[QUOTE=selah;5878684]
IMHO, that’s just the problem. Every athletic attribute is painstakingly and generationally bred for…and yet the correct TB stallion to add juice to the mix is…found?
It is said repeatedly that if one had a dose of Corde semen on hand, it would not be desirable to use, as that would be tantamount to “breeding backward”. Yet the needed/desired TB blood is gained only by linebreeding…is that not just another form of breeding backward?
To say that there is plenty of juice in the lines, so we will just line-breed to that which is already in the [increasingly distant] past, sounds to me to be a bit complacent.
Again, IMHO, one of the greatest strengths of the Holsteiner is the fact that blood has been added judiciously, and consistently
through the generations. To stop now would be a mistake.
I think the correct TB should be bred for…not “found”.
JMHO[/QUOTE]
i think the point missed in some of these comments is the historical context of where holstein was, what was added when, and where we are now.
i disagree there is anything complacent in breeding two horses with an average of 60% blood and being comfortable in giving that a chance to express itself without worrying about bringing in more tb blood. history may even show us that we are now at a time when the desireable benefits of the tb blood can no longer be gained going forward as they have in the past. it could be that this blood has done most or all it was needed to do for jumper and/or holsteiner breeding.
again, the subtle issue that continually gets mixed up in the discussion is that of motivation. some are motivated as defenders of the tb breed. others are motivated to breed the best horses possible for current jumping sport (and, in holstein’s case, doing so while secondarily preserving a desireable ‘breed type’).
these two different start points sometimes cause us to be having two separate conversations. to repeat from earlier, in holstein, the breeding experiment in recent years has been much more focussed on successful sport individuals as opposed to the older practice of attempting to specifically find a good tb sire. i guess time will tell whether that practice is validated (the current diverse set of stallions selected from such breedings would indicate the folks in holstein are happy with this approach so far), or whether there is indeed some failure to continue working to bring more tb blood in on top than is still being done.
my guess is that, over time, tbs will still be used and valued - especially for individual mares who continue to most benefit from them - but perhaps not so specifically sought out as they have been in the past.
as an aside, i breed angus cattle, and the parallel discussion goes on there quite the same. and what is interesting is that both sides of that discussion develop strong markets for their products and, at the end of the day, both produce good beef. the progresssives do very little back-crossing but rather will linebreed heavily on currently favoured sire lines. in doing this they have suffered the consequences of unknowingly propagating serious genetic defects, but simultaneously they are able to push all the boundaries of the commercial traits they are looking to enhance in the cattle unaffected by said defects. the other camp continues to back cross to their foundation stock, using semen frozen for decades and marketing their product as fundamentally more ‘safe’, if somewhat less productive in terms of carcass hook-weight, tenderness and flavour.
ultimately it comes down to an individual breeder’s vision and their ability to use available genetics to reach that vision. for some, that vision will include more tb blood than for others. then in the ring we will see how they do against eachother.
regardless of tb blood content, i think it is a very exciting time to be breeding holsteiners, as quantatively these genetics continue to show themselves among the most productive in the world for the jumper ring.
nick
www.hiddenpearlfarm.com
