Uli Hahn from the Hanoverian society in Germany said " Overall we have to ask ourselves what is preventing us from breeding better horses? And how can we remove these obstacles?"
This is an excellent question - if we are to breed better horses then we need to ask a lot more of ourselves as breeders, ask more questions - and develop a clear strategy to make smarter decisions based on better research.
Setting goals for each mare and mating is important – start with the end in mind. This stops time wasting and narrows your options in terms of stallion choice.
For the purposes of this site, the goal is to breed horses capable of performing at the top levels of sport - of course not all breeders may have this goal.
All breeders should also have at the forefront the goal of responsible breeding for the benefit, progress and health of the breed in general - soundness, temperament, functional conformation and longevity. Each generation should build progressively on the last and lead to a generally consistent improvement in type and ability
All we can do is raise the probability of breeding champion horses - and those foals and horses that do not live up to the highest expectations, should still be of use and serviceable for the average rider.
Different Goals
The goal of the commercial breeder is to breed foals to sell - and the sale is the important factor. Success is measured by the sale price and quick turnover - a subsequent performance career is secondary.
Some want to breed a horse to excel in the young horse classes.
Some may want to breed a horse for the show hunter ring.
Top riders often nowadays have a small breeding program of their own, to breed horses for themselves to ride - these riders have a great opportunity to breed a top horse as they are not driven by fashion choices.
And very importantly many breeders want to breed a filly for their breeding program, and sometimes -though far less often these days, a colt for stud. This breeding goal is extremely important - it lays the foundation for the next generations of breeding programs - and often the best result here will not be provided by the fashion stallion.
It is also very difficult to plan a mating that suits both sexes equally - certain pedigree factors have to be built in for colts and fillies.
In this manner, a goal should be outlined for each mare to enable better and clearer decision making and planning.
It also means that breeders need to look very critically at the stock they are breeding. This can help prevent producing excess to needs and/or poor quality horses. It also makes breeders stop and think - what am I breeding for?
In general, breeders need to get tougher in their own choices and evaluating their own foals- we need to open our eyes and stand back from the emotional attachment to the mares and foals. So many breeders have rose coloured glasses on and think everything they breed is world class.
But what usually happens is – if you are breeding 10 foals per year, you will have two standouts. You will have a few lucky matings where the pedigrees happened to nick, or the foal managed to inherit the best qualities of the parents - these will vastly outshine the others in terms of quality, class and athleticism.
Then there may be 3 - 4 foals that are perfectly nice in terms of type and movement but did not live up to your expectations based on the quality of the parents.
At the bottom rank are the average foals - all breeders have them - no matter what they say - they are plainer and harder to sell. Genetics being what they are, even the world's best broodmares will have a percentage of average foals.
If you get a plain filly you can always consider keeping her for breeding if she has a genetically balanced pedigree. And sometimes these plain babies just need more time to develop . Not all breeders can run horses on until they are 3 yos ready to ride or indeed go through the process of selling them under saddle.
When you have the outstanding foals, the mating is repeated with more hopes of success. If the pedigree has strong elements that combine well between both parents, then you are more likely to get another above average foal, but if not - the next foal could be very mediocre - horses tend to breed toward the breed average, no matter who the parents are
Many people have disastrously bought full siblings to champion performers and lost money, particularly if the champion was of the opposite sex.
If you have a genetically compatible mating with important elements and all the other factors line up then it is a good idea to repeat the mating - you may not get the best foal at first try - often the second one is better. However this would be the case where the mating was carefully planned and thought out - a much higher chance of success for a good result. Often the second foal from a random or fashion mating will not live up to the first foal who just happened to get the lucky selection of genes.
If you have a compatible mating and you are breeding to keep a filly, and you feel you got a great result first up, then it can be good to use a different stallion to keep another filly from that mare - with a different bloodline.
It will be great when we can buy sex sorted semen. Some mares only have colts and you can wait years to get a filly - if at all, and vice versa. Breeding to build in generations will be much quicker when this becomes available.
In modern day dressage breeding, the stallion drives the decisions for most breeders whose goal is usually to sell foals. Paul Shockemohle said that this desire to just sell foals is at the expense of keeping strong mare families going - breeders are not interested in this, only in breeding foals with flash pedigrees and popular stallions.
As a result of this type of breeding goal, there is an enormous overemphasis on stallion statistics and superficial appeal - and who hasn't been guilty of this as a breeder.
A very worrying trend is developing in breeding where young stallions are being chosen from short video clips on social media - on the basis of spectacular trots and wall climbing canters. All reason seems to go out the window in the dream of this specularity manifesting in the foals
This also favors stallions with strong marketing campaigns behind them and leaves out most others who are perhaps better choices for alot of mares
This method of selecting stallions ends up creating popular stallion syndrome, which does far more to reduce genetic diversity than the odd incidence of inbreeding
Having a solid long term goal for each mare helps to prevent getting caught up in making poor breeding decisions.
