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RE: [RC] Old arab blood - heidiBarb, the main key is whether or not the other horses in the pedigree
are of like type. A horse many generations back that is the only
one of his/her type is not apt to lend much to the current horse
standing in front of you. So, when breeding programs change
directions, the resemblance is usually drowned out in the predominant
type in the pedigree.
That said, one still sees throwbacks, often many generations
back.
On the other hand, take a horse like Mesaoud. We do not
"intentionally" select for Mesaoud specifically in pedigrees, but do
value many of his descendants. We have selected our horses based
upon their conformation, metabolic ability and trainability, and found
that that led us to a somewhat narrow range of bloodlines. In
looking back and in analyzing pedigrees of our herd, most of our horses
run anywhere from 12% to over 19% Mesaoud--and yet in only one of our
horses does Mesaoud even appear in a 5-generation pedigree. Do we
see traits of Mesaoud in our herd? You betcha.
Heidi
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