b4breeding

(Stamp of success Part 1 of 6)  You know the odds, now beat them! It’s the TAB’s familiar challenge for punters, and it applies no less to breeders. It’s all about maximizing our chances. One way is to select a sire that strengthens or complements our mare’s type and temperament. Breeding for type has been overshadowed in recent times by the strong focus on pedigree and performance. But do some stallions ‘stamp’ their progeny more than others? Novice breeder Bee Pears went looking for answers at the North Island Stallion Expo…

No wonder that old adage “Breed the best to the best” seems unhelpful these days. The top echelon of sires available to New Zealand breeders are all superb racehorses and from strong sire lines and often famous maternal families, and many of them have a long list of successful offspring. Breeders are spoilt for choice.

So I find myself feeling a bit sorry for the stud marketing teams.  Apart from his specific pedigree, what is the difference between this fast, beautifully bred, great gaited champion and the next one?

In situations like that, points of difference are important. Just being a “new” product doesn’t work – in fact it can be a handicap, unproven. That’s why I’m surprised we don’t hear more from the studs about a sire’s type and temperament. Some observations (even research) on physical or character qualities that are consistently showing up in his foals would be great.  Until recently, we had to search hard to find the height of stallions in the stud booklets. We might be lucky to get a quote from an excited USA driver or a Kiwi trainer who has broken in a couple of a sire’s first yearlings.

Of course the glossy photos and marketing hype is more about stud farm branding, and less about helping us make careful breeding decisions. That’s the tough commercial world they exist in. It’s also safer for sire promoters to focus on past deeds and proven progeny – lists of success updated each year. Nothing much fresh or insightful to help us on type and temperament.

So it is up to us breeders to ask if we want to know more.

As a breeder I want to know what observable characteristics (size, conformation, gait, temperament, attitude and character, colour or markings, and perhaps natural talents and soundness) might be more predictably passed on by a certain sire.

If I can learn that, I may have more chance of adding in the physical or mental ingredient I need to improve my mare or deliver the market’s “$100,000 horse” on sales day.

So do some stallions ‘stamp’ their progeny more than others? And if so, what do they stamp?

I took advantage of the North Island Standardbred Breeders Stallion Expo at Alexander Park in 2010 to ask some of our most experienced breeders and stud representatives if they could help answer that question.

These were just informal observations of their “stamp collections”, but it gave me a glimpse of what we can find out if we want to factor a sire’s type and temperament into the breeding equation.

Check out the next four blogs for  comments from Bob McArdle, Graeme Henley, Andrew Grierson and Sandy Yarndley on this topic.