Well, thanks for all the congrats. I rarely post but honestly I was just busting up with excitement! I find gambling in Vegas to be the most boring thing in the world, but breeding horses, which is always a gamble no matter what you are breeding is the most exciting thing in the world to me!!!
Neither one of the mares is a maiden mare. I have had the Totilas semen for 2 years, and waited patiently to use it on both mares until they had both been proven with frozen semen and had had a foal and proven themselves as mothers. Both mares have been stellar mothers with their first foals. Both mares took as maiden mares with frozen semen on the first cycle. So I felt a bit more confident about things. Also, this is going to sound crazy I suppose, but I did the breeding/insemination myself - no vet.
My personal opinion is that after reading the research and tons of anecdotal evidence, including some of my own observations that breeding a pony mare to a large horse is not horribly more dangerous for the mare than any other breeding. The research shows that the mares uterus plays a large part in determining the size of the foal at birth. Any mare foaling is innately dangerous for the mare. I had a Hanoverian mare that had had 7 uneventful and successful foalings, she was bred to an average size Hanoverian stallion and then she had a foal that was large and got hip-locked (a rare occurrence in and of itself) and we lost both the mare and foal - no ponies involved! Having said all that, this isn’t something I want to do on a regular basis…
What is my goal? A great question! Why wouldn’t I breed him to one of my best German Riding Pony mares rather than to a small Welsh pony? Because, my persinal opinion is that breeding a warmblood directly to a GRP is incorrect. (Just in case someone calls me out on a breeding on my website that was done GRP x warmblood - the mare was already bred when I bought her). If you want to incorporate some warmblood blood into your GRP lines, then the correct way to do that is to do an F1 generation first - a direct crossbred of Welsh x warmblood or TB - then take that resulting offspring and breed back to a small GRP, or might even need to get 3/4 Welsh 1/4 warmblood then breed back to a many generations GRP. Or breed the F1 cross to a GRP, then that result may need to itself be bred back to a nice full Welsh or 1/2 Welsh - until you start to consistently get the large pony size you want - which of course may take several generations - and there may always be throwbacks. So for me this is not an end product breeding but rather the first step toward a line of GRP that incorporates this particular warmblood bloodline. Within GRP breeding perhaps the most successful example of this is the Black Boy line. This is Black Grannus X Jadine and there are many super ponies descending from this origin including Highlife’s Bodyguard, Highlife’s Bulgari Boy, Highlife’s Burberry, Hilken’s Black Delight, etc. And I love the way Carol Lush incorporated her stallion Magical into her ponies!!! She did it perfect way before GRP’s were “fashionable”! The mare, Mapleside Macaroon is just a gorgeous mare. Oh my gosh I’m so excited I could go on and on about my plans!!! I lay awake at night sometimes planning out my generations! I can’t wait to use the offspring with my Die Oder Keine mare, and Diamond King - because he is a perfect GRP to cross if I got a mare because he is throwing smaller sized ponies due to the large amount of pony blood in his breeding and specifically the line breeding of the pony blood.
My guess is with that breeding there will be some pros with the ammies’ purses willing to sign up. Hoping for the OP that she gets exactly what she wants.