How to Choose a Stallion for Your Mare Part 1– Jumpers Corner By Judy Wardrope
mare have to offer? Do you need to consider a stallion that will improve her in specific areas? What is the intended purpose of the foal? Do you want a dressage horse, a jumper, a show hunter or something else?
A
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS It is common practice to breed ‘like’ to ‘like’ in order to produce a foal of the same type as the sire and dam. It is also normal to look for a stallion that favorably compliments the mare, perhaps adding strength where she is less strong. We often consider these things automatically. We
know that if we want to produce a 15-hand riding horse, we are not likely to cross our 12-hand pony mare to an 18-hand draft horse stallion. We’re also not likely to cross a jumper with an endurance horse hoping to produce a dressage horse. Although we quickly determine that these are unlikely choices, we generally stop there. Because it takes time and effort to learn the points
of conformation that determine function and/or specialty and the process can seem intimidating, we often don’t take these important first steps.
CONSIDERATIONS Have you got a true and honest assessment of the mare’s conformation? Simply saying that she is pretty, tall, or has some subjective quality are not evaluations on which to base breeding. Remember that if both potential parents are short-necked or have offset cannons, the offspring will probably be short-necked or have offset cannons. That does not mean that if you breed a long-necked horse to a short-necked horse that you will end up with foal with a medium-length neck, or that a straight-legged horse bred to one with offset cannons will produce a foal with only slightly offset cannons. Genetics are not absolute or entirely predictable. However, if our mare doesn’t have any jumping, dressage, or racing blood, she will probably not produce a champion jumper, dressage horse or racehorse, even if she was bred to the most prolific of stallions. To complicate the picture, one or both of the parents may not display a trait, but may carry a recessive gene
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n important part of the mare owner’s process for selecting a breeding stallion is asking some serious questions. What qualities does your
for it, and if both parents contribute their recessive genes, the foal may display the trait. So knowing the breeding and production history of both horses is very important. Generally, if you breed ‘like’ to like,” the result should be close to the ‘type’ of the parents. To complicate things further, breeders may need to
investigate certain claims made about particular stal- lions, especially those found in advertising. Be diligent; check out his career (level of competition, consistency, etc.) and his offspring (percentage of athletes, con- sistency of characteristics, etc.). In the horse industry, the breeders are often the true gamblers, but if expec- tations are realistic and educated breeding decisions are made, the odds can be narrowed in their favor. If our expectations are realistic and we make educated breeding decisions, the entire horse industry will benefit, and so will the horses.
ASSESSING THE STALLION The stallion’s record, sire line, and female family are all factors when considering a mate for your mare, especially if he is just beginning his career at stud. Opting for a horse that is unproven as a sire but descends from a strong sire line is generally safer than one who descends from a less dominant sire line. In addition, most successful sires come from strong female families that have produced other successful sires. A proven sire is said to be a better bet than an unproven sire no matter how impressive the pedigree or record, although many commercial breeders breed to some stallions and take advantage of the promotions and advertising provided early in a stallion’s career. When we think about conformation, we usually
consider straight legs and musculature, but do those points provide sufficient information to truly assist in our breeding decisions and really describe horses? Unfortunately, a lot of the terms we use to
describe horses are subjective. For example, what do descriptions like nice hip, good shoulder, well balanced, good mover, and so on really mean? Beyond straight legs, the skeletal aspects of
conformation vary from discipline to discipline or from function to function. In order to assess the functional aspects of conformation, and in order to use them to advantage when we make our breeding decisions, we need objective descriptions.
Conformation
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