Last weekend I could have lost a lifetime friend over the selection of a stallion to breed to his mare. Some of my friends, the number of them seem to diminish over the years for one reason or another will have some idea to whom I am referring. They will think about it for a moment and agree with my decision as being correct.

I refused flat out to recommend a sire for his mare and definitely steered him away from one of ours. The reasons I gave him were straightforward and simple to understand. If I had recommended any stallion and the resulting offspring was not to his expectations blame would be cast upon me or our stallions whichever way you looked at the result. I told him the even if I had a crystal ball’s prediction.  I still would not tell him which stallion to put his mare to. Perhaps that is what caused him to be so upset. A lot of people are always asking and looking for someone to recommend a stallion, but in reality they want a scapegoat or somebody else to blame if the resulting outcome is unsatisfactory.

When asked how I choose a stallion for one of our mares I tell people about the research we do. The study into the mare’s bloodlines for at least four generations back – that is both paternal and maternal.  We look at the mare’s sisters and brothers and study them and their progeny also. Then when all the info is all collated we will come to a decision as to the mare’s likelihood of passing on her best attributes.

Every breeder’s requirements differ; we look for temperament, ability to be trained, movement and conformation, and size. When we have a mare that meets these standards and we have identified the areas in the mare that could be improved we will try to match a stallion for her.  If we find that the mare has too many features wanting for improvement we will chose another mare. Then the whole process is repeated with the search for a stallion.

For us, as we prefer to breed to strong Holsteiner bloodlines when not using our stallions, it is relatively easy as everything about performing Holsteiner stallions is on record.  Most of the stallions we use are of international top performance competition lines. We have used some less successful stallions with a strong genetic strain to Ramzes but only to consolidate that bloodline and of course they were Holsteiner bred initially.  To find out the ancestry and performance of horses internationally is much easier today than it was when we purchased Romedio.  Fax machine, e-mail, internet, facebook, you tube and a host of international record libraries are at everyone’s disposal and almost all free of charge.

When we started, breeding records as well as performance records were kept by societies and private breeders, payment was asked for almost all information provided, and language was a serious barrier. In some cases they would not give any information about their breeding stock or who they used as outside stallions. Now in 2010 our personal records go back to 1970 – we have a knowledge of our mares from their health, temperament and training. This makes it very easy for us and we are extremely fortunate that we no longer have to put any great amount of time into researching the mare or stallion’s ancestry or any other requirement as they are on record and only have to add the current event to it.

For those who seriously want to breed for performance there is a necessity to look up and study the ancestor records. It is time consuming but once done you have it for all future use. Never take as the truth anything from hearsay about horses make sure you get it from reliable recorded records. By having all this recorded information you will be able to choose a combination that most likely will give you a bigger chance of success than breeding willy nilly.

Even the current world champion dressage horse Totilas has been bred from a very narrow band of horses.  The Trakehner has always been a potentially good cross with the older Holsteiner lines and in the case of Totilas we have at the Trakehner stallion Garibaldi being bred to the KWPN x Holsteiner mare Lominka.  This mare comes from the jumping line of Farn (Holsteiner stallion who was given the “star” predicate by the KWPN) and is from extremely old mare lines that go back to Gelderland, Gronigen, Holsteiner and Oldenburg mares – lines.  Gribaldi has crossed successfully with this “old fashioned” type of mares in Holland on several occasions.  It remains to be seen what mares will cross best with Totilas himself.