[QUOTE=D_BaldStockings;8394462]
If I am reading your pedigree notes right, your 3 year olds is out of a Sir Shostakovich XX daughter, while the sire Alligator Fontaine has both grandsires as XX? and your Parco XX daughter is in foal to Simplex XX. This is a high amount of TB close up. I would appreciate your reasoning for selecting such high percentage XX sires with such close direct XX ancestry, versus say a linebred Selle Francais, KWPN or Holstein as sire. I ask as it is the opinion of several that TB should remain farther back in the pedigree and close TB is too risky / will damage the jump. What are you breeding for: Show Jumping, Eventing? Thank you,[/QUOTE]
When someone tells me that he likes papers with TB in the 3rd / 4th / … generation … for a TB to stand in these generations, someone has to use them ! And when someone who likes TB in these generations doesn’t want to breed a TB … then he is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest, because he intents to reap what he didn’t sow (as already said in one of my msg above).
What I breed for depends on the individual horse … meaning if the horse shows jump and gaits and blood why not considering to event him ? The sport in which he / she competes doesn’t depend on his paper, but on his abilities !
Intuitively, I’m attracted to blood horses, the lighter the better. And with this said, I really don’t consider a horse to be exclusively a EV or SJ genitor.
I hold some opinions which are not very popular, but are the fruit of my analysis.
Generally when one has to be make a decision, more than one possibilities can be considered. In breeding at the time when I started with a heavy mare, you could go slow by using light WBs or you could choose to do it faster by using ‘Veredlerhengste’ (TB or AA). I choose the faster way … and because I also have a profond fondness for light horses and even the lightest WBs of that time didn’t ‘do it’ for me, considering the offspring would be a mix of my mare and a WB.
The second point is, in my eyes, the future of SJ competitions is not higher - wider, but competion will be intended for horses with more technic, more elasticity, more maneuverability, more flexibility, better recuperation capacities and better reactions. And more solidity.
The power of the jump isn’t the ultimate judge anymore.
And third, I am convinced (but this is just MY opinion nothing more nothing less) that the WBs have a tendancy to become heavier if you stop perfusing ‘light blood’, meaning TBs or AAs. (This I already stated in one of my postings above with Capitol I as an example).
My first mare, my basis mare, had to be bred to very light horses and I didn’t have generations to reach this goal … The question was which TB and after some errors (with TB and WB), the choice of Sir Shostakovich was the right one. Having two fillies by him I choose another one, Parco, very different then Sir Shostakovich. And again I had a filly.
In 2007 I was approached to breed an eventer for a friend, if we could find a stallion for both our goals (her : eventing - me : breeding). That stallion was Jaguar Mail. The filly out of this reunion was very much TB-like … I loved it ! But subsequently, we found out that she didn’t have the gaits to be an eventer, but she had a very very good jump - and she became a SJer !
Considering that a foal out of Jaguar Mail and a mare by a TB could be a very good jumper, I decided to continue on that way.
Quality Touch has a very good paper - Quick Star out of Sevada (mother to Classic Touch) - and was all what I considered good in a stallion : excellent paper, good career in SJ, good progeny and beside the head, a good model. The filly born in 2011 was good without being excellent in conformation as a foal. But maturing, she was all I expected her to be !
She is an even more refined version of her mother and qualified at 2 years for the French National Championship, where she obtained the best marks for freejumping and 7th place over all (German equivalent would be ‘Staatsprämienstutenschau’ but for 2 years old and with the freejump). That was in 2013.
In 2011, I decided to use a stallion who I liked very much for his career (to this day the stallion with the highest French performance index for a stallion - ISO 190) and his paper : Alligator Fontaine. He is also said to be a very good mother’s father … His model too is very much what I like, though a bit to big …
He became the father of the filly born in 2012. She too qualified for the French National Championship, where she placed 9th. That was last September.
Having been given a present by the stallion owner for the succes of the QT-mare, I choose a stallion of whom I had expectations to maintain the light model of his mother. This stallion is Iowa KWPN, excellent paper, good career, very much like Landgraf (his grand-father) but in a more reduced model. The foal, born in 2015, won the regional championship here in HN Le Pin and qualified for the National Foal Championship.
And finally, I love to experiment !
And even though my mares are all direct descendants of TBs, I always fear that the heavier model of my basis mare will come through over the generations.
So I participate in the ‘Route des Etalons’ every year to look at TB stallions, after studying their papers, videos, photos, careers.
I choose Simplex xx because he is a TB with a good career in terms of number of races, his progeny matures early, he has a good model and an excellent character. All the foals by him I saw (all TBs) had correct gaits even for a sport breeder, nice characters, good models.
Does this make him a sport stallion ? well we have to wait for the birth and then some years to know if this risk was worth to be taken.
There was one other point I considered : I saw 2 years ago a TB stallion by Montjeu out of a mare of the Nagaika female tail. He seemed to have it all : great model, excellent paper with references even in the sport breeding (Narow, Noble Roi, Nouveau Roi, etc). He was, in my eyes, one of the best candidats for a ‘Veredlerhengst’ … Alas, when I contacted the owner for his use on a sport mare, they told me he was put down …
So when I see a stallion, a TB stallion, who fulfills all my desires in all aspects … I wouldn’t hesitate anymore.
Over the years and this since 1991 when I used the first TB stallion, I read, looked at, analysed all writings, pedigrees on TBs in sport breeding and sport performance. I am convinced that if you choose correctly the TB, there is no danger of it being a flop, because he compensate his shortcomings with other traits (those mentioned above) as essential, or even more, as power.
Do I sacrify the F1 generation ? Not in my eyes and also not in breeding time terms : breeding is a generational activity.
To choose a TB stallion for a sport mare correctly, you have to evaluate his model in terms of WB-model and he has to have gaits (difficult, I know !). If you can persuade the owner to jump him … that’s even better.
But in my eyes, there are no pre-dispositions for a TB stallion to be used in WBs. I don’t care if he was a stayer or a miler, he has to have a model compatible with WB breeding.
I tend to very much look at horses said to have liked profond terrains. I don’t care for their winnings, but I appreciate solidity, shown by an important number of races run.
In all my breeding choices, I try to follow my gut feelings …
