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Dear Breeder,
Welcome to the first installment of what will be a weekly weblog about
thoroughbred pedigrees. As a word of
introduction, I have been directly involved in the horse industry since
1988 gaining experience in all areas of the industry. Very quickly
I found a
serious love for the mystery of affinities in equine families and how
breeders throughout history were able to manipulate such affinities to develop horses
that amazed both at the racetrack and in the
breeding shed. Seeing remarkable consistencies in equine pedigrees
and breeders' methods, I read as much as I could about the subject from
as many sources as possible. In addition to reading books, I took
time to discuss the art of mating stallions and mares with anyone who
had the time to talk with me. The obvious lesson to take from the
history of thoroughbred breeding is former successful breeders used strict husbandry management without fail, and
these breeders had a gift for identifying pedigree/ancestry patterns
that gave the horses they bred a higher probability of being high class
performers. The proof of these statements is evidenced in equine
families that have been seen to rise and fall with the direct management
of the breeders' own hand. That is to say, that when a family was
developed by a great breeder such as Frederico Tesio, Colonel Bradley,
or other such giants, those equine families thrived. Very rarely
did these breeders make mistakes in their choices in culling bloodstock
from these families. That is to say, when they parted with a young
filly or mare from a highly successful family by culling, it was for her
obvious failure in one aspect or another with regard to their breeding
programs. Breeder culled branches of highly successful female
families often failed immediately and for generations. However, the rare dispersals
of prolific female families because of
the demise of the breeder, more often than not, also demonstrated how
the strongest families fade when the direct hand of the breeder was no
longer making the mating decisions. As those families became
watered down by the minds of other breeders, they eventually became
unrecognizable, and some fading into oblivion. Over time, I have begun to
recognize patterns that these breeders very likely recognized. A
review of proven "nicks" and close inspection of the best horses bred by
historically successful breeders display very consistent patterns. They
display identifiable patterns in ancestral placement, generational
prepotency and a remarkable display of organized saturation of key
horses in the bloodline.
In the time I have dedicated to studying the breed, I
have also observed the breeding industry. In the past twenty
years, the
computer has come to be one of the greatest tools we have in studying
everything and anything. This is definitely the case with regard to
studying thoroughbred pedigrees, their conformation and race records.
Several pedigree enthusiasts and entrepreneurs have developed all kinds
of programs to try to uncover the magic
formula in breeding and developing champion race horses. The fact
is, if computers could do what the best breeders of our time were able
to do, we would have had another Triple Crown winner a decade ago.
Yet, from one scheme to another, the breed has performed about the same as it
has historically, and perhaps even a bit beneath some of our breed's
best. The reasons for
this can be blamed on a world of different factors, but one could
reasonably conclude that no commercial pedigree tool available to
breeders can be credited with being the magic bullet to breed a classic
winner. In fact, breeders have become a bit complacent, blindly
putting their trust in different nicking programs even though many who
use them have not seen any increase in breeding success because of their
use.
With this in mind, this blog will try to show breeders weekly evidence
of the failure of commercial pedigree nicking schemes. With this
knowledge, hopefully the evidence will be compelling to breeders that
the best way to proceed in mating their mares is to collect information
about the unique qualities of their mare and formulate classic patterns
on an individual basis. Each week, I will highlight horses who
earned black type in graded stakes in North America and throughout the
world in classic venues. The subjects will be horses displaying
poor mating grades offered by the largest commercial mating programs.
For my own measure, I grade a horse's mating on a scale of 1 to 10 with
10 being the highest grade available for a remarkably orchestrated
pattern that appears throughout a pedigree. A grade of 5 is given
to patterns that appear commonly throughout the breed which are achieved
by breeding haphazardly, and grades below 5, or average are given to
patterns that are completely void of any such patterns. The review
of each pedigree is carried out to the seventh generation of each horse,
and the grade is constant. This is important because grades given
by commercial nicking schemes change weekly as one horse can create its
own history basis for a nick. This evidence will be the subject of
the next blog entry, an explanation of the quality of the mating of the
G1 stake winner QUALITY ROAD.
Thank you for your interest in the subject and best
wishes in your mating plans,
Kris Stuebs
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