Christoph Hess

[springfallstud]

For those who dont get the Dressage magazine i thought you would be interested to read his take on British breeding. (taken straight from article wriiten by Angela Niemeyer Eastwood)

Using TB Blood

The type of horse we choose to ride has changed, with better mental stability and rideability, but he advises us to breed warmblood horses with some TB blood. He suggests we breed really good quality proven TB mares to top class dressage warmblood stallions ( not the other way round ) and not the fashionable ones necessarily but those with high trainability and excellent confirmation.
Since we have proven TB's in this country it seems the obvious to him that we should go this route and he wishes that more German breeders would do the same. This should help keep the forwardness that is so essentail and, often, this cross is easier to ride than the "pure" warmblood that can so easily go behind the leg and be difficul for English riders to motivate.

Thought on this anyone???

 

[arwenplusone]

Agree totally, but I did it the otherway round so maybe not as true to what he is saying - bred my pink papered WB to a WB X TB eventer - mostly to complement the mare's conformation but also to breed a bit of TB back into her line.

Irrelevant but I traced the mare right back to Godolphin Arabian. So its true they all come from the same place in the end!

 

[alleycat]

A long post on another forum (now defunct) suggested that the mare and stallion influence different elements of the foals conformation; a German breeder suggested that if you put a warmblood stallion to a TB mare you'll tend to get TB shoulder, head carriage & therefore action; basically in the first generation you could just get a coarse TB type. However, if you put TB over WB mare, you get a finer warmblood. Whilst its not going to be set in stone, I really think there may be something in this. The breeder had some interesting pictures to illustrate this.

This was partly why I was amazed at Horsegroupie's Welsh/TB mare x warmblood stallion foals; the mare seemed to favour her Welsh dam, to my eye, but in that first foal particularly I could only really see refined warmblood.

Would say that I don't know my way around warmbloods, but I am beginning to recognise that the real difference between modern WBs and TBs has less to do with power, athleticism or quality (whether you favour TB, like me, or WB) than with balance, particularly as affected by head & shoulder set, and from that the nature of the action.

Thus I'm not sure breeding direct to TB mares will work in the first generation. The nature of grading is such that the results may not have the chance to go on and provide a second generation, unless the breeder has faith in their breeding programme to take it forward despite adverse comment.

I'm really thinking dressage horses here; but if there is anything in this, I suppose this may very well be true of jumpers too.

 

[Ciss]

[ QUOTE ]
A long post on another forum (now defunct) suggested that the mare and stallion influence different elements of the foals conformation; a German breeder suggested that if you put a warmblood stallion to a TB mare you'll tend to get TB shoulder, head carriage & therefore action; basically in the first generation you could just get a coarse TB type. However, if you put TB over WB mare, you get a finer warmblood. Whilst its not going to be set in stone, I really think there may be something in this. The breeder had some interesting pictures to illustrate this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I tend to agree with this point of view rather than Hess's who is after all a young horse producer rather than a breeder and was also probably trying to (i) promote the use of Hann etc stallions on TB mares and (ii) say what he thought the British breeders would like to hear. OTOH, we all know of instances where breeders from the European mainland (especially grading judges) see our lovely National Hunt type big TB mares for the first time and are totally bowled over by them -- and even more so when the owner usually adds that they have several more of them at home. Of course these mares can take modern WB stallions and this is the way that the Germans would like their eventing breeding to go if they could get hold of the mares (some chance except indirectly by grading them into their studbooks ) as they have the sort of mitochondrial DNA make up that should match up well (especially with say Lauries Crusador sons) but unless the stallion used is both very modern and very prepotent at passing on super movement the mating might not always produice the desired result. This is becuase the limb formation often (I did not say 'always' as many of us know quite popular stallions that pass on their own incorrect limbs rather too frequently) comes from the dam, so the movement often mirrors that of the dam, sometimes even just by the foals immitating their dams way of going (which can and does happen and is why ET host mares have to be so carefully chosen).

TBs in the second generation are usually more preferably and there are very few top class warmblood competition horses in the world that do not have some XX in the third generation, if only becuase of the large number of TB stallions used to upgrade various studbooks about 20 years ago.

 

[springfallstud]

Interesting views. I have a graded TB mare who has now had 3 WB foals with her last most definatly being her best but i also think the stallion choice has been my best to date aswell, i agree that although i think she is a very smart girl with good movement and confimation (mum has v good trot and warmblood breeders often cant believe how good her trot is) i would love to be able to retain her and put her to a WB stallion to see the result!

 

[Navalgem]

[ QUOTE ]
if you put a warmblood stallion to a TB mare you'll tend to get TB shoulder, head carriage & therefore action; basically in the first generation you could just get a coarse TB type.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know theres always an exception to the rule but I put HG's WB stallion Lohekey Helios De Bornival over my pure TB mare (she's not a fine type though and has a good shoulder but her neck is set on too low and she's very difficult to lighten her front end), her foal is a total mini-me of his father and is nothing like his mother.........

 

[alleycat]

Would love to see pictures of these mares and offspring. I too have seen a stallion who seems to stamp his shoulder, head carriage, legs and movement on his foals; so it seems to be sort of negotiable.... I do think this phenomenon exists, though; I've seen other references to it since that debate, and there seems to be something going on there.

I've an ulterior motive for wanting to find out more, of course, to give me some idea of how to breed my own mare in the future. It also occurs to me that rather plain but well bred mares may be a better prospect at stud than they appear
if their plainness is due to something of this kind.