. Which means someone is not paying attention to that naming convention. I will look up the auction names later today. But at least you have the original intent.

(I will be the first to admit my SF knowledge is incomplete. )[/QUOTE]

This is used in the SF registry so “Du Rouet” is used only by the Fardin family who live in the farm Du Grand Rouet, the name is kind of copyrighted.
But other registry are not following this fair system who give exclusivity to a name to a breeder, then you see some horses with the affix “Rouge” not bred by the Lerrede family or “d’Elle” not bred by the Pignolet family.
This is why you saw horses in Germany with “Du Rouet” in their name the most famous is “Balou du Rouet” who has not been bred by the Fardin family.

[ahf]

Thank you Andy! You are the “go-to” man for all things SF.

[stoicfish]

When asked, I have been saying that he is a Holsteiner, but is registered RPSI.

Change your answer to “Holsteiner breeding” but registered RPSI, then it is an accurate answer.

Just to add, Wb’s use the registry system but that doesn’t make it a genetic free for all, regardless of how the NA versions have done business in the past.
Not knocking them as in the beginning, in NA, they needed to have rules that allowed for the native mare base and to get people interested in WB’s and support the stallions that were imported.

However, this is not the paradigm that created the WB.

Now when you are looking at a Wb horse, you need to look at the pedigree to know what the deal is. But that is not unlike any horse, not all Qh’s are created equal and they have racing, cutting, ranch, halter disaplines that are almost like different breeds in their types and purposes.
I get annoyed when people say Wb’s are a mutt, or they assume any mare (or stallion) should get approved for breeding because it is a registry and not a breed.
In Canada, it was proven to the Canadian gov that Wb’s from the major registries are in fact a breed as a whole. It took an incredible amount of work to go back and define the founding horses, which is what you do to define any breed. The rules of those definitions are under the Pedigree Act and serve to define any breed in Canada, including livestock, dogs and such.

[zipperfoot]

[QUOTE=stoicfish;8088935]
Now when you are looking at a Wb horse, you need to look at the pedigree to know what the deal is. But that is not unlike any horse, not all Qh’s are created equal and they have racing, cutting, ranch, halter disaplines that are almost like different breeds in their types and purposes. [/QUOTE]

Agree that QHs have a wide variety of types (for better or worse), but QH breeders have accomplished this using only QHs and TBs–quite a bit different from WB breeding programs, which have used many different breeds/types.

[ahf]

[QUOTE=zipperfoot;8088965]
Agree that QHs have a wide variety of types (for better or worse), but QH breeders have accomplished this using only QHs and TBs–quite a bit different from WB breeding programs, which have used many different breeds/types.[/QUOTE]

I truly don’t understand your point.

[stoicfish]

[QUOTE=zipperfoot;8088965]
Agree that QHs have a wide variety of types (for better or worse), but QH breeders have accomplished this using only QHs and TBs–quite a bit different from WB breeding programs, which have used many different breeds/types.[/QUOTE]

That isn’t entire true either. It wasn’t till 1940 that the “breed” was established with registration. And the breed was formed using local mares and an assortment of horses in the US including Arabs, Morgans, Canadian(breed), STB, local mares.
Now they only allow Tb’s but that wasn’t how they rolled before 1940.

And while this is partly true of many breeds, the QH allows registration of any horse of two parents. They trusted people in remote locations to be honest about the parents. But I know that was not always the case and many horses were registered that were not full QH. That is true with any breed but the QH was not as uniform and regulated as many breeds that have a very distinct type and an established breeding culture.
The Qh is often referred to as a warmblood, ironically.

Traks est. 1732
Hanoverian est. 1735
Holsteiner est 1891

As stated, Wb’s did not traditionally use many breeds. That is a NA version.

[vineyridge]

All I can add to this is that the French and Belgians have a naming convention of adding the breeder/farm name to the name of the foal. So if you have a very long name with vd (van de/von der) or one of the French de forms it’s probably either BWP, sBs, or SF. AFAIK, none of the other breeding countries use that convention, and the Germans seem to think that they can use the breeder name in their German foals if the sire is SF or Belgian with the breeder as part of their registered name. And I’ve seen horses sold to Belgium that add the new Farm name to the “birth” name.

[acottongim]

To clarify on the Trakehner thing - Trakehners are a closed book. We allow only approved Arab, Anglo Arab, and TB blood into the breed (and typically they are judged harder and stricter than the purebred mares/stallions as they are being let into the books to improve the breed and allow for outcrossing).

[ThistleDewDressage]

As far as registering a foal for another registry you would have to present that mare to the registry that you would want to have the foal registered with. The mare must be approved and then you must breed to a stallion approved for breeding in the said registry. Some things are tricky. My mare is Hanoverian, she is registered and approved Hanoverian, when I was stallion shopping I made a ton of phone calls, Pretty much all the registries will allow me to breed her to an approved stallion of their registry and register the offspring even without presenting her in person to that registry. This is something that is apparently is one way, you cannot take an Oldenburg mare and breed her to a Hanoverian stallion and register the offspring Hanoverian without her being presented and approved by the AHS so that was news to me, I thought I would have to present her to multiple registries if I wanted to breed outside of the Hanoverian registry. The result of this is that I bred to a Hanoverian stallion approved by ALL the other WB registries (except Trak) and the offspring could be registered to ANY of the registries. I will choose to register the foal Hanoverian, but it was interesting that there were more options than I thought.

There are other threads about which registries are more respected, have more inspections, are “easier”, cheaper, etc so I won’t go there. Since each registry has different requirements as to approvals, bloodlines, etc, I would suggest picking up the phone and calling each of them (take notes) they are usually very helpful and honestly if they aren’t it may tell you you do not want to be involved in that registry.

[sid]

What I have always done, when I advertised my stallions, was state the “breed”, that is the registry from whence they came. Both Boleem and Argosy were imported. Boleem was Dutch bred, Argosy was Hanoverian bred.

Then I state which WB registry where they have a license or lifetime approval.

Boleem was injured in his 100 DT in Holland, but was later approved here by the GOV for his scores as GP long-listed dressage competitor at age 13. Argosy was injured just before his presentation to the AHS here, but was licensed GOV about 8 weeks later that year at age 3 1/2. Boleem was approved by the RPSI as so many mare owner like that registry because they are very mare-owner friendly and educational.

The only reason I do this is to help breeders out of their confusion. Then they can decide which way to go with their offspring. The only confusion that comes up is STILL about the Old/NA vs. the GOV…but I won’t go there. :eek:

But at the end of the day, the registering of the foal follows the mares’ WB registry approval. I think that confuses many people.

Re the RPSI being an American registry. That is not the case. They must still follow the same approval standards of all the other German registries. Maybe that’s changed, but I don’t think so.

[Kyzteke]

As other posters have noted, of the WB “breeds” only Trakes can truly be considered anything close to a “purebred”, but even they have a semi-open studbook.

As a buyer, the US person needs to educate themselves to the WB system. Some time I ago I queried COTHers as to whether they choose the registry or the genetics. I was surprised to find that the vast majority choose the registry…but then, this is primarily a breeder’s forum.

All my base stock is Hanoverian. Both my foundation broodmares are registered AND approved Hanoverian. Their lines are as deeply rooted in Hanoverian genetics as can be possible

I have chosen stallions who are not only approved AHS (and in Germany), but also genetically Hanoverian…at least part.

But let’s look at two examples:
#1) Mare: by Weltmeyer o/o Batido (Bolero) + Stallion: by Sandro Hit o/o Escudo mare. Stallion was approve by testing in Germany (Hanoverian), because Sandro Hit (an Oldenburg by registration/birth) is approved by just about every major WB registry excepting Holstein & Trakes.

#2) Mare: by Rubino Bellisimo (Rubinstein (Wesphalian) x Bolero) o/o Batido mare + Stallion: by Sandro Hit o/o Contender (Holsteiner).

Both mares were registered Hanoverian here in America because their dam was registered AND approved AHS & so were their sires…

Both mares went on to be APPROVED by AHS as well as RPSI. The last few years I’veI choosen to register thsee foals RPSI however because their inspection comes at the right time & is very close to my house.

So in terms of BOTH genetics AND approval status there is absolutely ZERO difference in the quality of these foals because they were registered RPSI rather than AHS.

None whatsoever.

If a buyer is that concerned that a breeder is using a certain registry because the quality of their stock is subpar, do some research. Ask if the mare is approved by other registries. Is the stallion (the sire) also approved by other registries?

If the answer is “yes” to both queries, then folks – you are only talking about a piece of paper – a brand name, pure & simple.

It used to be that some “registries” (like Hanoverian) had genetic restrictions as to which stallions could be approved, etc., but that has pretty much ceased with the exception of Holstein.

So, as others have said, it is completely possible to have a registered AND APPROVED" Hanoverian" with virtually no actual “Hanoverian” genetics.

As to how to sort out the bloodlines/pedigree – that just takes alot of time & education about WB “breeds”…just like knowing that Bask was a Polish Arab, for instance, and not Crabbet.

And as for WBs have so many other breeds – I would be willing to bet they have fewer different actual BREEDS in them then the American QH or Saddlebred.

[LCR]

Trakhner registries, here and Europe, allow Shagya Arabian mares and stallions into their books. Must pass same requirements as TB & Tk. There have been several Shagya stallions approved in Europe, none here in U.S. as yet! Judging here in U.S. rejected even a Shagya stallion that passed the 100 day stallion testing–they seem to want more height then is normal for the Shagya breed. Ramzes was Anglo Shagya. And Habicht line is well known for performance.

[dani0303]

[QUOTE=andy.smaga;8088806]
This is used in the SF registry so “Du Rouet” is used only by the Fardin family who live in the farm Du Grand Rouet, the name is kind of copyrighted.
But other registry are not following this fair system who give exclusivity to a name to a breeder, then you see some horses with the affix “Rouge” not bred by the Lerrede family or “d’Elle” not bred by the Pignolet family.
This is why you saw horses in Germany with “Du Rouet” in their name the most famous is “Balou du Rouet” who has not been bred by the Fardin family.[/QUOTE]

And it seems like most SF bred in France have the breeders suffix. For example, my horse is Fils Du Reverdy who was bred at Haras Du Reverdy. My friend owns a horse named Imperial Du Valon was bred by Elevage Du Valon, the same breeder of Mclain’s former horse Twist Du Valon.