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[RC] Proving Stallions (or mares for that matter) - k s swigartSusan Garlinghouse said: I personally would not consider breeding to any stallion that had not thoroughly proven himself in upper echelon performance---endurance, jumping, eventing, third-level or better dressage at the national level, etc. Speaking from a TB racing standpoint (which is a great place to be able to understand the aspect of "proving performance" in horses and linking performance to pedigree).... While successful performance of the individual stallion himself at whatever the discipline in question can be a good predictor of success at producing successful performers (in fact it is probably one of the best predictors), a stallion is not "proven" as a breeding stallion until it has foals that are successfully performing. And after a stallion has foals that are performing (or not performing as the case may be), his own performance record becomes totally irrelevant with respect to his value as a breeding stallion. Spectacular Bid had one of the most impressive racing records in the history of American TB racing (and I think he still holds the world record for the mile and a quarter on the dirt); however, he was totally unimpressive as a sire. Although his stud fee when he first retired was probably quite high (although here I am guessing), after he had foals of racing age (and probably after having been bred to some of the best mares available since horses with good racing records usually get the best mares when they are first bred) his stud fee dropped with the non-performance of his foals. By the time he was 10 years old and still not producing anything that could win, his stud fee was a paltry (in TB terms) $2,500 and he probably didn't get bred to many mares at that price (and almost certainly not any good mares). On the other hand, Sadler's Wells (a Northern Dancer son) had a rather unimpressive career on the track himself. However, after a few years of producing foals (from not necessarily the top quality mares because of this unimpressive career), he made it to the top of the General Sire List in the UK (most earnings of his foals of racing age) and his stud fee (and access to the best mares) went up. The fact of the matter is, the way to "prove" a breeding stallion is to breed him and test the ability of his foals. If a stallion has foals on the ground, look at the foals and what they are doing, because when a stallion has foals on the ground, what HE is doing pales into insignificance. In the TB world, since they test them when they are two and three years old, it is possible to test the stallion in the performance in question (i.e. racing) to see which ones you probably want to breed, and then to test the foals to see if you made the right choices, and then use stallion for breeding lots of foals for the rest of his life (another 15-20 years). In disciplines where successful performance cannot be properly evaluated until the horse is 6-10 years old (like most of the "national level" competitions Susan mentions), this becomes much more difficult. If you wait until the horse proves himself at the national level (probably not before the horse is 9) to breed him to get his first foals and raise them up to peformance age to test the foals you won't know whether the stallion is capable of producing high level competitors (which you probably won't know until the foals are 9) until the stallion is 19 years old. And if you are in a discipline where stallions don't perform particularly well simply because they are stallions (jumping comes immediately to mind, but endurance and eventing probably also come under this category), then testing them at this type of performance may NOT be a very good predictor of the stallion's ability to produce capable offspring (if they aren't stallions). This makes it so you have to use some other form of performance (other than actual competition) to be a "test" for your breeding stock's ability to produce capable offspring. If you perform this test on young breeding stock and use the ones that peform this proxy test successfully as breeding stock, and THEN test the foals' peformance at the actual discipline to confirm that you were right to use them, you can continue using them. And I can agree that if your goal is to breed as many foals from the proven stallion as possible so he can improve the breed, then the horse IS "too valuable" to risk on the performance field itself, if the performance field is a riskier place than at home in the breeding shed (e.g. You wouldn't want to use your best producer of war horses as a cavalry mount, even if it IS an exceptionally good war horse). However, by the time a horse is old enough to have foals of performance age (i.e. he is also old enough to be a successful performer as well), then he is only worth using as breeding stock if he IS successfully performing or if his foals are successfully performing (or he is untested for reasons unrelated to ability and even then you are taking a bigger risk). kat Orange County, Calif. p.s. All of this is true of mares as well, just on a much smaller scale. 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