Diversity in the Holstein collection this year

[Bayhawk]

Out of 74 stallions , there are 19 by “outcross” stallions

Baloubet du Rouet 1
Cornet Obolensky 2
Diamant de Semilly 2
For Pleasure 1
For Fashion 1
Hermes D’ Authieux 2
Ibisco xx 2
Nimmerdor 1 this one has the same mother as Classe
Numero Uno 1
QDR 1
Quintero 1
Quirado 1
Singulord Joter 3 One of these is Singulord Joter / Canturo / Acord II 776 Grandma is full sister to Acorado

[stoicfish]

I find this list really interesting. Do you think the selection was based more on the individual with good pedigree or do you think they had a idea of which lines they wanted to introduce before they saw the stallions?

[Bayhawk]

[QUOTE=stoicfish;5871087]
I find this list really interesting. Do you think the selection was based more on the individual with good pedigree or do you think they had a idea of which lines they wanted to introduce before they saw the stallions?[/QUOTE]

They are all obviously good individuals or they wouldn’t have been selected but it is a concerted effort to bring in some blood that counteracts the c&c lines. They made an obvious point last year when they selected two L line stallions as champion and reserve.

Most breeders just flat refused to use the TB stallions so they have given them some alternatives. They don’t have anything against a TB stallion as these stallions are a big part of what helped make the breed into the powerhouse that it is today, but the breeders just don’t think they have the “right” TB stallion at this point in time.

[stoicfish]

Most breeders just flat refused to use the TB stallions so they have given them some alternatives. They don’t have anything against a TB stallion as these stallions are a big part of what helped make the breed into the powerhouse that it is today, but the breeders just don’t think they have the “right” TB stallion at this point in time.

Or they do not want to invest in the couple of generations it may take to see the full benefits. This could be due to the average age of breeders or the need for sales/results sooner.

[Lynnwood]

Not to hi jack but because I’d honestly like to know. What did those cornerstone stallions like Rittersporn, Rantzau, Cottage Son, Lucky Boy, Mytens , Ladykiller etc have that today’s sport horse breeders feel is lacking and preventing them from using TB’s in their program?

What are the missing pieces ?

[Bayhawk]

[QUOTE=hackinaround;5871808]
Not to hi jack but because I’d honestly like to know. What did those cornerstone stallions like Rittersporn, Rantzau, Cottage Son, Lucky Boy, Mytens , Ladykiller etc have that today’s sport horse breeders feel is lacking and preventing them from using TB’s in their program?

What are the missing pieces ?[/QUOTE]

Type. They cant find those types anymore. Most are overbuilt behind , necks too long and low set and have been described as incapable of being sporthorse producers.

Heraldik xx was one of the best ones to come along in many years.

[Go_Fish]

[QUOTE=Bayhawk;5872061]
Type. They cant find those types anymore. Most are overbuilt behind , necks too long and low set and have been described as incapable of being sporthorse producers.

Heraldik xx was one of the best ones to come along in many years.[/QUOTE]

You’ll probably get a lot of grief for this, but it had to be said.

[knowthatifly]

How about Comet Shine sire of Olympic eventer Courageous Comet? He fits the type issue and is a beautiful mover (and throws it) and his get can really jump. Good size, too and desirable bay color. Too bad Holstein has not had the opportunity to consider him as he probably is close to 20ish.
The sport horse type TBs are out there, but not in touch with the powers that be.

[stolensilver]

Fannie Mae wrote a great piece on coming to Newmarket (home of racing in the UK) and her impressions of the TBs she saw. Something that stuck in my mind is that she said the Germans need to move away from only thinking that TBs look like Lauries Crusador.

I was recently at a stallion show at Moritzburg and was very disappointed with the TB stallions I saw there, they were very lightweight, light of bone, ewe necked and had terribly scratchy paces.

The truth is that there are TB stallions available that have the right type and the right athleticism. Sports bred TBs are starting, slowly, to appear in the UK and Ireland. Louella stud has been breeding sports TBs for many years, standing stallions like Primitive Rising.

Sports bred TBs are a very different horse from the downhill, light of bone, ewe necked sprinters that you see so many of. There are also the stallions that produce the Grand National and Gold Cup racehorses who race over 3-4 miles and 20-25 fences. These National Hunt stallions tend to be tall (16.2-16.3hh) have plenty of bone (8.5-9") and look as if they could take you out hunting all day and still be ready for more after galloping 20 miles.

The biggest tragedy to my mind is that once a stallion has made his name as a National Hunt racing stallion all his male offspring are gelded to go racing. So many great lines have been lost: Deep Run, Roselier, Celtic Cone, Oats. Even great lines that did make it into sports horse breeding have gone: Java Tiger, Master Spiritus, I’m A Star. All lost as direct male lines. It is such a terrible waste. Losing those lines is like the warmblood books not having any stallions by Donnerhall or Weltmeyer or Cor de la Bryere because all if them were gelded to go competing.

Considering the way TB lines are allowed to disappear it is a minor miracle that the ever narrowing gene pool left to us keeps throwing up another generation has the build, jump and stamina to tackle the enormous fences of the hardest National Hunt races.

[Bayhawk]

[QUOTE=Go Fish;5872096]
You’ll probably get a lot of grief for this, but it had to be said.[/QUOTE]

Grief ? Surely not. It’s not my opinion , it’s the truth. The breeders I know in Europe very much want to use a TB stallion but they just don’t have the right one. They choose to line breed to them instead which is working well.

We have Ibisco xx in Holstein. I’m not convinced. Time will tell.

Friends of mine in Holstein have States Premium halfbred mares by Heraldik , Narew , Koenigspark and Sir Shostakovich but that day is over for now.

[vineyridge]

Got to disagree about quality these days.

Take a look at the eyecandy stallions on this one website. If there aren’t two or three who would make good sport horses, based on conformation, pedigree and their own performance and the performance of their get, I’ll eat my hat.

www.lts-uk.com

One would hope that WB breeders would look at this year’s German Derby winner who is from the wonderful Waldrun mare family and has Dark Ronald for his damsire line. His name is Waldpark, and his pedigree is here:
http://www.pedigreequery.com/waldpark

If you google images, remember that he is only three.

[Bayhawk]

[QUOTE=vineyridge;5872673]
Got to disagree about quality these days.

Take a look at the eyecandy stallions on this one website. If there aren’t two or three who would make good sport horses, based on conformation, pedigree and their own performance and the performance of their get, I’ll eat my hat.

www.lts-uk.com

One would hope that WB breeders would look at this year’s German Derby winner who is from the wonderful Waldrun mare family and has Dark Ronald for his damsire line. His name is Waldpark, and his pedigree is here:
http://www.pedigreequery.com/waldpark

If you google images, remember that he is only three.[/QUOTE]

Viney , it’s not about your observation of quality and it goes far deeper than just your knowledge of the TB blood. It is all about choosing the right TB stallion to match up with their particular mare base and what they are willing to inject into that particular mare base.

[Equilibrium]

I think you still need a TB person deep rooted in warmbloods to pick out TB stallions. What I mean is TB people, good ones, can tell you what certain stallions lines have produce over and over with regards to type. Even with the variety of mare types he will get within pure TB’s. So in other words stamping the stock. But this person also has to be capable of knowing how this could relate into enhancing today’s modern Warmbloods.

Seriously not an easy task, but it’s what’s needed. I look through out register here for approved TB stallions and it’s a very unimpressive list of horses in regards to what could be gotten. Most are horses that needed a job to do with their man parts that wasn’t of any interest to the TB world.

Terri

[mbp]

I think that, to be fair, you have to realize that the Holsteiner mare that a tb sire is being put to these days isn’t the same as in the Anblick, Ladykiller, Marlon, Manometer, Rantzau etc. days, so it isn’t quite fair to look at just one side of the equation and say “why aren’t the tb stallions as good.” The older style mares needed things that mares that have been tb crossed generationally for several generations don’t necessarily need to the same degree, so there is a different impact.

While I don’t disagree about a lot of tbs being sprint bred and overbuilt behind/low in front, I’m a bit surprised on the “too long” for the necks comment. A lot of the tbs that were successfully brought into Holsteiner breeding weren’t particularly short necked, heavy crests notwithstanding, and many successful jumpers aren’t particularly short necked - I think some of the objective measurements done in studies like Holmstrom’s pretty consistently showed that abit longer neck was one of the the things that successfully jumpers had v. their dressage cousins.

OTOH, the Holstein mare base had long necks to start with - from their harness backgrounds, so is that why they are adverse to tbs with longer necks? I may be misremembering this, but at one point weren’t Holsteiner stallions required to have endoscopies bc of concerns as to a higher than normal amont of roarers? I think it is a fairly limited niche, to want short necked tbs that are not sprinter lined overbuilt behind/low in front. Most tbs that are less sprinter bred are not particularly short necked.

[Bayhawk]

MBP…you hit the nail on the head about the TB stallion that was needed yesterday is not what’s needed today.

Medium length necks are what is desired. I think it is even actually in print in the mission statement.

[Equilibrium]

I thought that went without saying? Obviously TB’s of past aren’t what’s needed now. It’s having someone that can find those horses now that can make a contribution to what’s needed for today’s modern warmblood.

Not an easy task.

Terri

[mbp]

When the question was “What did those cornerstone stallions like Rittersporn, Rantzau, Cottage Son, Lucky Boy, Mytens , Ladykiller etc have that today’s sport horse breeders feel is lacking and preventing them from using TB’s in their program?” I don’t think it goes without saying. And I won’t even say that some of the TBs of the past wouldn’t do well for some issues now. I think the question, though, did need the clarification that it is not necessarily something that the listed stallions had and that is now lacking that is the issue.

Identifying what the more modern mare base needs now is perhaps a bigger piece of the problem.

Whatever time ends up telling about Ibiscus, he’s a really handsome guy. jmo, but I think he has a lot of what I like about Mill Reef and Tamerlane, in a more modern package. (His stand up picture is played with a bit to make him look more uphill) A pretty boy isn’t always a performance sire, but he is a dang pretty boy.

http://www.sporthorse-data.com/d?i=10478519

[stoicfish]

[QUOTE=mbp;5872845]
I think that, to be fair, you have to realize that the Holsteiner mare that a tb sire is being put to these days isn’t the same as in the Anblick, Ladykiller, Marlon, Manometer, Rantzau etc. days, so it isn’t quite fair to look at just one side of the equation and say “why aren’t the tb stallions as good.” The older style mares needed things that mares that have been tb crossed generationally for several generations don’t necessarily need to the same degree, so there is a different impact.
.[/QUOTE]

I agree.
But I also wonder how type is fitting with ability.
Some of the sires mentioned above are part of line breeding that makes the group so successful. But is it the sires or the “crosses” that we are trying to strengthen by line breeding? If you had a dose of Corde, what type of mare would you use it on? Would it still work as well on a L-line today? Or would the type be off but the ability still there?

I have noticed that many of the UL horses have the older breeding, I see more of them than horses with more generations between them and the “classics”. Which makes me wonder if we are refining as we go or trying to condense what we already had.

[Equilibrium]

I meant that it goes without saying in that the mare base is different from when those TB stallions were in their heyday. I just assumed everyone was thinking about the mare base of the modern Holsteiner when thinking of TB stallions.

mbp, you make good points. I was just adding to them in saying that picking a TB stallion for today’s mare base is more difficult than in the TB heyday.

Terri

[ne1]

terri, i think you are right, in conjunction with points made by reece and viney.

the specific expertise required to see forward at least a couple of generations what a given tb may do genotypically as well as phenotypically is a very narrow niche. i’m not familiar with exactly the verband’s inworkings and machinations around getting to newmarket, kentucky or anywhere else they may look at tb stallions. in order to minimise the ‘experimental’ aspect of any new sire - which will never go away completely prior to him breeding some mares - it would take a uniquely strong understanding of both the holsteiner breed as well as the tb breed, and of exactly how the blood of both tends to blend and produce when put together.

while i think it is good that we have ibisco and an eye out for others, however, i also note that ‘typical’ tb blood content through most of today’s holsteiners is in the 40-60% range, by virtue of those boys of old who have successfully been brought in. therefore, while i do see value in having some good tb sire to continue an infusion of the desired tb attributes, i also do not see any current emergency for a lack of having more available. certainly the direction of the ‘breeding experiment’ stallions taken on in recent years is more towards proven outcross sport individuals (often with high tb blood contents themselves) and less towards the straight tb stallion.

the point is well made that the mare base now is not what it was in 1950 or 1970 when perhaps the argument for the straight tb blood could have been made more strongly.

nick
www.hiddenpearlfarm.com