All the people who have bred foals from their own mares

H

horsegirl

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 June 2006
Messages
10,432
Visit site
are your mares perfect examples of their breeds? Just following from a comment on a post yesterday that horses will weak points should not be bred from. While I can see this would be the case for some conformation problems don't most horses have one or more weak/bad points? Or is it just mine?
tongue.gif
 
I breed from my home-bred mares but I don't breed from them until they have passed a mare grading - i.e. an independent 'expert' viewpoint without my rose-tinted specs has looked at my horse
 
i haven't bred from a mare with a serious weakness. tbh it's such a lottery anyway, there's no point starting from a bad position with a mare with a serious problem. i didn't breed from my much-loved homebred mare who went to Int eventing with me, much as i would have loved to, because her front leg conformation wasn't good enough, and there are no guarantees that even if i put the toughest, soundest stallion with the best front leg conformation on her, it would cancel out her deficiency in that area.
but i bred 1 from my ex-Advanced mare, proven tough and sound, with super conformation, and my friend bred one from her too. both offspring have not-great hocks (even though the dam's were perfect, as were both sires'). one won't ever event (has naturally weak tendons too, didn't get THOSE from its mum either) and the other might, but doesn't look tough enough for the top.
it depends what you're breeding for, though. if it's to be a hack/riding clubber, it may well stand up to that kind of work for years, even if it doesn't have the best conformation. but if, like me, you're trying to breed a top event horse, you need to start with a pair of aces, and even then cross everything...
wink.gif
 
All my mares that i breed from could be improved in one way or other, one could do with a longer foreleg and more height, so she always goes to stallions that are known to improve these, one could have a slightly shorter back etc but i am mega picky. They have however all passed kwpn gradings to a high standard for there comformation, movement, technique and have had their PROK x rays to make sure they haven't got OCD, navicular etc that could be passed onto their foals.
Must have missed the original post? Are you thinking of breeding your mare?
 
It depends what the fault is, but I suppose when breeding it is most desirable to take into account the faults of the horse and try to correct them with judicious breeding. Obviously you wouldn't want to breed from a horse with an obvious conformational defect, but if it's just something like a slightly short back then you would choose a longer backed stallion to complement it.
 
I would love to breed from my TBx. According to the vet the only fault she has is a minor dust allergy - her other problems were all caused by very bad malnutrition before I got her.
 
Yes Muffin61 I would like to breed a nice little foalie in the future, although it is my husband's horse so I suppose it is upto him (HAHAHA).

Not thinking of it for a couple of years though and I will post dome good pics so you can all tell me what you think first.
 
I bred from my own grade A mare (2nd in my siggy) and she is not perfect in conformation BUT she has no major or even what I would call middling defect. She just has a slightly short neck and is very deep (before having foals - now it is worse, obviously). She dishes a tiny weeny bit but this is hard to see even if you are looking for it.

I would think carefully before breeding with any mare and choose a stallion that best complements her. Even if you do this you cannot guarantee a perfectly formed foal, it just shortens the odds a bit!
laugh.gif
would be nice to see some pics of your girl?
 
[ QUOTE ]
I bred from my own grade A mare (2nd in my siggy) and she is not perfect in conformation BUT she has no major or even what I would call middling defect. She just has a slightly short neck and is very deep (before having foals - now it is worse, obviously). She dishes a tiny weeny bit but this is hard to see even if you are looking for it.

I would think carefully before breeding with any mare and choose a stallion that best complements her. Even if you do this you cannot guarantee a perfectly formed foal, it just shortens the odds a bit!
laugh.gif
would be nice to see some pics of your girl?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, just realised she's third in my siggy
blush.gif
 
The palomino mare I bred from last year is a wonderful stamp of her breed. Golden is highly bred with very strong Quarter Horse working cattle lines - very sought after over here. I bred her to my lovely Paint horse who has very rare bloodlines.

Golden is pretty much perfect conformationally. I will never breed from her again though as she developed a foot abscess when she was pregnant and on speaking with her previous owner who contacted me after she had foaled, she told me that the same thing happened when she bred her too. I wouldn't have bred her if I had known this, but I didn't. Anyway, Golden is back to her normal self again.

Ezzy, well it's difficult as he was the one who broke his neck, so no I would say he isn't perfect but whether or not that is because of his injury who's to say for sure. He has all the legs in the right corners, is very pleasing on the eye, moves nicely but most importantly his best asset is his delightful personality and unique bloodlines.

The resulting foal we have from these two is quite stunning. She is a very well put together foal and when you look at her compared to my other nicely bred QH's, she definitely has that something extra-special.

The other mare I bred from was our little pony mare who I shipped over from England. This was a great indulgence. She is a very dear pony; she has cancer and we wanted something from her to keep once she is gone. Cloud is basically a 14.2hh pony with chopped off legs, making her only 12.2hh. Apart from the short legs, she moves beautifully, has no blemishes and or weak points....everything moves exactly how it should.
smile.gif
I also bred Cloud to my Paint stallion.

The foal from this partnership is Legacy and she is perfectly in proportion and conformationally correct, so something seemed to work.

Both foals have the delightful nature of their father, but are actually far more like their mothers than him.
 
I breed highland ponies and none of my mares are ''perfect'', but they are good examples of their breed. I always put them to a stallion that I think could improve a few short comings, but their temperaments are exemplary. I really wouldn't breed from a mare that had any fairly serious short comings.
 
As yet I haven't ever come across a perfect horse, or person.

I can point out my mares faults, but they aren't glaringly obvious, she passed a grading with the SPSS with very good confirmation, temprement and performance marks. She is in foal to an Elite performancce stallion, who of course has his faults as they all do, but like someone said it is a chance you take, they both have their strengths, both have their weaknesses, I tried to make sure that ones strengths hopefully make up for the others weaknesses.

Don't get me wrong, the mare isn't a donkey!! She is ever so slightly croup high, dishes very very slightly, and at age 16 has a few acquired bumps!!
 
[ QUOTE ]
I breed highland ponies and none of my mares are ''perfect'', but they are good examples of their breed. I always put them to a stallion that I think could improve a few short comings, but their temperaments are exemplary. I really wouldn't breed from a mare that had any fairly serious short comings.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're being a bit too modest spitchwick - from what I've seen, your mares are very, very good examples of their breed, and if not entirely perfect, then certainly pretty bloody close!

To answer OP's question, I do not have any mares of of my own, but I would not accept mares with significant conformation faults to my stallion. All horses have their strengths and weaknesses, of course, and I will of course accept mares with 'weaknesses' in the areas where he is strong.

So if it's just that your mare is, say, a wee bit long in the back, or a tad short in the neck, has slightly upright pasterns, shoulder ideally could be more sloping, head is a bit long, etc., then that's OK (providing she doesn't have too many such weaknesses, and they are slight rather than severe) - you just need to chose a sire who is known to improve these areas. But I don't think one should breed from mares with serious conformation faults.

Maybe ask a vet or a knowledgeable breeder/judge to look her over and give you an honest opinion of her suitability as a broodmare? There are some pretty smart breeders on the 'Breeding' section on here, and if you wanted to post a few photos I'm sure they would be happy to help!
smile.gif
 
there's a comment on the 'why Irish horses' thread to the effect that Irish horses are good because 'if an English mare is naff, they breed from her. In Ireland, they'd shoot her.'

Which is plainly untrue because the Irish will breed from anything on 2 legs, frequently as a 2 year old, but it's a sound basic theory. In simple terms, the world has too many horses and a lot of them aren't truly worth perpetuating. If the horse sales were empty and the racing yards weren't turning out duff ex-racehorses and so on, we could afford to breed.

I realise this is idealistic, just that i'd like to change the perception that breeding is a good thing into one of 'is this what the world needs'?

E
 
No horse is perfect and whatever mare you breed from you should choose a stallion with the intention of improving your mares weak points - and hopefully your mares strong point will improve the stallions weak points. I bred an exceptional foal from my old cb x aa mare with a lumpy jaw line. The mare however has got exceptional feet (be ridden for 4 hours barefoot in cotswold stone country), a very good temperament and a fantastic hind leg. Ok, she's slightly long in the body & short in the neck but many horses are. Putting her to Pro-Set I have corrected her conformation faults, got a baby with a fantastic hind leg & her sire's flashy forelimb movement. Lily wasn't perfect, but the foal she has produced is as close to perfect as i have seen for a long time - and that is something my vet has said too!
grin.gif
 
Depends on the fault - Say I had a mare who was really ugly, common looking, had a ewe neck, upright shoulder, high withers, a big hammerhead... If she was a champion jumper, I'd breed her
smile.gif
If she was an allright jumper, and her only real value was emotional, I would not.

I agree that horses should be pretty near-perfect to be bred, or at least winners in their chosen discipline :P
I would not breed an unsound mare unless she would not suffer carrying the weight of a foal, and if the unsoundness wasn't hereditary.

I wouldn't breed a horse with leg problems unless she was a champion. (slightly over at the knee is okay, but other then that, I wouldn't risk it)
 
so what do class as serious conformation faults ? i have 2 mares, one is splay footed and literally stands at ten to two and the other one dishes in trot and canter and is cow hocked. im never going to breed from either of them but are those faults what you class as serious?
 
I would hope to breed from my mare in a year or two. To me temerament is everything - you can have the best looking foal in the world but if you can't do a thing with it its a waste of space.
How do you go about finding out about a stallion's offspring's temperament?
 
I have bred a foal from my mare, zara.
She is not registered and is a chestnut x-breed. (Appaloosa x)
She is a nice compact mare and has jumped her socks off for me for 10 years and has never been lame.
I would say her only fault is lack of papers, to some people this is a big no no but I would rather have a foal out of a mare that I have known to do its job and to be sound with no papers then a foal out of a mare I know nothing about or thats done nothing with good breeding on a piece of paper.

I put her to polling (international showjumper, also retired sound) as I want something to jump/ have fun on when my mare retires.

I am over the moon with what she has produced, you can really tell the difference in the ones you have bred your self as no one spoils them!

I have not bred him to sell him. I did breed my TB filly (by Andes) to sell but ended up keeping her as she is turning out very nice.
 
I personally think far too many people breed from mares just because they can. A majority of "everyday" horses IMHO should NOT be bred from. There are too many average horses about as it is, and there seems to be a worrying trend of "its injured so I'll breed from it because it COULD have been good at X", sorry, but unless it has got good conformation (obviously nothing is perfect!) and something a bit special, dont use it.
 
I bred from my mare to breed a WB that hadn't been messed about with or rushed for the sales. He can mature at his own rate without being over fed etc to 'make' more money. I also couldn't afford to spend 10 grand on a WB when my mare tore a ligament in her stifle and could no longer compete. Although I'm sure if I worked it out over the years he will probably have cost that and more!
grin.gif
 
I bought B to breed from initially, with a view to riding her at a later stage. I knew both of her parents and their correctness was not really faultable. She, bless her, does toe in, but that's hardly surprising, considering her start in life, not seeing a farrier till she was 4 1/2 is just one factor.......... Anyway, she is a graded mare and she is the dam of H, who won BEF First Premiums as a foal and a yearling and was the top yearling in the eventing section at Arena UK - making him 3rd in the country. He is also a county show winner. She's infoal again and I think she may just have one more, before coming back into work - though if she throws another goodun, she may just have carved out her niche in life and stay a broodie!
 
All ours mares have good sound conformation, but of course they are not perfect (no horse is) so all have stallions selected for them very carefully. Ideally I like mares to be graded and have some sort of performance record (be that performance testing or individual competition results). I also like a mare to be of decent breeding. The breeding game is hard enough without starting from a negative position with a less than stellar mare.
 
I think volatis raises an important point here about breeding - that a broodmare should not just be a good individual, but also have a good pedigree.

This is not about having a piece of paper for the sake of it, but because unless you know the mare's genetic makeup, you have no idea what she will produce.

I've always been taught that from a breeder's point of view there is the 'phenotype' - the horse you can see in front of you, her good qualities and weak points, achievements, etc. But there is also the 'genotype' - the horse you can't see, her genetic makeup, the genes from her sire and dam and other ancestors, which will come out in her offspring.

A good individual can be a 'fluke', a one-off, who when bred from never produces anything like as good as herself, because there are too many weaknesses in her pedigree.

If the mare has a 'dodgy' pedigree, you are taking a very big risk in breeding from her. If she has no pedigree - if her breeding is unknown - then you are breeding completely blind, an even bigger risk!

In some cases, the mare may be such an absolutely outstanding, exceptional, brilliant individual that it is worth the risk, but these cases are few and far between.
 
my mare isnt perfect, no horse is.
shes ISH

however she is well made and she has proven herself in competition

she is excellent in the stable and with other horses,she can be hot to handle but id say her temperment is good.

she competed to/won at medium,jumped 4ft tracks easily, won county show classes.

she produced a lovely foal who i am really pleased with and hoping to get to psg level with.

i looked at her faults-minor- things like slightly thick through the throat lash,can do with being slightly more mellow.

i also looked at her dam and sires faults and her siblings to see if there were any strong traits.

i also looked at the stallions i was considering and checked out his lines strong traits and offspring.

and then matched them up.of course it could all have still gone horribly wrong,even with the best planning.i just tryed to reduce my risks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top