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Breeding guideline today - Part 1 (long)
As the number of foals got halved over the last years due to the economy crisis and rising costs for keeping horses my intention increased to excite as many new people as possible to start breeding and get involved. Therefore I thought one needs a simple guideline of how to start or improve breeding and what one has to consider to work against this development of a shrinking number of horses.
Picking a mare
First of all one has to be very critical when it comes to picking a mare. The motto should be breed with the best. If you found a top mare she is responsible for 60-70% of the resulting offspring, so choose wisely. Then hope that the stallion does not destroy the mare’s quality instead of hoping for the stallion to do some magic and compensate for the lack of the mare’s quality.
I would prioritize the 6 selection criteria for a mare in the following way:
1. vet check: back in the days most of the time lame mares were put in foal as one had no other usage for them. This approach is no longer competitive. As research showed there is a much higher probability that you get offsprings with clean xrays if the mares and stallions had clean xrays and are sound. This does not consider the risks of chips or cysts due to traumatic injuries caused by a kick that the young horse suffered during growing up or getting too less food during that age.
As a horse with good xrays generates the same running costs as a horse with bad xrays and might not last as long one should start to properly check a potential broodmare with xrays of the legs as well as back and neck just to be sure the mare did not flip as a young horse or has some problems that might be inherited to her offspring.
2. movements: for breeding what interests us the most is what natural movements a mare has to offer. If you buy a mare that is already 2 or 3 years old try to get a video of her as a foal and compare it with your today’s impression. Always judge the movements on a harder surface such as a dry sand paddock or outdoor arena. Never do the mistake to estimate this on a muddy ground or on bark mulch that has a bouncy impact on the horse and makes it look fancy. Also popular are videos in high grass or on stobble fields and the horses trot like never before and also never afterwards at home. Try to avoid to fall for this and school your eyes. And do not even look at slowmotion videos.
In general we need a complete horse nowadays to be successful at World Championships as 80% is the goal everybody wants to attain. Thus the goal should be to find a mare that has evenly distributed talent in all three gaits. Ideally she should have an uphill canter with enough knee action in the front and more important pushing the withers up, the same is valid for the trot which should be floaty with an active hind leg, a swinging back and loose tail and also knee action in the front with a nice lift of the carpal joint. The walk therefore should be at least with a clear rhythm but a solid 7.0 is sufficient to me if the objective is to breed Grand Prix horses for later. It is physiologically much easier to make a horse Piaffe with a short walk than one with a walk for a 10.0.
3. rideablity & mind: this is a vital point that the KWPN did not consider well enough while building their world class health database. What distinguishes a Grand Prix horse from a normal horse in the end is its rideability and mind. The willingness to work with and not against the rider is crucial to teach the difficult lections up to Piaffe that are completely unnatural compared to the skills needed to get a great jumping horse.
If you have an average moving horse that lets itself school and can be ridden by amateurs you bred a horse for 99% of the customers worldwide and chances are high that it can become a Grand Prix horse, probably just for national levels but still a Grand Prix horse. This means you are in the position to sell this horse well at a later stage. We need the right mix between a basic relaxedness and sensible electricity of the horses to make them hot when needed but also not to completely collapse in the walking lections or just the daily care at home.
Always remember that we sell rideability and it is a highly important criterion. Due to my focus of breeding horses for the big sport I slightly put it behind movements as professionals also can cope with hot horses.
4. conformation & type: this is a criterion that actually includes several criteria. Next to the look it also consists of conformation and indirectly stamina. First of all we need correct horses because correct movements can be developed out of horses with correct conformations. The executive of horsetelex.nl Dirk Rosie recently analysed the best Grand Prix horses and it turned out that they have a few attributes in common: long, vertical necks, light head-neck connection, withers at least as high as the croup, foreleg at the very front of the body, long upper arms, strong pasterns and sloping femurs. This should be sufficient as a rough recommendation of what to look for. Please have a look at the picture of Totilas below and how he naturally has all of the above mentioned attributes.
Furthermore we need pretty horses to be successful at stallion licensings and mare shows and also to impress judges later as this sport is subjective and a lot about the look which influences the B marks.
Finally pretty horses normally have a high ratio of thoroughbred in their lines which assures attitude and stamina for the tough challenge to potentially pass a Grand Prix. With tools such as horsetelex you can precisely calculate the percentage of thoroughbred of your foal. Using thoroughbred stallions is not necessary nowadays as we passed the stage of modernizing old fashioned farm horses to sporthorses. Nevertheless to me we still have to consider to keep a ratio of 35-50% of thoroughbred in the sporthorses of today.
5. height: aim for a mare with a height of around 1,67m up to 1,72m. This leaves you with a higher chance that the foal will be tall enough as there is more space in the belly and the mares have more milk to put it blunt. One comes close to the ideal height. A big enough frame is needed for the big tour to fill out the 20x60m arena and arrive at the end of the diagonal in the trot extension. Not only for this frame is essential but also if you want to prepare stallions out of that potential broodmare for licensing later. Often enough the verdict „not enough frame“ destroys the hopes of having a licensed stallion (frame is the ratio of shoulder and croup length in relation to withers height and body length, if you have a big frame it is a sign that the horse will move well).
6. damline: as breeding research showed us the quality of your offspring is a mix of the last six generations of mare and stallion and thus focus on a strong damline ideally with records in the sport and not just at mare shows or stallion licensings. Often enough one can find show damlines that are not performing well in the sport due to a lack of robustness or rideability. Websites such as horsetelex.nl or books like Hannoveraner Stutenstämme by Claus Schridde, Westfalens Zuchtschätze by Franz-Josef Neuhaus and many more can be found giving you the chance to trace back the damlines and also to build pedigrees of your future foal.
What one definitely has to avoid is what I call name breeding where e.g. the sire and damsire are well known but the offspring is normal and the damline is nothing special. Better go for sire and damsire that are not so well known but the offspring is great and the damline is interesting. Chances are very high that these offsprings will always produce something nice and you have different bloodlines which we are all looking for to prevent a narrow genetic pool.
An alternative to buy a ready mare is to go for a filly, yearling or 2 year old if you can get a good deal and have time to wait. I was the most successful with buying fillies and choosing the long way paid off.
Breeding guideline today - Part 2 (long)
Picking a stallion
Picking the right stallion is every year an exciting and challenging decision. In essence you can also use the same criteria for a stallion as for a broodmare: vet check, movements, rideability, conformation, height, and damline.
Nevertheless one always has to consider if one can identify certain patterns that some lines match very well with each other, e.g. Sandro Hit with Donnerhall, Dancier with Wolkenstein II, Fidertanz with De Niro, Benicio with Sir Donnerhall I, Zack with Don Schufro or Vitalis with Fidermark. The combinations are of course endless. First of all one should try to avoid an incross coefficient much higher than 3.0 as the probability of genetic defects and diseases exponentially increases once this mark is passed. You can easily calculate the incross coefficient with horsetelex.nl.
Incrossing once nevertheless increases the performance and emphasizes the strengths of a line. I had a lot of success with an incross on Donnerhall grandchildren as they often had a powerful hindleg and great rideablity. It can never harm to incross on a stallion that did Grand Prix and whose offsprings already did Grand Prix. With hot lines such as Jazz or Sandro Hit I would be very careful not to overdo the incross. If you do this once it is something one can call the x factor. If one overdoes the incrossing though you get something called the incest depression where you overemphasize the bad attributes of a line like bad rideability or walk or not correct exterior plus the higher risks of defects.
Next to that always consider that the blood ratio is high enough and aim for at least 30% up to 50% thoroughbred. This can also be easily calculated with the tool of horsetelex.nl. We need this blood to assure stamina as the Grand Prix today is on such a high level and the warm up and test itself is very tough for the world class horses. Sometimes it also makes sense to look for stallions with jumping blood like the Holsteiner C line which generally adds knee action, stability, strong backs, and good canter.
I often look for stallions that have a long upper arm and a short cannon bone that is constructed more under the center of gravity which makes it easier to collect and Piaffe. Many mares are often straight and out behind and those stallions can really improve them already in the first generation. Furthermore they should also have quick hind legs which is needed to improve a German warmblood mare which tend to move big and floaty but often lack the quickness compared to Dutch mares. To give an example Don Nobless is delivering exactly the quick hind legs that are stepping under the center of gravity with a strong topline and I believe there will be many Grand Prix horses produced by him.
The above criteria apart I try to imagine a possible fit of a stallion by visualizing a 3D picture of the stallion and the mare. Visualize the conformation and movements of a potential offspring from these two horses. E.g. a mare long in the back needs a stallion that is more compact and inherits this. That is for example the case why Zack works well with long Donnerhall mares because he tends to make short backs and add long legs. To make it easy just take a picture of your mare and of a potential stallion while standing and also moving and then look at videos of them. Then decide if you can improve your mare with the chosen stalIion. Ideally never use a stallion that you did not see live.
If you have a mare that has a strong hind leg use a stallion that is not just fancy in the front but also has a good hind leg as this engine in the back is what the Grand Prix riders need later. The horses have to be able to collect, carry themselves and for this need big muscles in the back and a powerful hind leg. Today’s breeding already diluted the old performance damlines as many picked stallions just by looking at videos, being impressed by fancy front legs and never checking them out live under saddle to make a clear verdict.
A good approach preventing this video breeding is already the 2 day sport test for young stallions where you get to see the youngsters with the regular rider but also a test rider. It would be great if we arrive at the point that there is no need for 2 year old licensings but instead give them time to mature and do a sport test in fall when they are 3 years old. We would have horses that stay sound longer and could better judge their quality as a riding horse because that should be our main objective: breeding great riding horses. In the long run everybody would be more satisfied. The results of the sport test are another good criterion to me of whether to pick a stallion or not.
My 5 favorite stallions at the moment are Don Nobless, De Niro, Bonds, Escolar and Fürstenball.
Here is a little overview of stallions that I like to take when it comes to improve the following criteria:
1. Trot: Bonds, Don Nobless, Santo Domingo, Escolar, Vitalis
2. Canter: Don Juan de Hus, Escolar, Ibiza
3. Walk: Diamond Hit, Fürstenball, Benetton Dream
4. Character: Fürstenball, Vitalis, Belissimo M, Lissaro
5. Type: Fürstenball, For Romance, Sir Donnerhall.
You can consider the above criteria but concluding one can say that in the end the rest is gut feeling and a big portion of luck what mother nature will create. So prepare as careful as you can and then just jump for it.
