[QUOTE=crosscreeksh;8430934]
This is a broodmare…in foal.[/QUOTE]
Wow, $17,500? Let’s start a pool on how long it takes to sell:winkgrin: In foal to Totilas? :lol: I predict foal will be born and still no sale…
[QUOTE=mvp;8430318]
That’s the essence of the challenge that a grade mare creates for someone running a registry.
So her phenotype-- physical appearance-- may rock. However, you don’t know much about the genetics that produced that. So, does her phenotype “advertise” a genotype (genetics behind it) that will show up in her offspring? It’s hard to say, because you can’t see what her parents and sets of grandparents looked like.
The “F1” term means “First Filial” generation. It comes from Mendelian genetics back around 1900.
If you crossed this mare with a stallion whose pedigree was known, you could infer things about the mare’s genetic contribution… because you know more about what the stallion brought to the table. But it would be relatively little.
If you kept breeding subsequent generations of this mare’s offspring (her children, grand children and great grand children) to the same line of stallions, you’d learn more about what her line tended to contribute genetically.
All this is to say that people need to appreciate the difference between:
-
A wonderful individual horse and the concept of phenotype.
-
The notion of genotype and the horse whose genetics are known such that one has a decent chance of predicting what that horse will produce when bred… or if bought very young/“on paper”, what the phenotype of the horse will turn out to be. And “phenotype” can include mental characteristics.
The frustrating thing about so many American buyers is that they want some kind of minimal piece of paper for their grade horse. So they take it to a registry and get something that relates only to phenotype and makes none of the implied promises about known genotype that traditional registration implies.
To me, then, that being accepted into some book that leaves a mare 4 generations from having any of her offspring registered is almost worthless. I’d never embark on the project of breeding 4 generations for “her” so as to get one baby registered and assume that it brought the genes of this mare into the registry. Or if I did, I’d have to be young, very knowledgeable about stallions on whom I’d cross these descendents and made of money. And she’d have to be a spectacular mare.
But her acceptance did mean that the jury liked her phenotype well enough to allow some deep-pocketed devotee to embark on their 4-generation breeding empire with this mare. And that’s all it means: The WB people liked the individual horse well enough.
And then American pooh-pooh the value of registration, keurings, papers and the rest. They think it’s rugged and populist and to say, “Hey, you don’t ride the papers.”
True… but THEN they complain about having to go to Europe to find an adequate supply of young horses.
THEY SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED!.. Because that concerted lack of attention to the massive project of learning genotypes and stabilizing it so that you can reliably predict the effects of crosses (which is what registries and limited books do) is what enables breeders to efficiently produce what people want. To put it another way, it makes any cross less of a crapshoot if you now the genetics behind the appearances of sire and dam.
What they are left with, if they don’t care about pedigree, is the obligation to work only from phenotype with each cross. And there will be a lot of misses.
Take what you like and leave the rest. I don’t mind having my ideas culled, lol.[/QUOTE]
Just had to quote the whole post again. MVP, that is one of the best posts on sporthorse breeding I’ve read in the 15 years this board has existed. I wish it was going to be read by a wider audience. I would love to see it appear under a Horseman’s Forum in the Chronicle. Please consider submitting it.
I second the motion.
I too know if someone who is passing their draft/tb off as a warmblood and selling it for the same amount (17,500). I don’t think it’s approved though. I was going to ask you if this person was on COTH because we may be talking about the same person! lol
This has been going on for years. My friend had a draft/tb/ ABS cross when we were kids, and even then, we would mock those claiming their same cross was a warmblood. At the time (14yrs old) we didn’t know there was a registry for this. She would laugh about her $200 cattle auction bought horse was a warmblood.
I have a grade mare who I have strongly been considering breeding for years. Though she is grade, I know a ton about her parents, grandparents, and great grand parents. I know what she is bringing to the table. I know what kind of horse I need to Improve her, but I also know that if her foal came out just like her, I’d be tickled pink with that.
That being said, after 13 years of owning her and probably 10 of those thinking of breeding her, I’m still not sure.
Never would I try to pass her off as a WB though. She isn’t. According to a lot of the requirements, she would pass with a high score, but she isn’t that breed! She will never be. Idk. I guess all breeds started from somewhere, but… It really bugs me with this fake breed stuff.
And thank you all! For all the information. I truly wish I knew more about sport horse breeding! Sadly in my area, breeding isn’t a thing. Anyone know any awesome Breeders in middle TN that I can turn to for information? Informative sites?
[QUOTE=Ready To Riot;8431141]
I too know if someone who is passing their draft/tb off as a warmblood and selling it for the same amount (17,500). I don’t think it’s approved though. I was going to ask you if this person was on COTH because we may be talking about the same person! lol
This has been going on for years. My friend had a draft/tb/ ABS cross when we were kids, and even then, we would mock those claiming their same cross was a warmblood. At the time (14yrs old) we didn’t know there was a registry for this. She would laugh about her $200 cattle auction bought horse was a warmblood.
I have a grade mare who I have strongly been considering breeding for years. Though she is grade, I know a ton about her parents, grandparents, and great grand parents. I know what she is bringing to the table. I know what kind of horse I need to Improve her, but I also know that if her foal came out just like her, I’d be tickled pink with that.
That being said, after 13 years of owning her and probably 10 of those thinking of breeding her, I’m still not sure.
Never would I try to pass her off as a WB though. She isn’t. According to a lot of the requirements, she would pass with a high score, but she isn’t that breed! She will never be. Idk. I guess all breeds started from somewhere, but… It really bugs me with this fake breed stuff.[/QUOTE]
I’m not aware of her being on COTH…but could be.
An example of breeding up, using 5 generations in goats
http://guernseygoats.org/about/breeding-up-program/
And a discussion regarding cattle
http://guernseygoats.org/about/breeding-up-program/
[QUOTE=Ready To Riot;8431141]
I have a grade mare who I have strongly been considering breeding for years. Though she is grade, I know a ton about her parents, grandparents, and great grand parents. I know what she is bringing to the table. I know what kind of horse I need to Improve her, but I also know that if her foal came out just like her, I’d be tickled pink with that.
That being said, after 13 years of owning her and probably 10 of those thinking of breeding her, I’m still not sure.
Never would I try to pass her off as a WB though. She isn’t. According to a lot of the requirements, she would pass with a high score, but she isn’t that breed! She will never be. Idk. I guess all breeds started from somewhere, but… It really bugs me with this fake breed stuff.[/QUOTE]
Breed your mare, OP. And I say that in light of my post above.
IMO, you are doing everything a registry/committee in charge of selective breeding would do:
-
You like the mare in front of you.
-
Equally important: You’d be happy if the foal were no better than she.
-
You know her ancestors.
What that means is that you aren’t taking a genetic unknown who has some features you don’t like and hoping that a stallion’s genes will remove the effects of the (unknown) ones that you don’t like in the mare.
See what I mean? It’s one thing to try to improve upon a mare whose genetics are known. And you’d do well to use a pretty prepotent stallion who has a history of producing that kind of correction to get the improvement job done.
But! It’s a fool’s errand to consider only the mare’s phenotype and the stallion’s phenotype and though they would have some kind of equal (or even predictable) effect on the foal. Again, you’d have to know the degree to which those particular features were consistent ones in each of the parents’ lines.
And FWIW, I wish people would put more effort into evaluating mares and creating mare families. By not doing this, we are agreeing to leave 50% of the genetic contribution to any cross kind of unpredictable. And also, for the small breeder, knowing what you have genetically in your mare puts you farther ahead of most-backyarders. It is the characteristic that makes you more like a sophisticated breeder that studies pedigrees.
[QUOTE=ahf;8431105]
Just had to quote the whole post again. MVP, that is one of the best posts on sporthorse breeding I’ve read in the 15 years this board has existed. I wish it was going to be read by a wider audience. I would love to see it appear under a Horseman’s Forum in the Chronicle. Please consider submitting it.[/QUOTE]
I’ll do that if you hook me up.
All of this comes from a detailed understanding of livestock genetics as it was first developed as merger between the work of late 19th-century biometricians like Francis Galton and Gregor Mendel’s theory of particulate genes (though they weren’t called that).
People teaching genetics and such to non-biologists now get lost in the post-discovery of DNA details. But they no longer teach much about the commercial livestock breeding developed in that era. And I’ll tell you what, by 1920 or so, beef cattle and especially dairy cattle breeding was really, really sophisticated. The dairy folks especially did performance testing and had breeding systems that allowed them to develop bull lines whose females’ capacity for milk production (or other heritable characteristics) were known. (Incidentally, the performance testing for some breeds of dairy cattle go back to European practices of running state-supported farmer co-ops; those guys had what amounted to keurings for their animals. The depth of research and support at American landgrant colleges and the USDA helped, too.
Not only were animal breeders in this era building practical- and mathematical models for breeding that were effective, but to some extent, their version of “genetics” still applies to what we have today. That’s because we don’t know nearly enough about genetic expression; we have to lean back and use simple Mendelian ideas about genotype and phenotype.
I always thought it would be cool to make this old chapter in ag history useful and sexy again to someone.
Basically, it comes down to the fact that not all registries are created equally. In the US, some can and do accept anything with four legs. And their offspring can quite quickly wind up in the main books, despite what some say.
Registries including: AWS, AWR, RSPI, and Old/NA are the main registries with lower standards.
These registries are generally not as well respected, with good reason.
That said, if you’re buying a gelding, it doesn’t matter. If you are buying a mare, well, I wouldn’t buy a mare bred and registered within these registries.
Still, people always ask why there are more good quality WBs in Europe. This is one of the main reasons. People in the US just refuse to believe that their mare isn’t good enough. And, there are enough of these people that entire registries were formed for them.
[QUOTE=D_BaldStockings;8432401]
From Sponenberg
http://www.oocities.org/horsesnewmexcom/gradingup.htm[/QUOTE]
Well I know something like grading up from dog breeding. As you probably know, Australia developed the standard for the Jack Russell Terrier. And as the gene pool was not really big, the registry hosted days, where anybody with a dog looking like a Jack Russell could come and present the dog.
If the breeding committee decided that the dog was close enough to a Jack Russel they would paper him and allow him to be bred within the Jack Russel population. So they got a bigger gene pool. As far as I know it worked for them… But I dont know whether the gene pool in Warmbloods is too small, so that something like this would be necessary. In Oldenburg they are not soo strict about registration of mares with missing pedigrees. I think as long as they are outstanding species they will register them. The foals cannot get a premium, but their foals can…
It depends on what type your registering with KWPN. The Dutch Harness book definitely has saddlebreds in it. ASBs were imported to Holland several years ago. Pretty sure standardbreds and Morgans are allowed as well, at least in the KWPN-NA, Hackneys as well.
The rest of them - QH, Paint, Appy, TWH, draft, Friesian, Andalusian/PRE, Lusitano, Lippizaner - agree, not so much.
They may let Arabs in- I know there are several showing as Half Arabs, I’ve never really checked. Other than a better head, I’m not sure what the Arab brings.
Here is an example of breeding up the books.
http://www.sporthorse-data.com/d?i=11122154
If you look all the way down the damline, you’ll see the dun comes from the mare Lini, who is by a Fjord stallion and out of a TB mare. She would have been placed in the registry’s lowest books, and in a few generations, you have a line of dun warmbloods in the main books. You could do the same thing with any registry that has the lower book/four generation of approved blood rule.
The Saddlebreds Holland’s Golden Boy and Immigrant have descendants in the KWPN ridng and harness books
http://www.horsetelex.com/horses/progeny/23122
http://www.horsetelex.com/horses/progeny/14937
This mare would be considered f2 in the KWPN registry
http://www.horsetelex.com/horses/pedigree/664213
Third the motion
[QUOTE=Manni01;8432512]
Well I know something like grading up from dog breeding. As you probably know, Australia developed the standard for the Jack Russell Terrier. And as the gene pool was not really big, the registry hosted days, where anybody with a dog looking like a Jack Russell could come and present the dog.
If the breeding committee decided that the dog was close enough to a Jack Russel they would paper him and allow him to be bred within the Jack Russel population. So they got a bigger gene pool. As far as I know it worked for them… But I dont know whether the gene pool in Warmbloods is too small, so that something like this would be necessary. [/QUOTE]
Now things will get complicated…
It makes biological sense to, from time to time, to open up a studbook to “outside” individuals who have a desired type. I think WB registries had instances and benefits from adding well-proportioned TBs or even Arabs to their heavy-framed horses. That’s about changing the breed and also increasing it’s genetic diversity.
And the question: Is the gene pool of (any of) the WB registries too small? To ask it another way: Has that type of horse had it’s genotype so stabilized by selective breeding toward one goal that there is relatively little genetic variation floating around in the population?
This need for a supply of variation… within a population that you like precisely because so many of it’s individual are prepotent (which also means the group is genetically pretty homogeneous…is key.
And now the complicated biological/mathematical/political question: Just how inbred are these breeds? I wouldn’t worry about WB “breeds” because they have such a long history of rather porous studbooks. That is to say, they have allowed in other horses often.
But! IIIRC, population geneticists (who do all this with mathematical models) have argued about just how homogeneous the population of North American TBs is. And a geneticist/rider friend of mine swears that she can see the phenotypic effects of inbreeding in the average US OTTBs she sees.
Since you can’t get a genotype of every individual in the population/breed, you need a way to figure out just how many alleles (versions of a gene) are “fixed” (permanent) in the average individual.
To create an inaccurate example: Assuming there was an allele for bad feet, does the prevalence of that trait in TBs mean that the population now lacks genetic variation for that allele? That is to say, you could not cross your Bad Foot TB with any other TB and hope to get a different genotype or, even the Good Foot characteristic.
In this case— where genetic variability has more or less been eliminated from the population— you either have to wait for a random mutation, or you have to open your book to some horse that is true-breeding for the Good Foot character.
And finally getting back to TBs and WBs. I don’t know if the genetic variation question is resolved by biologist. (And you can see why this has political and economic implications for the Jockey Club). But if you were to open a WB’s book to TBs, in order to get pure variation, or some clear differences (as in lighter bone) in subsequent generation, you’d have to know how inbred/genetically homogenous each population was AND how related they were to each other in the past.
It makes for genetically-healthy but messy registries if the studbooks are open and closed often.
[QUOTE=red mares;8432580]
They may let Arabs in- I know there are several showing as Half Arabs, I’ve never really checked. Other than a better head, I’m not sure what the Arab brings.[/QUOTE]
I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that cross is all about what the DHH brings to the Arab and not what the Arab brings to the DHH.
A lot of those crosses seemed to pop up for English/County Pleasure type showing in the Half Arabian rings, and some of the ones who didn’t get enough movement from the DHH have been trickling down to Dressage riders (I have one, although he has Saddlebred in him too).
But I’ve only ever seen these marketed as Half Arabians, never as Warmblood crosses. I’m not saying it never happens, but I don’t think this is one of the “trying to make a warmblood out of something that isn’t” crosses.
[QUOTE=red mares;8432580]
.
They may let Arabs in- I know there are several showing as Half Arabs, I’ve never really checked. Other than a better head, I’m not sure what the Arab brings.[/QUOTE]
Several of the Euro registries do approve some Arabs and Anglo Arabs - even approved as breeding stallions. They can bring much more then just a pretty head - they are universally refining - you can breed an Arab to just about anything, and the result will be lighter, prettier, more elegant. They also have a good bone density and strong feet, short backs, etc. Don’t think of crazy halter Arabs - look to the “unspoilt” breed, and there is a lot to appreciate. Arabian blood is foundation blood in a lot of breeds!
But - having said that, US breeders screwed up a lot of the Arabs by breeding for halter. And when I see a halter bred Arab approved for breeding in a WB registry, I cringe internally…
