b4breeding

I’ve been following the interesting discussion on Race Cafe forum about the ‘freakish’ trotter Googoo Gaagaa who is from a moderately bred trotting family by a pacing stallion who was an okay racehorse but not a commercial sire.

Cross-breeding strikes us as unusual today, but it was common not all that long ago  in the days when the two specialised gaits were still being developed, and even more recently some good families have arisen from cross breeding.

Tar Heel, who is so common in our New Zealand breeding pool via In The Pocket and Holmes Hanover, has a trotting-bred dam (Leta Long who paced) and his damsire is the hugely influential and big hearted Volomite (who left about 50/50 pacing and trotting progeny).

Direct Scooter, whose sire line is becoming very influential in modern breeding, descends from Volomite and has a trotting damsire.

So In The Pocket (Direct Scooter-Leta Long-Tar Heel) has great trotting blood quite close up in a number of directions. And that puts it well and truly into many of our top family  bloodlines on the maternal and paternal lines.

The In The Pocket mare I breed from, Zenterfold, also has a trotting-bred grandam (Now And Zen whose sire was Chiola Hanover). The Zenover/Zenith family has left both pacing and trotting branches, and some of its descendant mares (like Now And Zen) can be bred to and produce both gaits. Some people have pointed to that trotting blood in Zenterfold’s pedigree as a possible ‘weak point’ in the mare’s genetic structure but I totally disagree. It is the quality of the genes that count.

It is interesting that when Zenover and her daughter Now and Zen were crossed with pacing sire New York Motoring, the result seem to have been the most successful branches of the family – Interchange from Zenover, and Zenola Star from Now And Zen.

So although the concept of crossing a trotting mare to a pacing sire comes across at first glance as a bit of a gamble, it is a path well trod in the not-so-distant past.