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So it's not so much working stock vs. breeding stock as it is breeding
stock = working stock but working stock doesn't always = breeding stock
(assuming you're ignoring non-genetic defects and injuries and stuff
that might render an otherwise good horse unable to perform).

Or at least that's the way it should be. And that's the problem.
Breeding stock SHOULD have the aptitude for performance and,
preferrably, be proven in the showring/on the track/etc... provided the
horse is free of defect or injury. But somehow people got it in their
heads that if a horse can't perform it's only good for breeding, as if
breeding is something that should be saved as a last resort for an
otherwise useless horse.

Am I hitting even close to the mark there?

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 10:42 PM, <heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Yeah, this whole working vs. breeding stock is news to me, too. I always
> thought the point of breeding was to pass on traits that make a horse suited
> to your purposes. Why would you want to breed anything other than a proven
> performance horse? The last thing a breeder wants is to pass the bad traits
> of the dam and sire onto their foals.


You're right that no conscientious breeder wants to pass on anything but good traits to the subsequent foals.  But proving working ability does NOT prove genotype!  There are many top performers who will not reproduce with any level of consistency at all, simply because they have very inconsistent breeding behind them, and just "got lucky."  Likewise, there are many top performers who are the result of hybridization, and whose offspring will also be "all over the map."

Good breeding stock, for the most part, ARE good working stock--but they also have fairly consistent genetic backgrounds, so that their odds of producing what they are is considerably higher.  THAT is "breeding stock."  And likewise, the experienced breeder understands that there are times when an individual is apt to "outproduce" themselves, most often due to some sort of environmental influence that has rendered them as less than optimal for performance themselves.  In solid breeding programs, such individuals may well be good "breeding stock" even if they themselves don't work.  I'm not talking here about horses that have GENETIC flaws that render poor minds or poor conformation.  But there are those individuals that have the genotypes to pass on outstanding working traits, but who have such things as birth injuries, who are last foals of great old mares and suffered the deprivation of uterine insufficiency, etc.  To throw such individuals out of a breeding program would be utterly foolhardy.

On the latter note, there have been some top racehorse breeders who didn't start with the big bucks to buy the outstanding younger individuals--so they researched the mare lines that produced such individuals and then bought old mares that had been top producers but who were literally cast-offs, and which they could acquire for a song.  Such mares might not produce stellar racehorses in the first generation, due to a less than optimal uterine environment--but keeping and breeding their daughters sent some of these astute breeders right to the top, because they had gotten their hands on the genetics that pass on the good working traits.

If it were as simple as breeding Champion A to Champion B to foal out Champion C, everybody would be a successful breeder.  But there's a lot more to it than that.

Heidi

-- 
Genevieve