Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Bottom line there too many horses bred. But look at it from a business viewpoint.
Take TB racing for example. If only one in 10 TB's even have a chance of
being a decent race horse, then you have to have a 10 X oversupply there.
Then of that set of the one out of 10 that do have the potential only one
out of 10 of those may actually hold up to training and make it to the track.
So now were are at 1 in 100. Now of those to make it to the track, ...........well
you get the drift. The breeding is geared to support the industry. Where
do the racing rejects go? Some to the show ring, some to trail riders, some
to fox hunters, some to dogfeed and some to feed the appetite of the people
that like to eat horse meat. 

So there is little difference in the "performance horse" industry and the
show horse industry in the respect of overbreeding. The reason is they are
industries. They are a business and in order to be in that business you have
to have more stock to start with than you need in order to stay in the business.
It seems that even endurance - at least as practiced on the international
level - seems to be moving to that business model. In this business model
the horse is a capital asset. 

It is a fact of life - maybe a sad fact - but a fact nonetheless. I don't
think someone that wants to breed a horse for their own use should allow
this to cloud the issue. I agree with Heidi, find the best stallion and mare
you can find independent of current fads, breed it, love it and ride it.

Truman

Heidi Smith wrote:

I was going to comment further on this post last night as well, but I see Maria and Sarah W have beat me to it.  If anything, the "big name" show horse stallions have MORE foals in the kill pen so to speak than others, simply because they ARE in vogue, and more people breed to them, making far more of their foals available.  Furthermore, even though the ridden show disciplines may change fads more slowly than the halter ring, they DO nonetheless change fads with regularity.  What made a good western pleasure horse back when I had any interest in showing would be given the gate these days--a horse that moved freely, moved with neck properly telescoped and just flexed nicely at the poll, and covered ground readily in a pleasant fashion.  In the Arab ring, western fads come and go over how slowly the horse can move (often shuffling his hind feet, or practically dragging them from the next county), how overbent he can be, etc.  In the stock breeds, one has seen peanut rollers come and go, horses that slope so painfully downhill in front that they are caricatures, etc.  So indeed, the stallion that is producing the "champions" of today is often out of style next year.

 

The situation is far better with disciplines that have a using objective--horses that can get to the finish line first, horses that can cut a cow, horses that can jump, horses that can consistently recover and do endurance ride after endurance ride, etc.  Those sorts of disciplines that require balanced conformation and general athletic ability do not come in and out of vogue as the rail and halter classes do, and furthermore, horses bred to do athletic disciplines can usually do other disciplines than the specific ones for which they were bred, as well as make good general riding companions. 

 

Especially if one is breeding to suit one's self, it pays to seek out the "generalist" horses rather than the "popular" horses, as the former will have a value for a long time, whereas while the latter may have a higher dollar value right now, they will be much harder to place 5 or 10 years down the road.

 

Heidi

 

In a message dated 3/4/03 9:20:47 PM Central Standard Time, penelope_75647@xxxxxxxxx writes:

Very rarely will you find  one of
these horses in the sale pen unless it is a high classed
auction where the sale average is high.

I disagree with this. There is a very big named stallion with high stud fee that has had many of his foals end up in slaughter house pens. High dollar, in vogue, stallions have plenty of foals that get thrown away.

Maria