Have you ever found full siblings to your own horse? - how alike/different are they?

[see_u_at_x]

My horse has three older full siblings - two mares and one gelding. They’re all by Pablo and out of a bay Swedish mare (Rambo (Danish)/ Amiral/ Magini). The two sisters are at my barn, but the brother (who is the oldest of these full siblings) is somewhere in New Mexico, I think, so I’ve never seen him. From what I’ve been told, he looks a lot like another Pablo baby in our barn who is out of my horse’s maternal grandmother and is more modern looking. Apparently, he started out as a dressage horse, but now he’s jumping around the hunter ring and loving it.

Based on that info, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many full siblings who do not look much alike. :lol: There are some things about them that resemble one another, though: their expressions, their eyes, certain behaviors and sensitivities, the way they move.

Here are my observations about the three who are still left in my barn, including my own horse:

Sister #1 (bay, age 10, around 16.2): She’s the oldest (also probably the most responsive and forward ride of the entire bunch (no spurs, no whip), but she’s not squirrelly acting and is still quite sensible, especially after having her first foal last year. For example, she’s been hacked out alone by a 12 y.o. kid without any issue. Also, she’s likely the best mover of them all. Definitely looks more modern in her body. She can be a little sensitive when she’s in season and has a super quick hind leg, so you’ve got to be a little more cautious with her in her stall. She’s not the kind of horse where you can just throw her winter blanket over her back all easy-breezy and expect her to stand there totally chill. You’ve got to put it on gently and just move more carefully around her than you might with other horses.

Sister #2 (chestnut, age 9, around 15.2ish, I think): Definitely more opinionated than the others and also super responsive and forward. Her rider doesn’t ride in spurs but does use a whip IIRC. From watching her be ridden, she’s the one who seems most likely to stop in her tracks and be “looky” if she’s not focused. Perhaps the most challenging ride of them all. Also a really good mover. Her build is much stockier, short-coupled, and she looks like more of an old-school type of warmblood. I’d say that out of all of them, she’s the one who probably most requires a very calm and quiet rider.

My horse (gelding, bay, age 7, 16.3): Super brain, but not a deadhead. Although he likes to work and has a great work ethic, he’s still a slightly more push ride vs. the girls who are more Ferrari types. I can get him going, but my recent co-leasor struggled a bit more with that. I do ride with roller spurs and a whip, though he doesn’t need the whip most of the time. He loves to hack out, and yesterday, I took him for a hack alone and about eight deer jumped out in front of us and took off, but he didn’t even flinch. He, too, is a good mover, but not quite like his sisters, though we haven’t even begun to see what he’s capable of yet. His breeder and my instructor has said that his trot is starting to look more like his oldest sister’s, though, which is really positive! Build-wise, he’s also more short-coupled and is more old-school and solid looking but has a slightly dished face. A beautiful face and expression, but with that pretty head comes the fact that it’s harder to get him to open up and not set that jaw against me. :lol: But seriously, for a mediocre adult ammy rider who’s had him since he was three, he’s the perfect horse for me.

Other similarities: The three at my barn all have good bone and good feet. Under saddle, they all require their rider to be in the correct position. They won’t let you get by with slouching or tipping forward and just keep trucking around like “ho-hum.” You’ve got to sit correctly and you’ve got to ASK correctly on them. My horse is probably the most forgiving and chill, though, but that isn’t surprising - I’ve been told that it’s one of the biggest difference between the girls and boys with Rambo on the dam’s side. All of them are ridden by adult ammy riders and all of them tend to bond quite strongly with their people. I’ll see if I can find some decent pictures to post.

[skyy]

DD’s pony mare has at least 1 full sib. - a gelding. He did well in the Large hunter ring. She flunked out of hunter land but was a kick ass Pony Jumper! We always say that she got the extra genes of her TB mom and he must’ve gotten her share of the Welsh dad.

[fanfayre]

I wish- it seems all my most recent horses have been destined to be ‘only children’.

My 1st homebred- while she had maternal 1/2 siblings and paternal 1/2 siblings- her sire passed away before she was foaled and no available semen (he was a rare breed so any little bit of semen frozen was banked for pure mares) to rebreed the dam, even if she had caught (I tried re-breeding 2 or 3 times with different stallions, but she never caught again). My 1st h/b was her last foal too. She looked very different from the rest of her paternal 1/2 siblings- she was grey, when the purebred breed standard is Bay (she was a Cleveland Bay/TB cross). [She is my screen namesake]

My 2nd homebred is the daughter of the 1st homebred, and while the dam and sire lived for several years beyond this one’s birth, the dam (1st h/b) was too sick to be rebred (to any stallion, let alone back to “our” Fred) and I couldn’t/cant afford ET. She does look a lot like the rest of Fred’s children though, dark bay [She is my avatar]

Between these 2 I bought a colt foal, who was the LAST foal by his sire, as the stallion was gelded and sold before the colt was born, so he also had several paternal 1/2 siblings and I think a maternal 1/2 sibling or two. His sire stamped his get, though, with the majority of them dark bay with some white markings (legs mainly, with lesser face)

[PNWjumper]

Full siblings, no. But I have a sibling story that has been interesting (to me, anyway).

I purchased a month-old foal in Germany 4 1/2 years ago sight unseen. She was (is) bred to the nines and something I never could have afforded to buy at an even slightly older age. She was maybe the 3rd or 4th baby out of the mare? The mare and the other fillies had absolutely incredible temperaments and scored extremely high on the rideability component of their mare tests. Easy, tractable, kind, simple, etc. The other fillies were massive (17.3+), and so they changed tracks with my filly’s stallion and used a young up-and-comer, which resulted in a very nicely sized 16.2-might-eventually-get-to-17h mare.

Well my baby mare is one of the biggest pain in the ass babies I’ve ever worked with. She is SO opinionated all of the time and absolutely fights you tooth and nail every single time you ask her to do anything. She also started out really awful in the mouth…which sent us down a long, fruitless road trying to figure out if there was anything funny about her mouth or teeth (short answer; no). I had recently broken my ribs when I started her, so I started out ground driving. Her response when I asked her to do things she didn’t want to do was to fling herself to the ground in a total toddler tantrum. And we’re talking simple things like “come back from the walk to a halt and then walk off again.”

Not gonna lie, I was nervous when I started riding her. But interestingly, she’s never done anything particularly aggressive or objectively naughty. She’s never bucked, reared, spooked, or bolted. But if you ask her to slow down within a gait (for example) and she doesn’t want to, she’ll object to the bit pressure (no different with a side pull or hackamore, btw) and shake her head back and forth (like seriously wave her head around) until she realizes she’s not going to get what she wants. She’s a year under saddle now and she is SO FAR behind all of the other 4yos I’ve had at this stage. And partly because she fights everything until she feels like it was her idea (and then when she does that she’s like riding a 20yo schoolmaster).

But to the point of the post. I found out at one of the early shows this year that a fellow local trainer imported this filly’s half sister, 2 years older - by the same stallion and out of a very similarly bred dam. That was interesting in and of itself because the stallion was lightly used, and to end up with two fairly uniquely-bred German horses within 100 miles of each other in the Seattle area is crazy! But that mare has been exactly the same in every way as mine. Just awful to get started in the same ways. And now, two years in the mare is turning into a star. No doubt in my mind that my mare will be super special - she’s easily the most naturally talented young horse I’ve sat on. But in the meantime she’s doing double duty with the word “special” :lol:

I’ve been able to track many of my other horses’ half siblings over the years. Never had two half-siblings be as much alike as this filly and her sister. But then all of my other half-sibling comparisons have been out of completely different lines on one side of the equation.

[fordtraktor]

I have a Dutch filly and she has quite a few older half siblings out of her mom. It is interesting to watch them. They all look very similar, even by different stallions. MOST of them have been very ammy-friendly, I ended up with the one that isn’t! And her dad should produce good tempered horses, he is now an A circuit Junior Hunter and is a move up horse from the ponies for his owner.

My girl is a sweetie and will be easy someday but she is just one who has a panic button when meeting something new. She was lightly started this year and is going to a Ray Hunt type guy this year. I am not going to bother trying to ride her until she learns to cope better with adversity! Once she learns something is Ok she is very quiet…she is one that is just going to take longer to get going and needs a lot of positive mileage.

It is also interesting how many babies are exactly the same shade of bright bay. That must be a powerful gene in this momma!

[rjr]

Not a full sibling, but an offspring of my mare. When I purchased her, I knew that she had a foal when she was 4 years old, and I knew the name of the foal’s owner, but I had never seen the foal. Then a few years later at regional championships, I saw this gorgeous gelding that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. I was thinking that the reason I liked him so much was that he looked and moved a lot like my mare. Then I heard someone walk up to him and say his name. I realized that it was my mare’s foal. Turns out they have fairly similar temperaments also.

[GramV]

I bred two full siblings. They are two years apart by Freestyle and both grew up in the same situation and still are with me and mom.

They are sort of alike and nothing alike.

The older one looks like Freestyle and moves like him–elegant, smooth, gorgeous. She has always been super sensitive and quiet, but loving. If you’re near her, she will slowly be touching you. She’s starting GP and is super talented and now strong enough I think I may compete her in a snaffle. As they got older, her younger sister became more dominant. She looks a little like a baroque horse and is mostly black looking. She is very energetic and pretty easy to sit on and ride, but also the lazy one. She would make a great western pleasure horse, and when I put someone on her who is not much of a rider, she acts like one.

The younger one looks like mom, but way bigger and is 2 inches taller and probably 200 lbs heavier than her sister. She is strong, big, and pushy. She’s been a tough ride in that she went through a spooky phase and was pretty scary to ride. She’s sorted that out, but still once she looks at something, can be a pain, because she has to look at everything. Once she gets a little tired, she is really fun to ride and can do all of the movements easily. She just does them. She’s the easiest horses I’ve ever put changes and tempi changes on.She takes a strong rider, though, and is like riding a giant spring. She’s going I-1. She is super into everything and wants to be part of everything, and wlll spook at something, and then go stick her head in it. She wants to be all over you and touching you, also, but unlike her sister, is not careful and may step on you or bop you. She is a fabulous mover also, but in a very different way–strong and impressive. She actually moves a lot like Rosamund and is mostly that same bay coloring.

Mom is the smallest one, but still dominant. She’s bay and varies from almost buckskin in the summer to dark bay in the winter.

[Corbyville283]

We lost a beautiful percheron mare to colic this spring. She did weddings, parades and my husbands saddle horse. We found her full sister and brought her home on trial (she was lame at the time). She has high ringbone, stifle issues and is blind in one eye. She will stay with us until she can no l9nger be kept comfortable (thank you previcox). She may never be sound but we owe this to her sister.
She has her sisters temperament and style and I love seeing her in our field.

[b]

I bred my KWPN mare 3 times to the same stallion. The first offspring is a mare that turned out to be around 15:3 hh and a dark chestnut. The next is a gelding that was bright bay and finished around 17 hh. The third is a gelding that is black/brown and will also finish around 17 hh. All have very good paces. The bright bay gelding has a half-sister from the same mare that is a doppelganger. So it turns out that the half-siblings are more alike than the full siblings.

[exvet]

It’s not unusual with full siblings that the first foal, especially if the mare was a maiden to be smaller than the rest/subsequent ones.

[Dutchmare433]

In working with a breeder, I’ve had the opportunity to deal with lots of full siblings and even more half siblings…both from the same dam and from the same sire.

My gelding has no full siblings but lots of half siblings from either same sire or same dam. The dam is pretty prepotent, most of her kids are pretty similar…very similar hind end confirmation for example, though I think mine is probably one of the most idiot proof ones on the ground, though he has only been handled and ridden by professionals, so who knows what he could have gotten up to with different handling.

My mare also has no full siblings, but lots of halves from either side, and I know her dam and several of her offspring. Most seem to end up very forward thinking, sensible, and brave. It’s interesting to see what the sire stamps vs the dam. I would take 100 carbon copies of the mare herself and would kill for a full sibling!

[plaidbreeches]

My boy has two full siblings. A gelding the breeder lost track of and a sister who I have never met but her owners have a tack stand so I see them at shows sometimes. They say she is very similar in looks and temperament but she is a whole hand shorter than my gelding. Mine is older by a few years but has been under saddle a few years less. (extenuating circumstances, wasn’t fully broke until he was 11) They do look pretty similar but then again a lot of clydesdale crosses end up looking pretty similar. My boy is lighter and apparently got all the summer roaning, he’s almost a chestnut orangey brown in the summer and then his winter coat grows in and he darkens up considerably. She stays medium bay year round.

I am facebook friends with the owners of a lot of half siblings, a handful got shipped down to florida to become foxhunters. They are all pretty much lower level horses, definitely first and foremost pets to their owners as I am perfectly happy to admit my boy is. Their sire was a very loudly marked halter clydesdale and their dams were either a tb or stock type breeds (appy, paint, qh) There is one lady who owns two of them to hunt with (one tb cross and one appy cross)

From what I can tell, they all pretty much need to be in regular work to stay happy and to stay in shape and I think they can be a bit flighty as my gelding can so they take dedication but as far as draft crosses go they are all built pretty soundly.