Home Current News News Archive Shop/Advertise Ridecamp Classified Events Learn/AERC
Endurance.Net Home Ridecamp Archives
ridecamp@endurance.net
[Archives Index]   [Date Index]   [Thread Index]   [Author Index]   [Subject Index]

RE: [RC] breeding your mare - heidi

The risk in breeding your own to replace the horse you have is that what you 
get may not be suitable for what you want to do.  Now - I did this myself, 
nearly 30 years ago, and I kept the foal, broke & trained him, and rode him 
until his death at 25 years.  However - I didn't get what I had planned on, 
and had to make adjustments.   


I hear this a lot--not getting what the person planned on when they
breed--and I think that this is a problem not of breeding itself but of
making unrealistic plans for a given breeding.  I don't want to pick on
Elizabeth here, because this is a really common phenomenon, and it is
perpetuated often by charlatans who just want a stud fee and hence put
together all sorts of glowing reports on their stallions--although in
their defence, most of them don't "get" it, either.

A pedigree is not a blueprint--it is a set of possibilities.  In order
to know the range of that set of possibilities, you have to really know
what is in that pedigree--not just names (and how famous they are, and
what their show records are) but what the horses are REALLY like.  You
have to be honest about possible "bad apples" in the barrel, and if
there are very many "red flags" in the pedigree, then no matter HOW
gorgious, balanced, talented and suitable the potential parent in front
of you might be, that horse is a risk as a breeder.  Your range of
possibilities is anywhere from stellar to horrible in that case--and
that isn't a "crap shoot"--that's something you can determine.  By the
same token, if you have a pedigree that is consistent in terms of the
traits that you are after, your odds of getting those traits are very
high indeed.

We had this discussion before when I talked about "breeding stock"--all
breeding horses should be of good using quality, but not all horses of
good using quality make good breeding horses, for this very reason. 
Sometimes the individual in front of you DOES represent that odd roll of
the dice that put together the good traits from a very random set of
genes, and there's just too much lurking back there to be worth rolling
the dice again.

Heidi


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-