A Critical Shortage of Blood

[TomReed]

Here is an article I wrote that will be published in the next issue of Horse International. It discusses thoroughbred stallions in the breeding of sport horses.

http://www.morningside-stud.com/A_CRITICAL_SHORTAGE_OF_BLOOD.pdf

[fanniemae]

while i am totally with you re faux blood infection in dressage horse breeding, i don't think jumper breeding will be/is effected, for the simple reason, that breeding jumpers works the same way like breeding tb/race horses:

both breeding cultures follow a single paradigma, only.
one breed speed, no matter how, the others breed skill, now matter how.
both can be masured easily and it doesn't take an expert to do so.

only dressage and its subjective valuation is different and as such leaves room for faux blood - and faux horses, and lot's of them...

at the same time, it is dressage horse breeding and it's faux tributes (front leg activity, puppy heads and colour) that seems to rule global wb breeding.
as such, you might as well minimize your demands when looking for the "perfect tb sire": athleticism, jumping technique, movement, rideability, conformation, trainability. ...
you can easily skip "jumping technique" as a search criteria and leave more room to create the perfect eventer. as it doesn't take a jumper, to do eventing. any tb can.

"But the problem is that even today’s “dumbed down” version of the CCI4* event, and many CCI3* events, require true blood horses and not the “faux blood” horses that are failed showjumping and dressage horses. ..."

don't get hung up by your own argumentation, tom.
you do not need to re-envent tb race horses in order to keep up with event horse breeding.
as long as the race horse industrie exists, there will always be a source to enrich eventers.
as there is no such thing like the perfect tb for event breeding, anyway.
mediocre jumping, decent gaites, correct foundation - 50% of tb population suit these requirements.
tb specific muscle fibre and mindset are more important and probably the last two tb-specific features, tb influence is needed for in wb breeding.
and yet again:
any tb is suitable to serve both.

and maybe, one day event horse breeding turns out to be the lender of last resource for both, dressage and jumper breeding.
as eventually THE ideal half tb descends from any given event horse cross...

[Suomi]

Thx.

- @TomReed - in your acticle you mentioned lots of thoughts we've discussed in this forum over the years! (you can read german ? )

I personally would always prefer a tb or hb, but in the heads of many riders (not eventers!) they have a bad image. Furthermore they often do not look like the "modern" horse the riders acually prefer (like fanniemae pointed out).

I'm the owner of a eventing horse, hb (from Cavallieri xx) We've seen lots of horses with faux blood in competitions the last year...and several of them really exhaustet at the end of the course (and this was not even CIC*!). Not only once I thought that was REALLY dangerous! Our aim is competing in CIC* at the end of 2015 or in season 2016... and I hope he will make it well...

Sula Blue you mentionend sounds very interesting... I think I will open an new topic for him.

[TomReed]

Thanks! No, I neither speak nor write German.

Best of luck this year!

[Irislucia]

Thank you for sharing this!

I very much agree with you on the finding that the number of mares a tb stallion gets to cover is paramount to his success as a breeding stallion. Actually this seems to be the only criterion that will make sure he will end up in the top of the eventing sires ranking. In fact I think that stallions such as Heraldik and Lauries Crusador produced a lot of mediocre offspring (from a showjumping perspective!) and could only succeed in eventing (or dressage in the case of Lauries Crusador), because they were allowed to cover many mares and thus produce offspring that could convince other breeders to give it a try with better mares.

I agree that many faux blood horses succeed at lower levels of eventing, which creates different interest as to the format such a horse will be able to compete. They will fail at upper leveld and in turn, the format has been changed to accomodate the needs of such horses. That has been criticized in countries that do habe the tb blood horse and lack the sporthorse. I also agree that you need blood to breed serious eventers.

What is often misunderstood in countries with a long tradition of breeding tb as racehorses is that tb plays a very different role in Germany with its long tradition of breeding sporthorses. Now many US citizens I met tended to make the mistake to think that since Europe is at the top of sporthorse breeding and chooses to do this by merely infusing tb (at the most), they naturaly conclude tb is not beneficial to produce sporthorses.
The real problem, in my optionion, is not the lack of suitable tb, but the lack of persons with in depth knowledge about tb. To choose sporthorses for breeding under such conditions makes perfect sense, especially if on top of that you do not know much about tb and they have a bad reputation.

As to your conclusion in "a special role no more", I seem to have a slightly different view. TB will not be allowed to play a special role, since it is not used in a way that would create top class sporthorses. The types of mares usually covered with a tb tend to be old fashioned and lacking quality. How do you suppose any tb could produce world class offspring with such a mare? Truth be told, no sporthorse stallion ever could.

From what we can learn from earlier breeding experiments in Germany (Trakehner), the "natural experiment" without tb is bound to fail and we are set for the return of a plain old fashioned horse. But fortunately, due to carefull selection procedures, tb is not the only breed with stamina and courage and the skills to do the job. So I guess it will probably take much longer today to actually see such a change happen.

The truth is, that barely any traditional breeder in Germany knows much about tb, including, but not limited to, their lineage, what type to look for, which one will suceed in what kind of discipline. Actually, most sporthorse breeders have probably never come across a tb in show jumping competitions in all their life. Its a simple matter of maths: In Germany there are around 30 tb competing every year in show jumping. It used to be a lot more, but then racehorse breeding has shrunk together quite a bit and there are only around 800 tb foals born each year in this country. So where should all the great sporthorses come from? But who will introduce such promising horses to riders? Who will promote them as sporthorses? It is just not likely to happen.
I have drawn together quite a bit of data on tb as a sporthorse in Germany all the way back to 1980s covering roughly 1.00 horses that succeeded in dressage, eventing and show jumping. What can be said from those numbers is that numbers are diclining rapidly. What used to be a reasonable second career for a tb is highly unlikely nowadays. As to the reasons you could only speculate that sporthorses are much more reknown to "serious" riders, are promoted, selected to suit every possible need, plus there are plenty around, so why would you even stop to consider a tb?
Racehorse and sporthorse breeding are a bit like distant universes in Germany. The two systems do not overlap. There are very few people in Germany, who have the contacts and the knowledge in both fields. Hence, any exchange between the two are highly unlikely and limited to the action of very few persons.

So now who do you expect to breed purpose bred tb in Germany? It is already very difficult to sell halfbreds for any breeder and near impossible for tb sporthorses. There have been a few experiments on this, but from those breeders I know, all have failed (lack of funding/ lack of quality, you name it). Of course the reasons for failure vary, but mostly because breeding with much tb blood in Germany is still very uncommon and in any event limited to very few, very dedicated breeders. Who is to buy foals from them? That is still not very common for eventing prospects. Who ist to recognize such talent? Who do you expect to finance this? No sporthorse stoodbook in Germany would do such a thing (albeit easily possible for example by handing out a tb bonus for true halfbred foals, licensing such tb-crosses etc). On the other hand, all such products would need intense marketing schemes. It is only interesting to sell what the market calls for.

Breeders in Germany do not choose sporthorses over tb, they simply chosse the safest option known to them. Which makes perfect sense, of course, but leaves the tb without much support from sporthorse breeders. So how are tb stallions to produce promising progeny?