PIONEEROF THE NILE gone :o(

I still remember an anatomy & physiology class that I took in college. The teacher used a house as an analogy and a way to remember the difference. A heart attack is a plumbing problem. A cardiac arrest is an electrical problem.

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Agree.

I highly doubt AI would have saved this horse; his necropsy may prove me wrong, but I immediately thought aneurysm or something cardiac when I read the Bloodhorse article on Monday. Whatever went wrong with him was likely a ticking time bomb that was going to take him sooner than later, and it just happened to happen on Monday. The horse doesn’t always have to exert themselves in order for these kinds of things to happen, either
my own horse was turned out when an aneurysm took her. She was a long-time retiree doing nothing but relaxing in her paddock and it still (very sadly) happened to her. One second she was here and then she took off at a run, got about 50 feet, dropped and was gone :cry:

RIP to Pioneerof the Nile (he was magnificent) and condolences to his connections. I was very sad to hear he had passed away. Losing a horse unexpectedly is a special brand of sucks.
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Diversity in this case is referring to state program stallions. “Local” quality mares will stay home and get bred to local stallions in PA, NY, FL, CA, LA, etc, because it isn’t economically feasible to ship out of state to a (marginally?) better, similarly priced stallion. (Mares that ship out of state to Ky, or over to Galileo/Frankel are worth $$$$$$$ and the cost of shipping the mare is negligible for the resulting foal).

Diversity means 20 state stallions will breed 30 mares each, instead of, say 12 other KY stallions AI’ing 50 mares each. Those extra 8 state program stallions may turn out to be a Lucky Pulpit, Malibu Moon, or Kantharos, who may not have had enough interest to be successful in an AI shipping scenario.

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Who is the “They” that would set the limits? How would “They” arrive at one limit for all breeders across the industry? How would the number of covers, live or AI, be policed? Why would this not be considered limiting a business owners right to operate their business as long as they operate within the standards set by whatever jurisdiction they operate in? That’s why it would end up in court as the AQHA case did.

Oh, you could set a limit of registrations but how would you like to be a small breeder and the owner of a foal that was determined by “Them” to be over the cover/collection limit therefore ineligible?

Always thought AI should be acceptable with today’s DNA capabilities. But limits on covers/ collections? Seems more like a solution in search of an established, documented problem.

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OK. I didn’t know that (of course.) thank you enlightening me, LauieB

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Genetic variability? The modern TB is pretty inbred as it is. I doubt permitting AI would have any appreciable impact in the long run. Yes, the more popular stallions would get even more bookings, but the gene pool is getting pretty shallow anyway per the recent articles I’ve seen.

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So, again
USTA (United States Trotting Association) is doing this today. I admittedly do not not know all the ins and outs of rules but there are registry limits in place. I want to say it’s around 150 mares a year per stallion. Maybe a little less. I think the book can be decreased based on other circumstances (fertility, syndicate rules, etc.) But
Books fill, and that’s it (i.e., no more mares can be booked). And they are all doing AI. My point is, it CAN be done.

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When USTA’s breeding and racing business model is in the millions like the Jockey Club’s is, there may be some discussion on challenging the book limit but until then


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I get your point. USTA is small potatoes compared to Jockey Club, but it’s also not some fly-by-night registry. And they are managing it, and managing it well, IMO.
As I said earlier, I don’t know of any evidence it’s more or less advantageous for a stud to do live cover v. AI. Sounds to me like an unfortunate freak thing that happened in this case. But I do know that if the Jockey Club chose to pursue it, they’d get it done, and it CAN be done.

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Apples and oranges are the USTA and the Jockey Club.

I still believe hell will freeze over before the JC will allow A.I. The breeding policies of the USTA will never be taken on as policy by the Jockey Club. The gulf between harness and flat racing is of Grand Canyon proportion, both entities seem to be just fine doing their own thing, without arguing or comparing breeding rules/methods.

Expecting the Jockey Club and the Standardbred racing people to be simpatico with each other’s rules is akin to the belief that the AQHA and the Holsteiner Verband would agree on registration criteria. They have in common that their horses are ridden and /or raced, and that’s pretty much the extent of any similarity between them.

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I don’t think that you can approach this issue in TBs without recognition that the ban on AI is supportive of traditional breeding centers. The diversity argument has been weakened severely with shuttling and the big books. But in this country, there is a whole vast horse related economy in and around Lexington Kentucky premised on the fact that mares from all over the world come calling every spring and there are lots of out of state owners who board year round because of the concentration in the industry.

With AI, mares don’t have to travel 2000 miles to be bred and they probably won’t.

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Live cover will still limit the size of a stallion’s book. Yes, more “precise” breeding practices usually allow a single cover on a mare.

Stallions will shuttle northern-southern hemisphere but not, at least that I am aware, across the pond or across the country. So, some diversity but still, at least for the US, as noted, concentrations of the top stallions and mares (KY and FL are two that come to mind with smaller “pockets” in other areas of the country).

KY I suspect would fight tooth and nail to keep the live cover requirement. Loss of so much more that just shipping the swimmers where needed


I understand that argument, but with the top stallions breeding so many mares anyway, couldn’t diversity be achieved by limiting the number of foals by Stallion X who could be registered in any given year?

The industry has lost several top, young stallions in the recent past. Without any facts to back me up, I feel that these top horses, who are getting scores of mares, are being bred past what their system can handle. A horse (or any living thing) is only as strong as its weakest part. These stallions go to the shed, often 3x/day, for months. Then they go to the Southern Hemisphere and repeat the program.That’s a lot of blood being forced through a horse’s system, day in and day out. A heart attack, aneurysm, anywhere the blood vessels are weakest, these horses are a time bomb waiting to go off.

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Just out of curiosity, excluding shuttle stallions to the Southern Hemisphere, how many mares do you feel these JC stallions cover per breeding season??

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Most of the horses you mention were breeding back in the days of 40 shares in the syndicate, one mare per shareholder. (Then add of the trainer who gets a breeding right each season, and possibly 1 or 2 more. That is a long way from 200++ mares a season.

The books got bigger and bigger in the 90’s after Elliot Walden (Vinery) broke though that accepted number. First 60 mares. then 80 ---- the question was: when will it end? Seems to me that the stallions are being totally maxed out. If another mare could be added, she would be. Money talks. A stallion who stands for $250,000 and gets 150 live foals earns $37,500,000 a year
 And there goes any valid argument for “diversity”.

Standardbred mares must be on the farm where the stallion is. This is how they got through the arguments of killing an industry. The same number of mares must make the same trip as before. It is just easier on the horse.

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This is not accurate. Semen is shipped all the time. None of our mares ever leave their home farm to be bred. Now, there ARE some states with limitations like a mare/foal must be in that state x #of days/months for that foal to have eligibility for things like state breeder awards, etc.

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Elliott Walden didn’t work at Vinery. You may be thinking of his father, Ben Walden.

A stallion (or 10 stallions) producing 150 foals from a foal crop of 21,000 still allows for plenty of other horses to have a chance to reproduce. A stallion (or 10) each producing 500 live foals via AI is what would really begin to impact diversity.

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Apologies for the inaccuracies above. I was involved in the industry decades ago and, when you get to my age, time seems to stop.

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But would stallions who are already servicing 100+ mares now really increase to 500 if AI was introduced? Are there really 350+ mare owners waiting in the wings to breed those stallions if only AI was introduced? And, if there were, what’s stopping them from upping numbers now via live cover? Are the books stopped at 100 or so because the stallion really can’t handle more or because that’s all the interest that there was for a single season?

With all the money in the industry, if there really 350 more mares with owners who wanted to breed them to American Pharoah or Justify or other hot stallions, wouldn’t they be lobbying for a way to make it happen?

As far as numbers and diversity go, I doubt that introducing AI would have much impact on the upper tier of TB breeding. Where we’d see the changes would be on the lower tiers of TB breeding. Likely, horse quality would increase because breeders in smaller areas with smaller budgets would now have access to more/better stallions.

I’ve seen plenty of laments about good stallions being sent overseas because they didn’t make it in the top tier Kentucky market. That might not happen so much anymore because his market is now country (or world) wide. Or, even if he did go overseas, that stallion could still be potentially be available to the American breeders who appreciate him.

A wide range of stallions would still be used because of varying budgets and goals and preferences. Under utilized stallions could be used more because that Florida stallion is now available to the Indiana breeder. And that Indiana stallion is now available to the Maryland breeder and so on.

The only area that would be hurt by the introduction of AI would be Kentucky. Everywhere else would benefit.